The Harz is no coincidence.

Fred Kiesewetter was not a hotelier by trade. He was someone who drove into the Upper Harz one day and never quite wanted to leave again. The nature, the quiet, the forests around Lake Oker — and the feeling that this region deserves more attention than it gets.

So he began to invest here. Not with grand gestures, but with patience. He acquired holiday homes — in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Hahnenklee, Schulenberg, St. Andreasberg. Group accommodation for families, hiking groups, people who seek out the Harz the way he had found it. Those houses became KHOMES, a label that still stands for uncomplicated travel in the Upper Harz today.

And then, in Hahnenklee, he saw the Hotel Viktoria Luise.

A building from 1910. A historic timber façade, little turrets, a view of the Norwegian stave church and the Kranichsee lake below. A building that must once have been magnificent — and you could still sense it, if you looked closely and were willing to see more than its outward condition.

Fred acquired it in 2017. Not because it was a safe investment, but because he was convinced that a house like this must not simply be left to decay. That someone had to take responsibility. That he wanted to be that someone.

Fred Kiesewetter passed away in 2022.

His family — Nina Meryam Kiesewetter and her sons Frederic and Max — carried on. The KHOMES houses are running. The Hotel Viktoria Luise is today the project of a support association funding the historically accurate restoration of its façade. It is a long road. But the family walks it, because Fred would have walked it too.

My name is Ralf Thode. I run Baltic iHub GmbH in Kiel and THOR Holding, a group of companies dedicated to digital transformation. Software, platforms, new ways for companies to work and communicate. That is my world.

I came to know the Upper Harz through Nina Kiesewetter. In late autumn 2023, we had actually planned to fly to Nice. An air traffic controllers’ strike put a stop to that. We sat in the airport hotel and I said: “The Harz is cooler than the Côte d’Azur — but let’s just drive there. Show me what you’ve got.”

So we drove.

Nina showed me the KHOMES houses. The idea behind them, the love for the region, the care in every detail. And then we drove to Hahnenklee and I stood in front of the Hotel Viktoria Luise.

I understood it on the spot. Not just the building — but why someone would give everything to preserve it. What Fred must have seen when he first stood before it. That peculiar blend of responsibility and infatuation that takes hold of you when you see a house that has a soul.

We still haven’t made up for Nice. It never felt quite so urgent again.

Okersee Schiffahrt GmbH, the hotel’s previous operator, ran into financial difficulties. The hotel stood empty. 25 rooms right on the Oker reservoir, one of the most beautiful locations in the Upper Harz, a building with history — and no one to run it.

For us, it was a question. Not whether we wanted to do it, but whether we could — and whether we could do the house justice.

We believe: yes.

Since 1 May 2026, Baltic iHub GmbH has leased the Vitalhotel Schulenberg. On 14 May 2026 we opened our doors for the first time under a new name and new management. This is not a teardown and rebuild. It is not an off-the-shelf franchise concept. It is an attempt to preserve something good and, at the same time, to show honestly what hospitality can look like in 2026.

What we learned at KHOMES, we bring to the Vitalhotel: no key box at the entrance, no reception staffed only from 2 to 6 pm, no phone call to ask whether you might arrive an hour later after all.

Self check-in. Smart locks. A digital guest directory with everything you need to know — excursion tips, house rules, direct contact. From check-in to room access to the heating: your smartphone takes over the tasks that once required a bunch of keys and three forms.

Simple, quiet, in control.

This is not technology for its own sake. It is the conviction that a guest who arrives when they like, finds their room just as they expect, and can reach us instantly when needed — has a better stay than someone left waiting. People who come to the Harz want nature. Quiet. The feeling of being welcome, without having to fill out a novel to get it.

We are not an anonymous investor from afar. We have been in the region for years — through KHOMES, through the Viktoria Luise project, through our relationship with the Kiesewetter family.

The Harz is not a property to us. It is a place we — like Fred before us — have fallen in love with.

The Vitalhotel Schulenberg is our clearest commitment to that yet.

A hotel is more than a building and a concept. It is the people who open up every morning, greet every guest, and smooth over every small mistake before it becomes one.

As luck would have it, we had the great fortune of getting to know the Vitalhotel’s core team — people who know the house from the inside, who know how it feels when the Oker lies in morning mist and the first guests ask, after breakfast, where the most beautiful hiking route begins.

They stand by our side. And that is perhaps the best thing that could have happened to us at this start.