David Svoboda expands his Czech hotel empire across Europe

David Svoboda, son of the founder of the Czech Inn Hotels chain, began his career in the family business at the very bottom — washing dishes and working the night reception desk. Today he is in charge of the company's international expansion, which now runs thirty hotels in seven countries and recently closed deals in Riga and Vienna worth hundreds of millions of crowns.

Czech Inn Hotels was founded in 2003 by Jaroslav Svoboda, who leased a small eighteen-room hotel in Harrachov. Today the chain has thirty hotels, around four thousand rooms and ten thousand beds in Czechia, Portugal, Georgia, Austria, Hungary, Scotland and Latvia, with annual revenue running into the billions of crowns. But his son's entry into the business was far from starting in the executive's office.

“He washed dishes, set tables, then worked the night reception. He went through the hardest path — I deliberately didn't make anything easier for him, and even slowed down his career progress, so he'd understand what this job is really about,” his father, Jaroslav Svoboda, told CzechCrunch last year. Later he entrusted his son with one small hotel, then another, and eventually with running the group's entire international division.

Today David Svoboda admits that the tough start is exactly what gave him the grounding for his current job, where he evaluates deals to buy buildings worth hundreds of millions of crowns. “The night desk is key experience, because that's where you see the whole workings of a hotel from the inside. Everyone who wants to work in the hotel business should go through it,” he notes, adding that his father remains his main teacher, even though their personal and working lives are closely intertwined.

One of the most recent deals was the acquisition of the five-star Grand Palace hotel in the centre of Riga — just a few steps from the main square, the cathedrals, the castle and the Daugava river. According to CzechCrunch, the Czech group bought the hotel, along with its Michelin-recognised restaurant, for around 200 million crowns, and did so without any bank financing: with interest rates rising and procedures dragging on, the company is increasingly doing its overseas deals without loans.

“We really do like buying hotels from owners who no longer have the time, energy or expertise to run them. After buying Grand Palace we managed to lift revenue by 10–15% straight away and cut operating costs,” says David Svoboda, walking through the hotel. After the deal, the team spent several months studying the local market and guest expectations around food, rooms and the wellness area — now comes the investment phase: tens of millions of crowns will go into overhauling the outdated spa centre, and smoking in the hotel bar will soon be a thing of the past.

Riga was followed this year by another overseas investment — in Austria. In early autumn the group announced the purchase of a Vienna Hilton near Schönbrunn Palace, often called the “Viennese Versailles.” The hotel has 247 rooms and a thousand square metres of conference space, and according to CzechCrunch the deal was worth more than 1.2 billion crowns.

Czech Inn Hotels' expansion is a rare example of a Czech family company confidently buying up landmark hotels in European capitals, competing head-on with international hospitality giants — and planning to add four to five new properties a year.