Badrutt’s Palace Hotel Managing Director: Richard Leuenberger – Legacy, Trust, & The Art of Timeless Hospitality

31:10The Gstaad Guy:And they have that same pride and family feeling where that relationship between someone serving you on behalf of the hotel and a guest is always at the highest level of respect. Yes. But you feel that family feeling because of that pride. Yeah. Same thing here. I don't feel like any member of the Bedruth Palace team is a family member that's going to hug me and there's an incredible sense of respect. But the pride in the work is something that I think creates that family feeling. And never by any means overstepping and becoming a friend of the guests. Although the interaction might feel incredibly friendly, every little detail is still thought of.

31:59The Gstaad Guy:Like, for example, this is a very rare thing, but I made a very small comment to, I don't think even my waiter at dinner last night, it was a person assisting the waiter. Yes. And you mentioned that comment today. So it went up every single layer of the hotel within 12 hours, which happened to be 12 hours overnight. Yes. I think that is a deep sense of pride and love that allows for interactions like that. Without the staff feeling like it's their fault, like they have to hide something. I think it's, as you said, family can mean a lot of things. And even when people first start here, they might have a different understanding, you know, when they read about our values and all that.

32:44But I think you could have family and have a relationship in a department to agree that, yeah, this is good enough. That could be also an agreement of a family. Yeah, this is good enough. And I think having the family value, knowing that you can make a mistake is one thing, feeling comfortable with it, but always understanding it's because we want to be better at what we do, right? We want to be different and better. And I think in that spirit, it works very well. and you have to in the end I think for all my management team you have to walk the talk and I think that it makes it quite easy if you have that passion and also we're incredibly fortunate to be in a building like that with this variety of services but most of all with these types of guests that trust us to come in here and say, hey, I'm going to spend a week here and I'm going to have a great time and I'm going to do things I haven't done last year and the palace is going to help me do things that I have never done and things that I always wanted to do.

34:11And if sometimes it takes, you know, it's not me, it's not the concierge, sometimes it's somebody, a waiter in the restaurant, hearing of or overhearing something that they would like to do and then taking that and we take it to the next level through the other departments because it is a family and they feel comfortable picking up the phone and calling the concierge, calling me, telling me, hey, we heard this guest wants to do this and this and that, right? What else can we do? And it's not even a lot of times, you know, they might think, well but this could be very expensive and this could be um this is very difficult to do and when they realize that we can do it as a team it just also emboldens them to absolutely to do more and and it's uh yeah it's a very it's a very special special thing are most of the guests recurring guests to stay with you we have about 65 recurring guests wow and also that book directly with us which is uh which is also a great sign of trust as i said we're quite obsessed about arrival yeah and in order to do arrival well you have to know a lot and and the more you know the better you can you can make that arrival happen and as the person steering the ship and deciding how the elevation happens,

35:45The Gstaad Guy:how you continue to lift the bar, but also how you continue to respect and honor the hotel's history and tradition. I personally see incredible modernity in places like the spa, in the kitchen, and I had the pleasure of touring the space. And in the bathrooms, for example, where people love things to be the newest and the best of us. and then I see incredible respect for the history of the hotel and places like the lobby, which especially feels like it's 100 years old. How do you balance and decide what makes sense to elevate and modernize to the highest level and what makes sense to keep the way it's always been?

36:31The Gstaad Guy:Like many of the staff interactions, even those, they just feel like from a different era. it's understanding you know what makes us unique and you know we write it down right we write down things that make us unique that made us unique through the you know through time that nobody copied let's put it this way it was very difficult to replicate and we treasure those but at the same time yes we travel we go see we work with, we try to find incredibly talented people to help us. It's not, you don't do this. I mean, the lobby, you talk about the lobby and yes, we haven't changed many things, but I give you an example, lighting in the lobby.

