“We think in tandem and bounce ideas off each other,” say Urs Grimm and Yasmin Grimm Cachemaille, joint general managers of the Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken, Switzerland. “We share a business card, but we have adjacent offices – both exactly the same size, and the door between can be closed when one of us is having a meeting.”
One question they discussed at length when they started working together was how, as a pair, they would work with associates and with unions. In fact communication has never been a problem.
At the 212-room hotel, Yasmin Cachemaille handles HR, rooms, spa, design and maintenance. Ask Urs Grimm what his responsibilities are and his immediate response, with a big grin, is walking their Bernese mountain dog, Wilu. “We have separate contracts, and my brief is to oversee F&B, finance and sales and marketing, but I also help out wherever needed, even assisting the concierge,” he explained.
With nearly full occupancy April through September, a multitude of languages in-house, and 60% occupancy year round, the hotel, which has a full-time staff of 270, frequently needs all hands on deck. One or both of the joint GMs heads two daily briefings, at 9 a.m. and at 5 p.m. Urs Grimm will have been on site up to a couple of hours before that morning get-together. “I am an early bird while Yasmin is a night-owl,” he said.
Current strategy is led by continuing to bring their iconic 1865-vintage property, now owned by Michel Reybier’s Aevis Victoria, slightly ahead of today. Vision 2022 will initially see renovation of all first-floor salons and 50 bedrooms, with a variety of niche offerings, including executive specials, and retro-vintage. Nescens, one of the many brands in the Reybier portfolio, will take over the hotel’s spa, now led by Hans Peter Veit, longtime wellness guru of Brenner’s Park in Baden-Baden. “On September 21st we will officially announce Nescens’ wellness packages, offering four, seven-, 10- and 14-day options,” said Yasmin Cachemaille – or was it Urs Grimm (sometime one starts a statement, the other finishes it).
Yasmin Cachemaille was literally born a hotelier. Family members were major shareholders and managers of a hotel with just over 500 rooms, a few miles into Germany from Switzerland. By 15 she was waiting tables and helping in all departments. Urs Grimm, who has family roots near Interlaken, decided at 10 that he was going to be a GM when he grew up. They met when both were doing MBAs at Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. Coincidentally, they had separately realized they had the passion for the industry but they needed tools to understand the business world better and develop strategy. “I was one intake ahead of Yasmin, which meant we coincided for four months. We met July 23rd, 2006, and it took us both five days to realize our shared chemistry,” Urs Grimm recalled.
Their first joint appointment was as GMs of Waldhaus Flims, a traditional hotel owned for generations by the Lorenz family, which had recently been bought by Z Capital, owners of The Carillon, Miami. Having both worked previously for the Victoria-Jungfrau Collection, he at Bellevue Palace, Berne, and she at The Palace, Lucerne, they contacted Beat Sigg, CEO of Victoria-Jungfrau Collection. Shortly afterward Aevis Victoria bought the entire Collection and within three months, in June 2014, they officially moved into their present dual role.