“As always, twice a year, we closed punctually – this time at 12 noon last Sunday, September 18,” says Eric Favre, general manager of The Alpina Gstaad, Switzerland.
Like many Swiss resorts, the 56-room property has two seasons, summer and winter, and the twice-yearly closings, and openings, are as efficient as Swiss clockwork.
“That is key to maintaining bottom line,” he explained. “As soon as the last guest checked out, we began the inventory. Housekeeping put notes outside each bedroom door listing anything that needs attention. Staff can take home flower arrangements, and the geraniums on the balconies that all our rooms have. Sunday night we have a party for the entire team. Monday afternoon is a meeting for heads of department each to present their assessment of the season that has just finished, and Monday night I always take them and their assistants, about 25 in total, out for a final dinner. By Tuesday morning they are on their way, to all over the globe.”
Roughly 40 of the 120-minimum associates, all European, are on year-round salaries and they stay on during the closures, to look after sales and marketing, front desk and telephones, and engineering and lawn-cutting (main maintenance of the Jean Mus-designed gardens is outsourced, as is the security check that complements detailed electronic surveillance). The rest of the team are on seasonal contracts, with full emoluments. “Many non-Swiss team members make more money here, working eight months, than they would year round back home,” Favre revealed.
He himself does sales trips during the closure periods. “Next month I will be in Dubai for the two-yearly convention of Preferred Hotels & Resorts, and then travel a bit around the Middle East, which I know well from having worked in Saudi Arabia, and afterwards I will be continuing to China, especially Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai, to boost our share of the new wave of billionaires who want authenticity and the clean-air mountain luxury that Gstaad, at 3,445 feet above sea level, offers,” said the Swiss GM, with a smile.
There are many advantages to seasonal hotels. Operational costs during low occupancy periods are saved, everyone takes holidays during closures, which cuts down on overall staffing numbers, and maintenance can be done without affecting guests. Eric Favre actually thinks that many properties could benefit from at least one general closure – even his hotel’s own-run Six Senses spa has a break.
“By the time we re-open, at noon on Thursday, December 8th, 2016, some pale camel carpets in our bedrooms will have been replaced – in public areas, multi-hued carpets are faultless, after four years,” he explained. Re-opening is a reversal of the closure. Although some housekeeping and kitchen staff will have returned earlier, most of the team come back 24 hours before: There is near-zero turnover so no induction training is needed. The first guests check in that first night, and from that day on it will be near-full occupancy through to the spring (that closure, after months of winter-sports activity, does require a bit more cleaning up than this fall one).
Eric Favre was brought up a few miles from Gstaad, and from about 7 years old he wanted to be a chef. When he was 16 his parents registered him for Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. He has since worked his way up, but not in the kitchen. His professional ladder, which has included two spells working for Les Roches hotel schools, has been, in order, Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, Thailand; Al Khozama, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Le Royal, Lausanne, Switzerland, and, twice, Le Mirador Kempinski, above Vevey, Switzerland. In October 2013 he was persuaded to move to The Alpina Gstaad by its asset manager, Onno Poortier, who, with Kurt Wachtveitl and Olivier Vulliamy, one-time GM of Hôtel Royal-Savoy, Lausanne, remains a Favre mentor.