37:22So we all know 10, 15 years ago, everybody started switching to LED lights. It's regulatory and all these things. So it was a huge problem for us, right? This lobby lives from the ambiance. Changing lights is a big decision. So it took me four years to find the right guy that knew how to do light here. Wow. And to find somebody that's as passionate about the hotel and about lights than we are and obsessed with perfection. And he comes back every year and we make it better, right? Every year. And so then you have a relationship with that person and that knows what you want, that understands the guests and understands the hotel when it's at its peak, when it's empty.

38:20And so we need those people. We're looking for those people. And so as I said, you know, modernity in the rooms. yes we get we we look at what how do our guests travel often they tell us what they want um subtle ways you just need to listen um and often you need to go see the best yeah i mean i i'm not you know there's amazing hotels out there what is built today is there's some or some things that that you would have i would have never thought 15 years ago that that could be done so be very close to what's happening in the world and finding people that are like minded and passionate about what they do just like you you're passionate about this world and about understanding it and so I think we very quickly found found good conversation points when we first met

39:25The Gstaad Guy:I love these details I love this comment about the lighting I could tell you who it is but I'll tell you afterwards it's a very delicate balance between being intimate but not being dark and being bright in energy but not feeling like you're at a pharmacy I think actually Andra Belaz does this very well with his hotels so I'll give Andra Belaz a shout out I think the Children Firehouse which hopefully will be back soon was one of the most delicately lit hotels I've been to. I have a dear friend of mine. His name is Chris. Yes. And we both stay at many hotels around the world. And during that special moment you spoke about the check-in process, the arrival process, we usually try to look around and quickly figure out what's this day going to be like.

40:14Yes.

40:16The Gstaad Guy:And we actually do that by studying the general manager. Oh, wow. Okay. We try to psychoanalyze. maybe we're taking it too far we do this a lot never show me the sheet you wrote down about the GM of the palace I'm going to be this is actually one of the benchmarks of excellent arrival processes and excellent general manager auras that we have as a benchmark for experiences around the world we came up with a list we like to always add to of what makes a great general manager I'd love for you to actually help me develop that list because you naturally know this is the retreats palace I think what makes a general manager great is one what we discussed earlier, the leading through inspiration the general manager not using authority to not get their hands dirty but to actually get involved every element to make sure their hotel is as great as it can be I think also the pace.

41:22The Gstaad Guy:The pace at which senior leadership moves, I think should always look in control and not running. But they should always also be everywhere at the same time. So it's this thing where, and I feel it here, the senior leadership is everywhere. And everything is in control and they're moving quickly. They're not lollygagging. I think great treatment of all the guests and not this networking with the best guests, which I do sometimes see some general managers, there's a big spender coming in and they give them a lot of attention and sometimes they even think they're their friend, sit on the couch with them, have a glass of wine, enjoy the moment.

42:11The Gstaad Guy:It's like, this is the guest and you're not the guest. So that's something I see. Could you help me with some more that you think you've seen around the world? No, I, you know, what you often don't see, but what ultimately you do see it or you do feel it, it's how much time do you spend as a manager understanding your guests, what's going on in your hotel, but spending enough time with understanding how is it as an employee to work here and what are the true challenges and spending time understanding them, which then you elevate yourself in the hot seat because people will come to you with issues that are not really your issues to solve and being willing to do that.

43:06So I'd say, you know, maybe on your list, say, you know, observe interactions with guests, but observe interactions with people and maybe also who speaks and who doesn't like in a conversation I think it says a lot about what's going on in a hotel

43:28The Gstaad Guy:I think also the structure of this hotel and hotels like San Pietro for example the focus on elevating within and not scaling outside allows for that excellence to grow and the categories of excellence to grow I think we live in a world that's obsessed with scale and a lot of the industry is dominated by big hotel groups that are publicly traded companies. Yes. And they actually have to keep growing, keep paying out to their investors. While in this scenario, that's not the case at all. So you actually can instead technically pay back to your guests and just keep elevating within. Which is an amazing opportunity.

