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It is one of the most successful German entrepreneurial stories since the turn of the millennium: in 2000, Dieter Müller, then 50 years old, founded the "low budget design hotel" chain Motel One. Today, the company operates 89 hotels in 13 countries, recently generated annual sales of 639 million euros and profits of 116 million euros, and is probably worth several billion euros. In the OMR podcast, Müller talks about how he got there, the reasons for his success, and a possible IPO. "I've always liked hotels; I just couldn't afford them," says Dieter Müller in the OMR podcast about his early career. That only changed when the then 22-year-old, after completing a commercial apprenticeship, stumbled into the industry by chance: he walked past a construction site in Saarbrücken where the French hotel chain Accor was building the first Novotel in Germany, and spoke to the person in charge, who hired him on the spot.