Hotel Weißenburg offers the feel good service

Since 2016, an 1160 from Weidemann has been taking on many tasks around the hotel and the attached farm.

The Hotel Weissenburg is quietly and idyllically situated above the town of Billerbeck in Münsterland. From the spacious sun terrace you can see parts of the city and the cathedral as well as the game preserve belonging to the hotel with about 70 deer. The hotel offers 75 rooms, 15 presentation rooms and a SPA area. Thus, there is enough space for meetings, celebrations and recreation. The hotel has been owned by the Niehoff family for over 100 years. In 1911, August Niehoff bought the outdoor restaurant in order to run it as a farm and restaurant. At that time, the inn was still run mainly as an agricultural business, but it continued to develop. In the mid-1950s, business really took off as people became more mobile, making the outlying homestead more accessible.

The hotel also became known as a first-class conference venue. Insurance companies, business enterprises, political groups and, for years, FC Schalke 04 were regular guests at the hotel. "Since then, we have actually been constantly busy with additions and conversions," says managing director August Theodor Niehoff. An expansion in one area in turn resulted in the expansion of another area: a larger conference room required more rooms, for which the restaurant had to be expanded, and this in turn was followed by the expansion of the toilets and parking spaces for cars and buses.

The Niehoffs are currently working on a further extension. Another 25 rooms are to be created, as well as a plenum and three group rooms. The rooms can be combined into a single large room, as needed, so that the space can be used as a multifunctional hall.

The company's own Weidemann 1160 was also used in this conversion. "Without the Weidemann, the construction site would have been a fiasco," August Theodor Niehoff recounts. With the company's own machine, the construction crew could be effectively supported. Small enough to be able to drive inside the building and at the same time powerful enough to be able to move heavy components and steel girders, the Hoftrac has become indispensable. "We have lowered it into the excavation pit with the crane or even lifted it onto the roof from time to time - depending on where it was needed at the time." Yet the grazier's main tasks are not actually on the construction site.

Even though the last pigs left Weissenburg in favor of a modern computer technology room in the 1990s, the heart of the family is still attached to farming. Around 70 deer belong to the farm, as well as several hectares of grassland, corn and game fields. It is impossible to imagine the farm without the grazier. He tends to small corners of the farmland as well as the parks around the hotel. Equipped with a shovel, pallet fork and sweeper, it is used for maintenance work, leaf sweeping, wood processing and, in winter, with a snow blade for pushing snow. Thanks to the turf tires, the parks suffer no damage in the process. "For an operation like this, a Weidemann is ideal. It's not too big and not too small," says a pleased Theo Niehoff. "If you do need something big, you just ask the neighbors.