German hotel apologizes after telling Israeli guest 'no Jews allowed'

A German hotel has apologized after rejecting a booking by an Israeli customer by telling them that "there are no Jews allowed" at the hotel.

The hotel's junior director Andreas Vogl told dpa on Wednesday that the message does not reflect the establishment's "world view at all."

The case was highlighted by Israel's Consul General to southern Germany Talya Lador on Tuesday when she posted the rejection message sent to the customer via booking.com on X.

"Have we returned to the 1930s?" Lador wrote in German.

A screenshot included in her post shows an English-language message from the Hotel zum Hirschen in Bavaria, which reads: "Sorry, there are no jews [sic] allowed in our hotel."

The hotel has since sent an apology email to the guest and offered him and his family a free one-week stay "so you can get to know us personally, and to prove to you that we are not bad people who discriminate against others."

The email was also sent to the Bavarian State Chancellery, the executive office of the state premier.

“It was definitely wrong of us to respond in that way in the chat,” the hotel writes in the email.

According to the email, the hotel has been struggling with fake bookings and phishing attempts via large platforms for some time, with customer data said to have been stolen repeatedly.

The request from Israel had also wrongly been assumed to be a fake booking, the hotel, which is located in the Bavarian Forest near the Czech border, said.

“However, it is extremely important to us that you understand that this remark was not directed at people of the Jewish faith, but was made out of frustration at the numerous fake bookings,” the letter states.

“Nevertheless, this was unacceptable and must not happen in a professional business.”

The hotel has received daily threats including death threats since the case became public, according to junior director Vogl.

Booking.com has also removed the hotel from the platform, Vogl said.

On Monday, a man in Germany was given a six-month suspended sentence for displaying an anti-Semitic notice in his shop. 

He had displayed a notice in his second-hand shop for around four hours which included the phrase "Jews are banned from these premises!!!"