Tallink City Hotel underwent nearly 10 million euros worth of renovations
Renovations of the Tallink City Hotel, located in the heart of Tallinn, included a thorough facelift of all of the 324 rooms in the hotel, the lobby, the restaurant, the conference centre and other public areas. The owner of the hotel building, VARA HTG, owned in equal parts by Infortar and Kapitel, invested almost 10 million euros in the renovations in cooperation with the hotel operator, Tallink Hotels. The construction works were completed by Merko, and the hotel will re-open on 30 June.
“We are thrilled to have successfully used these times of a pandemic to carry out large renovations and have this great end result – we owe it to the dedication and efforts of the entire team. Tongue in cheek, we are particularly glad to have managed the renovation works without losing a single customer in the process – there simply weren’t any. The hotel concept with an entirely new service solution is the creation of our hotel team, focusing on Tallink’s strengths and having well-known and loved activities and brands from land and sea meet in the centre of Tallinn. Guests are not only welcome at the hotel but also at the City Grill House restaurant and the relaxation area, and to browse Tallink Webshop’s display,” said Ave Svarts, Member of the Management Board of Tallink Hotels.
“Once a legendary House of Services, now the Tallink City Hotel is definitely a pioneer among Estonian hotels. The new hotel picks up on certain new nuances that guests require, looking more like the customers’ dreams. For instance, there is a very spacious lobby where one can spend time in different atmospheres – socialize at a long bar table, “hold hands” in the fireplace nook or retire to the quiet library. Or have a ZOOM meeting in the small glass room. We need all this and we have all this. It took a year to come up with this and make it a reality; in terms of a large hotel it sounds like a marathon at the pace of a sprinter. The construction company and we were on the same wavelength and things went smoothly,“ said architect Meelis Press.
“As the owners of the real estate, we took a rather significant risk last summer and decided to fully renovate the hotel together with Infortar and Tallink. In hindsight, we managed to turn the crisis in the tourism sector to our advantage. The hotel operator and we are really pleased with the outcome of the joint effort of everyone involved and we hope our guests will be too,” said Rait Pallo, Member of the Management Board of Kapitel and Vara HTG.
The former House of Services on Laikmaa Street from 1974 was turned into a hotel in 2004. Renovations of the Tallink City Hotel began in September 2020 and the hotel will reopen at the end of this June. After the renovations, the ten floors of the hotel will accommodate 324 rooms of various categories – classic twin rooms, spacious rooms for families, elegant deluxe rooms and impressive suites. All hotel rooms will be furbished in modern style fitting for a city centre hotel and the interior design will take its inspiration from such key words that may seem to contradict one another at first glance – heart of the city centre and close to the green outdoors, high tech and natural, fast and take your time to enjoy. The fully renovated restaurant, seating 228 people, now goes through two floors and offers flexible possibilities for organising various events. For holding events, meetings and conferences, the events’ floor, located on the 10th floor, has also been renovated.
Kapitel is among the largest real estate companies in the Baltics, developing and managing shopping centres, hotels and office buildings. The Group’s real estate portfolio includes over 244,000 sq m of rental premises. The company owns four office buildings (Delta Plaza and Sõpruse Ärimaja in Tallinn, Narbuto 5 in Vilnius and I.P.Pavlova 5 in Prague) and has holdings in four shopping centres (Spice and Spice Home in Riga, Panorama in Vilnius and Viru Keskus in Tallinn). The company owns Nordic Hotel Forum (operated by OÜ Nordic Hotels) and, with AS Infortar, co-owns the Tallink City Hotel operated by Tallink Hotels. Moreover, the company has a stake in Nordassets OÜ that owns two logistics centres on the Tallinn ring road.
OÜ TLG Hotell is a subsidiary of AS Tallink Grupp. Four hotels bear the Tallink Hotels brand: Tallink City, Tallink Spa & Conference and Tallink Express Hotel located in Tallinn city centre and Tallink Hotel Riga in Riga in the near vicinity of the railway station and Riga old town.
Infortar is one of the largest private investment groups in Estonia with interests in shipping, energetics, transportation, real estate, hospitality, construction and building materials, printing, trading, financial service industries, and health and well-being services. In addition to a 39% holding in AS Tallink Grupp, Infortar’s investment portfolio includes AS Eesti Gaas, nearly 70,000 sq m of various hotel and spa properties in Tallinn and over 350,000 sq m of land in Tallinn and its vicinity.
AS Tallink Grupp is one of the leading providers of passenger and cargo transport services in the northern Baltic Sea region. The company’s fleet consists of 15 vessels and the company operates various routes under the brands of Tallink and Silja Line. Tallink Grupp’s shares are listed on the Nasdaq Tallinn Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Helsinki Stock Exchange.