In particular, two recent game-changers include the Swiss resort town of Andermatt, plucked from obscurity by billionaire Egyptian property tycoon Samih Sawiris in 2013, and the Bürgenstock, a mega hotel and spa project nine years in the making that opened above Lake Lucerne this July.īut there is still something that neither resort – nor St Moritz’s traditional rivals Gstaad and Zermatt – has. To truly understand the town’s role in marketing mountains to the world, I set off to explore in the company of John Webster, a historian and guide who, having studied St Moritz for 27 years, knows the resort’s backstory best.īut while the resort once reveled in Xanadu-like fantasy – outlandish stories of elephants and sea lions flown in for legendary parties at Badrutt’s Palace are all true – it remains equally bombastic in the face of fierce seasonal competition today. “But because of Badrutt that number exploded to more than 2,000 over the next four decades.” “Before him there was only 75 beds in the village,” said Leuenberger, showing me around the Palace’s Great Hall, otherwise known as the ‘living room’ of St Moritz. Still, Badrutt’s role as pioneer cannot be downplayed. And by the 1880s, the number of English-speaking arrivals had increased to such an extent that a local newspaper – the Engadine Express & Alpine Post – was published entirely in English. In order to pay off the high cost of his ongoing investment at the Engadiner Kulm, he needed to keep the hotel open year-round, paving the way for a winter ice rink and regular curling tournaments played with stones first brought by early Scottish visitors. By this time, other resorts in the Swiss regional cantons of Graubünden and Bern were also flush with business, with clinics in Davos, Arosa, Leysin and Grindelwald developed as winter sanctuaries to cure patients with tuberculosis and respiratory diseases.īut what Badrutt did was make the Swiss mountains accessible in a way that no one else had done before. The first tourist office in Switzerland had been established in the same year as the bet, and there are tales of an Anglican priest, one Reverend Alfred Strettell, who came to preach the gospel in St Moritz in 1861 before returning to England to advocate the resort’s potential as a winter destination in open letters to British newspapers. That the Badrutts almost single-handedly marketed this untapped winter wonderland is a little spurious. There had long been the demand in summer, but winter? It was lunacy.” “Before the Badrutts there was little reason to come to St Moritz, or holiday in the Swiss mountains, in winter at all. Opened by Johannes Badrutt’s son Caspar in 1896 to further reap the benefits of his father’s gamble, the hotel has become a byword for the resort town’s lavish excess. “Some people think it’s a legend, but it’s all true,” said Richard Leuenberger, general manager of the five-star Badrutt’s Palace, during my visit this past July. But by the time of their arrival in St Moritz, the skies had cleared, they were sweating profusely, and a beaming Badrutt, jacket-less and with his shirt sleeves rolled up, was there to greet them. Towards the end of their week-long journey, sat on a horse-pulled sledge and wrapped head-to-toe in furs, they negotiated the 2,284m Julier Pass, a two-day Alpine crossing that first linked Chur in the Rhine valley with the Engadine valley in southeastern Switzerland. The clock that changed the meaning of timeĬome mid-December, the group of men returned to Switzerland. But if Badrutt’s promise proved false, the hotelier would pay for their journey and winter-long stay. “Why not enjoy the mountains year-round? Winter is so pleasant that on fine days you can even walk without a jacket.” Lured by the promise of blemish-free skies against a backdrop of lofty peaks, the Englishmen were pleased to accept the wager up until then, St Moritz had been a modest hiking destination in July and August. “You holiday here in summer,” he challenged them over a bottle of Veltliner red wine.
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