A PLACE OF INSPIRATION LESEHOTEL When your gaze is captivated by Lake Hallstatt and the Dachstein glacier, all you want to do is sit and look. The silence up on the mountain below the summit is exactly what guests of the Lesehotel crave on a short holiday for rest and relaxation. The increasing complexity of the network society makes people experience a deep need for relaxation and inner peace. It is precisely this longing that the Lesehotel meets as a cross-industry innovation project when it connects publishers with readers. Dr. Silke Seemann, economist and also operator of the Hallstatt Hideaway (see page 53), researches social change and asks quite pragmatically about the effect on tourism to keep surprising her guests with new products: „People need places of retreat that simultaneously take them out of everyday life and lead them into inner peace. The Lesehotel will be a place of retreat, encounter and exchange. In any case, a place of inspiration.“ Here and now Hotels are places that celebrate the temporary! This is precisely why they are so well suited for engaging in intensities that one does not dare to experience in everyday life. The Lesehotel celebrates this momentum and at the same time offers the framework to recover physically to the maximum without sacrificing the basic creative tension. „We‘ve all had the experience of how much an exciting book can take us away from our hectic everyday lives and relax us so wonderfully!“ The Lesehotel is a place of retreat where one can meet and rediscover oneself. We often lose ourselves in the hectic demands of restless everyday life. At the same time, however,
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we long for exchange, resonance and encounter. As well the Lesehotel offers the opportunity to exchange ideas with other guests about what they have read and to inspire each other. „The book bar is equipped with books, reading glasses, water bottle, writing utensils, notebook and reading light individually for each guest. It can be carried around the house, as a very private side table. It serves as an active means of communication: if a book is placed on the reading light at arm‘s length, it is an invitation: I would like to talk about this book! Anyone who feels like it, can take the book, read it and then offer to talk. If the book holder is in a low position, it means: I want to read in peace.“ Read and enjoy The Berghof, which dates back to the 1970s, has been restored to its former glory. A conscious decision was made not to build a new building. Here, life can be reflected and dreams can be made! Both the silence of the forest and the darkness of the night with the radiance of the stars make it easy to detach oneself from everyday life and turn to that which is waiting to be discovered as potential in everyone.