Masters students investigate magdas HOTEL: the hotel with a social purpose

After having explored how businesses incorporate social responsibility into their business plans, Prof. Dagmar Lund-Durlacher’s MSc Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility class investigated magdas HOTEL, the Vienna hotel with a social purpose. This self-proclaimed “social business” has adapted the hotel concept in order to serve social needs with the goal of “maximization of openness and humanity.”

A pet-project of charity concern Caritas, magdas HOTEL employs refugees in Austria, understanding the difficulties that refugees have in finding jobs when their complicated pasts have not allowed for what typical employers deem to be “sufficient experience” in the work place. The general manager’s team of 20 refugees are trained by 5 employees and coached by a social worker to develop the skills necessary for employment in the hotel industry, but it’s the employees’ individuality and passion that bring a feeling of genuineness to the atmosphere of magdas.

The MU group was given an exclusive tour of magdas HOTEL led by the general manager. Located in a repurposed retirement home by the Viennese Prater, the hotel sets a tone of a social business combined with a sense of “home” as soon as the guests enter the lobby. The gallery along the right wall of the lobby features photos of the hotel’s employees, which immediately helps to forge a connection between the guest and those who are making their stays comfortable.

In addition to their mission to help refugees find respectable and fulfilling employment, magdas seeks to furnish its rooms and social spaces sustainably and support local artists. Each room is made unique with furniture made from repurposed wardrobes, doors, and other structures left behind in the old retirement home, as well as artwork designed by artists from the neighboring the Academy of Fine Arts. 

Magdas HOTEL proves that economic prosperity and social responsibility are not naturally at odds with one another in business. The hotel serves guests well because it meets social sustainability goals. Social responsibility is inherent to and inseparable from the success of magdas’s hotel concept. It is a great example for MODUL’s tourism and sustainability students alike!

- Elizabeth Shanaman, MSc student in International Tourism Management