This year, the "Hospitality Innovation Award“ was awarded to Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International. The prize, which is given by PKF hotelexperts Vienna, was presented in the course of the hotelforum gala dinner on 6 October. During the same evening, the winners of the "Hotel Property of the Year Award“ and the “Blue Hotel Award“ were also honored.
In his laudation, Michael Widmann, Managing Partner of PKF hotelexperts Vienna stated: "Corruption impairs economic development. Tourism and especially the hospitality industry are exposed to a dual danger in this context: On the one hand investments that make economic sense are impeded, delayed and made more expensive. On the other hand, funds that are often accumulated by corruption are invested in hotels”.
“Transparency International has managed to increasingly direct the attention of the public to the topic of corruption. The annually published ´Corruption Perceptions Index´ gives an easy to understand insight into the presence of corruption in any one country. For us, it has now become an important benchmark for the assessment of investment projects – in addition to other economic indicators such as GDP and inflation”.
