Czech hotelier Pytloun eyes five stars, then an Alpine glacier

Czech hotelier Lukáš Pytloun keeps expanding his hotel empire: after Liberec, the mountains and central Prague, he has stepped outside Czechia for the first time, opening a hotel in Baden near Vienna, Austria, while simultaneously turning an entire building on Wenceslas Square in Prague into a five-star boutique hotel.

Pytloun started building his business at 23, while still a student — he earned his starting capital abroad picking fruit and working as a bartender. He had no experience in the hotel trade, but he did have a clear goal: to work only for himself, with no bosses and no outside investors. Today, at 46, he runs sixteen hotels across Czechia and intends to keep the company fully family-owned, planning to eventually hand it down to his children.

His newest project is the four-star castle hotel Pytloun Schlosshotel Weikersdorf Baden, a thirty-minute tram ride from Vienna. The building, whose history stretches back to the 15th century, has been complemented with a modern extension housing an extensive wellness area. The property is leased for twenty years, with 164 rooms and 13 conference halls already operating under the Pytloun brand, though the entrepreneur still has plenty of renovation spending ahead — he typically invests around three to seven percent of turnover into a property.

Still, Pytloun calls this year's biggest investment not Austria but the purchase of the building at Wenceslas Square 33, right in the heart of Prague, where a C&A store occupies the ground floor. He bought the long, unassuming building from the Czech company VN33 Building, part of Radka Prokopová and František Fabičovic's Alca Group. A large-scale reconstruction is now underway there to turn it into the five-star hotel The Home by Pytloun Hotels, which will operate as a “courted boutique hotel” — with an individual approach to design and service.

The entrepreneur's ambitions don't end there: he is eyeing expansion into Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam and London, and down the road he dreams of opening a hotel in the Alps — right on a glacier.