About Us
About Us
Christl Schassberger, the founder of Hotel “Alarun” was one of five siblings.
She was born and raised in her family’s old farm in Hollern, Germany.
Initially she wanted to study social education, but after a weekend job at the small guest house “Linde”, she discovered her passion for the hospitality industry.
This passion led her to pursue a hotel career at the Hotel “Metropol”, which closed its doors a couple of years back in Munich.
After gaining enough experience in the field, Christl set her mind on opening her own guest house. Nevertheless, it was too soon for her plans to finalize, so she decided to go back to school to study agricultural science. Later she worked in a state institute taking care of the kitchen and the household, sometime after she proceeded to work at the front desk at the “Hotel Olymp” in Eching, where she spent 3 years as a receptionist.
It was only then when Christl could finally see her dream come true, and her hotel was finally built in one of her family’s pieces of land in Hollern. Hollern used to be a suburb of the city of Eching, until the new high way B13 was completed in 1990, which made then Hollern a part of the city of Unterschleissheim.
In the early 1990s the city of Unterschleissheim was thriving, strangely enough it only had one hotel available, and that scenario was the perfect premise for Christl’s dream project.
The “Alarun” located in the middle of green meadows opened its doors on March 16, 1992.
Initially, it offered 56 guest rooms, a sauna and two conference rooms. The proud hotelier was adamant on spacious, guest rooms that were at least 24 m² in size. “I wanted big, comfortable rooms, where my guests would feel at home”, she remembers.
The name Alarun, Celtic for “flowing water”, was suggested by a town historian of Eching,
(the name that was once given to Hollern’s land settlement. “It was like a tongue twister to me at first”, confessed the hotel entrepreneur.
Coincidentally and not long after, Celtic artifacts were found in the ground in the hotel’s construction site. Ever since, Christl decided to give all her conference rooms Celtic names.
Even with her family’s financial support and the inherited piece of land, young Ms. Schassberger was struggling making ends meet. For years the “Alarun” stood on the verge of closing, especially after another hotel opened up in Unterschleissheim, offering low prices to gain market share. “Those were hard times. We almost went out of business”, expressed Schassberger. However, she always stayed true to her own beliefs and values and never went down that road.
By the early 2000s, the hotel “Alarun” had established financial security. Even with the city’s industrial expansion, Christl Schassberger has been eager to keep her property green and full of natural life. In 2004, the restaurant “Freetz” (also a Celtic name) was built and added to compliment the hotel’s breakfast service, starting to operate by 2005.
In 2013 the “Alarun” underwent further expansions with its South wing and two additional conference rooms with a garden view. As of 2014, the hotel has almost doubled its capacity, offering a total of 104 guest rooms.
Christl started out with merely 8 employees, nowadays she employs more than 25, surpassing the usual number of staff operating a hotel of its size and category.