A new general manager will lead Palais Hansen Kempinski – Peter Knoll will take over the management of the five-star hotel located on the Schottenring, Vienna. He is successor to Markus Lueck, who led the hotel from October 2013. He leaves Palais Hansen after having had the most successful month since the opening in March 2013 in order to meet new challenges.
“I am very much looking forward to my new task as general manager of Palais Hansen Kempinski,” says Peter Knoll. “My first priority is to get to know the hotel, its operations and mainly the employees, in order to get settled as fast as possible. I am not only taking over a strong team and a successfully led, magnificent hotel, but I am also moving to a great place: Vienna is an exciting city, providing both culture and history.”
Originally from Black Forest, Germany, Peter Knoll is a highly experienced hotelier. Most recently having worked as general manager for Kempinski in Croatia and Jordan, he already looks back on an impressive career with in the luxury branch. He has been engaged in the hotel business for more than three decades, a passion he gets from his roots. His family has owned a hotel in the Black Forest for nearly four generations. As a result, Peter Knoll first completed an apprenticeship as a chef before his studies in Cologne and Villingen.
He worked for the InterContinental Group in London, Bahrain and Shenzen, before moving to Kempinski for the first time in 1995. First he was a rooms division manager and later worked as director of sales & marketing at Kempinski Hotel Corvinus in Budapest, followed by positions in Prague, St. Petersburg and Tallinn. Afterwards, he returned to Kempinski and to Budapest as a resident manager. In April 2010, he took over the management of Kempinski Hotel Hybernska in Prague as a general manager and moved to Hotel Adriatic in Istria in the same position three years later.