Resort hotels have steadily taken a growing share of Germany’s construction and transaction volume in recent years, and their project development is becoming more professional with each cycle. It is no surprise, then, that the international momentum behind glamping structures, treehouses and tiny houses is finding its way here. For hotels with unused land reserves they can be a natural extension to the room mix — a touch of adventure and proximity to nature that the main building cannot provide. The Sonnenalp in the Allgäu has now added five detached ‘nature lodges’, each of 28 sqm, set apart from the hotel buildings on 2,000 sqm of site, built from prefabricated timber modules.

The constraint is construction cost. A tiny house is still a house, subject to the full weight of German building regulations. Prefabrication — preferably from Eastern European producers — is the only viable route, whatever the structural logic of the individual unit. This is territory where an architect’s contribution can generate a genuine USP: attracting new guest segments and improving utilisation of the existing central facilities.

I am watching this develop across a number of regions. The individual schemes are small — four units here, nine there — but locations previously considered dull, including many in the lower mountain ranges, are acquiring a new relevance. Four tiny houses will not rescue a struggling leisure hotel in the Sauerland; the business case requires scale. More to follow.