Maybe we all need a break from analyzing the Starwood saga.
Let’s cast our minds backward, not forward.
I’ve been traveling in Mitteleuropa of late, and in March I visited Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, notably for the International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin and the Young Hoteliers Summit in Lausanne.
As I walked around Prague and Lausanne, I started noticing old hotels, the sort of properties that in their heydays must have been known throughout the continent and beyond: the Grande Dames, the hotels of spa, intrigue, opulence and one-upmanship, with names that included the words Grand, Bohemia and Continental.
Many have names that seemingly now cannot be owned by any one person or business—Bristol, Continental, Angleterre.
Some need tender loving care; some are being given it; and some are time warps that a certain type of traveler is happy to see belonging to the era of the fictional hotel in “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
In Prague I stumbled across two gems, the first being the Grand Hotel Europa, just off Wenceslas Square. This gorgeous Art Nouveau pile has Louis XVI styling and a restaurant based half on Paris’ Maxims-de-Paris eatery, and the other half on the dining room of the ill-fated Titanic.
Prague’s Grand Hotel Europa needs a little love but is in one of the Czech Republic capital’s finest buildings. (Photo: Terence Baker)
Today it is a 3-star property. I assume once it was higher than that. Built in 1889 as the Archduke Stephan, the hotel must have excited turn-of-the-century hoteliers and travelers. More recently, it gained some publicity for being filmed as part of Tom Cruise’s “Mission Impossible,” although it did not state which film in the five-part franchise. And it will take a braver man than me to watch any of them to find out.
Elsewhere in Prague, I came across the Grand Hotel Bohemia, another grand hotel named after a multi-nation destination. This property has been well kept but still speaks of the Grand Tours, an age in which hotels would have been closed off to most people. It was a completely, utterly different world of high class, one most likely I would not have dreamed of entering even if I could have afforded it.
Another Grande Dame wonder in Prague is the Grand Hotel Bohemia. (Photo: Terence Baker)
In the Old Town Square area of the city, this gem was built in 1925 with neo-Baroque elements.
Other grand hotels were built to attract certain nationalities who had discovered the joys of visiting European countries. Those who have read Thomas Mann’s novel “The Magic Mountain” or know about fellow writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s health and financial problems, know that much of the upper classes a century or so ago were in the middle of Europe either taking the waters, hiding from creditors or undergoing regimens for body and mind.
One Grand Hotel reminiscent of this that I found in Lausanne was the Angleterre & Résidence, on the Place du Port by Lake Geneva and next to the Quai de Belgique.
The Angleterre & Résidence in Lausanne, Switzerland, speaks of that faded era of grand city spa retreats and afternoon strolls along the promenade. (Photo: Terence Baker)
It is good to see that this hotel, too, has been well-kept.
All three properties are independents.
Long may they survive and flourish.
There is room for such wonderful places, however au courant they might or might not be. And who knows, one day some properties of the probably-to-be-combined portfolio of Marriott and Starwood might follow down the same path as some of the faded superstars of yesteryear, and we’ll be speaking wistfully of them, too.
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
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