Staying At Any Of These 5-Star Properties Is Traveling In Style
On my way to a press luncheon to promote the Swiss Deluxe Hotels – a series of 5-star properties in Switzerland – I heard a radio ad for a Motel 6.
And the funny thing about me and traveling is that I can stay at either!
Oh, to be sure, I would prefer to be at Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz rather than a roadside Motel 6 somewhere along A1A in Florida. But being in ether means I’m on the road, traveling.
And I like being on the road and traveling because you never know what new adventures await, and what people you will meet. And in my lifetime, I’ve spent a lot more time at the Motel 6’s of the world than those of the standard of the Swiss Deluxe Hotels.
It must be said, however, that traveling in style certainly makes the stay more pleasant.
There’s something dignified about walking into a place where they open the door for you, where everyone is dressed in perfectly pressed suits (what’s their secret to wrinkle-free wear; even after I spent 20 minutes ironing my khakis they look as if I just emerged from the Amazon after wresting with an anaconda) and the beds are big and soft.
Perhaps someday, someone will tell me what to do with all those pillows.
There are 38 properties under the Swiss Deluxe Hotel umbrella in Switzerland and the oldest one, the Four Seasons in Geneva, dates to 1834. They all have stellar rooms with great views, spas, lounges and fine restaurants featuring master chefs with a total of 17 Michelin stars.
They even have a slick and gleaming magazine, “Ambiance” put together, I later learned, by a former Miss Switzerland.
Swiss Deluxe Hotels are where celebrities and dignitaries stay and are located in the best places in the best cities and towns.
If you know anything about the Swiss, you know they have a natural elegance about them and if you give them 5-star properties to work with then you can begin to picture the high level of these hotels. A film they showed us at the luncheon said the hotels “make you feel like home when you are away from home.”
We’ll I don’t know what it’s like as your house but mine is nothing like a Swiss Deluxe Hotel!
But to me, the thing that stood out the most was the fact the hotels have 4,500 rooms and 5,500 employees.
Think about that for a minute. There are a thousand more people working at the hotels than the hotels have rooms. That’s amazing.
I doubt the hotel industry as a whole has bothered to chart an employee-to-rooms ratio – like baseball does for a walks-to-strikeout ratio for pitchers, for instance – but if they did, the Swiss Deluxe Hotels would certainly be the statistical leader.
I’m also intrigued by the new rooftop bar at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Bern, which has become one of the city’s top bars. I’ll have to try that one out myself next time I’m in Bern.
Somehow, I have a feeling I would be spending more time at the rooftop bar than I would the room.
Cheers!
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