Hotels which hire, work with or support refugees
Some readers of Across the Big Blue Sea commented that combining the worlds of tourists and refugees wouldn’t have worked anyway (you’ll find out in the book why I thought a project along these lines could have been a good choice in Tuscany). And if you read the book you already know that my project didn’t work out. But as the following examples show, I wasn’t the only one to come up with the idea. Luckily, other people also managed to put it into practice.
- Grandhotel Cosmopolis: young, fun, alternative and artistic – we stayed here for a couple of nights in summer 2015 after visiting Ida in a refugee home near Augsburg (our children loved our jungle style hostel room, Sergio and I would go for the rooms with en suite bathroom next time).
- Magdas Hotel in Vienna: stylish, contemporary and very well thought-through. Definitely looking like the most professional and inspiring project among the ones I have read about so far.
- A Guardian article about two smaller but noteworthy projects in Tuscany and northern Italy.
- The Beehive Ho(s)tel in Rome: family-run, eco-friendly hotel supporting local charities which supply work to refugees.
Tuscan Travel Resources
The Italian villa rental company I collaborate with
The Swiss Alps
- Schweizer Tor – the ‘door to Switzerland’ described in chapter three.
- The Glarner Alps – home of the ‘Glarner Tüechli’.
- Braunwald – the car-free ski resort where we often holiday.
- Edwin Hauser’s video introduction to the textile industry in the Glarner Alps (he is the friendly local mentioned in the book)
- Another video (in German like the one above), but with some beautiful shots of the textiles and the Hänggitürme (the towers used to hang up the printed textiles for drying).
