With perspective - TagungsTreffpunkt Bonn

Mrs Dubbelfeld, you have been the new manager of Bonn Conference Youth Hostel since February 2023. You have known the hostel for a long time, as you completed your training there years ago. What do conference and seminar groups particularly appreciate about Treffpunkt CITY in Bonn?

Anika Dubbelfeld: The Kottenforst nature reserve begins on our doorstep, so that although we are close to the city centre, you can work in a secluded and concentrated environment surrounded by greenery. Conference guests like to use the forest for a jog in the morning or for a walk during their lunch break. At the same time, we are very well connected to public transport, so that an environmentally friendly journey and an evening trip into the city centre are possible without any problems. We benefit from this, as organisers are paying more attention to the CO2 footprint of conferences and seminars today than in the past. With the combination of a location close to nature in an urban environment, a concentrated working atmosphere and an attractive price-performance ratio, we have already struck a chord with many conference and seminar groups.

Bonn Youth Hostel attaches great importance to environmentally friendly behaviour. How do you implement this topic in the conference area and what requirements do your guests have?

Anika Dubbelfeld: As a certified organic hotel, we are delighted that sustainable conference and catering concepts are in high demand, as we have long supported the initiative to establish Bonn as a conference location for sustainability as a „Partner of Sustainable Bonn“. In the kitchen, we work largely with certified organic food and use regional products wherever possible. We serve conference cakes in bulk and you will look in vain for packaged portions. Fruit baskets contain organic produce, conference drinks such as coffee and tea are 100 per cent organic and the food is currently 70 per cent organic. We even have conference guests who don't want to eat fruit or vegetables or drink extremely sugary soft drinks. Of course, we fulfil these wishes, source mainly regional products and advertise our organic range to give us a clear advantage over conventional providers.

The meetings industry is changing. Where do you think new strategies and investments are needed?

Anika Dubbelfeld: For example, we have invested the special budget that all youth hostels received in 2023 in high-quality conference technology. In future, we will continue to invest in single and double rooms in order to meet the increasing demand for them. In the long term, we would also like to offer so-called combination rooms, which can be flexibly allocated according to group requirements.
I also have the idea of customising some of the conference rooms to enable a different kind of exchange with new room concepts or to offer new forms of encounter. Our building is already ideal for event formats such as bar camps, world cafés or walking talks in nature. I would like to push ahead with this and am convinced that we will be able to raise our profile and appeal to new groups of guests. After all, event venues today have to offer clear emotional added value. In my experience, this added value is based on the experience factor of an authentic location where people enjoy coming together to be active or creative. Our sustainable city location on the edge of the forest already fulfils many of the requirements for this.

The trend towards more sustainability does not only apply to the conference sector. Do you also have specific ideas for the future for other guest groups?

Anika Dubbelfeld: The sustainable approach that we embarked on years ago naturally benefits all of our guest groups. For schools, we want to expand it further with regard to school trips. We are therefore planning to become the second youth hostel in the Rhineland after Mönchengladbach to be awarded the Environmental Youth Hostel certificate. This DJH-wide seal of quality stands for values with which our entire team can identify very well and which are a perfect fit for a sustainable hostel like ours. Although our youth hostel is a townhouse, it is also located right next to a nature reserve. This is a mix that teachers also appreciate for their school trips.