44:10But I worked for a lot of these companies And I can tell you there are companies that I worked for that I see have hotels that excel almost in every place they are. And if I look back at the companies I worked for, I say the ones that do the best are the ones that manage to convey the values they have very strongly into their teams. And yes, as you often said, you need great managing directors that do not only carry your values, but they live them every day and they bring them to the team. and there are hotel companies that do an amazing job. I just think, yes, at a certain scale, it becomes very, very difficult.

45:06And truly having the commitment to create excellence requires those values, the passion, the pride. But let's be honest, it also requires capital, right? It requires money, it requires commitment from the owner's side. And I think that's where sometimes in the bigger companies it gets tricky, right? You cannot say we want to be the best and then not invest to be the best, right? So I think this is... So that's, again, very fortunate that we have this setup where we can say, look, we reinvest in order to stay relevant. If a guest was here this winter for Christmas and he comes next winter, it can't be the same.

45:52you have to know what is what is it now what else can we do and as long as you have that I think it's it's very difficult to fail actually I see the adapting

46:08The Gstaad Guy:every time like now I know health and wellness is front of mind for a lot of people and I was in the spa yesterday I felt that at the breakfast today I felt that there's a lot more options that cater to that Yeah. So. I think nutrition, wellness, I call it the I want to live forever movement. Yes, that's all here. Yeah. I think we're just trying to find our place. Yeah. Where is it really that we can shine? You know, is it because I offer IVs and this and that and protein and collagen and all of these things? Yes, maybe we need to offer some of it, but where we do it, it really needs to be the right place, right?

46:56So let the guests say, oh, look, they have, they understand me. They know what I do in the morning, what I do in the evening. And so we need to identify those places. And it's not good enough just to put hyperbaric chambers everywhere and cold plunges. So that will not solve for that need.

47:21The Gstaad Guy:Especially when you can have the exact same conditions as the hyperbaric by opening your balcony. Correct. This is exactly it. So I think this is one thing that keeps us busy thinking of, yes, what is the next thing for our guests? And where should we be? do we want to be an expert in longevity no but we want to be really good at the few things that we do that play to people's habits you've discussed what it takes to be a great member of the team I would love if we could discuss what it would take to be a great guest for us the best guest is the guest that comes here with the mindset of having an experience, right?

48:17This is the guest I work with. I work with the best. And of course, you know, respect goes a long way. And I think most guests we have know that. And naturally, it's not that we say, oh, you know, if you respect the staff, you will get better service. But you make your own experience better. And I think if you understand that and you bring that to the hotel, you will have an amazing time.

48:47The Gstaad Guy:I like that you mentioned that respect element. I think respect transcends manners. It's not just a being polite thing. I think it's actually has a lot to do with honesty and has a lot to do with being truthful in the interaction. And I actually learned this. One of my dear friends is here right now, Konstantin. And a few other friends and I were at one of the Andra Bilas properties in London, a children firehouse. And we really wanted to get into the club. The cow. So we're lined up outside. We're brainstorming excuses. We're like 19 years old and thinking, okay, should we say we know this guy?

49:32The Gstaad Guy:And so, yeah, that could work. Maybe we'll say we know this person. And we see the person in front of us. They try that and that doesn't work. Oh, my God, that doesn't work. So maybe we all group some cash together and we can tip the person. We get in. We see someone else try a tip and that doesn't work. Or maybe we pretend like we're famous. Maybe that's going to work. We see someone else try that. That doesn't work. So we decide, you know what? We're just going to be honest. So we go to the front. We say, hey, just three guys. We don't have a reservation. And we just want to have a good time.

50:07The Gstaad Guy:So you don't know anyone here? No, we don't know anyone. We just want to come in. And not only did they let us in, but they let us in forever. and we actually became friends with the staff and we hang out with them. We built this beautiful foundation of truth versus a foundation of status or a foundation of trying to be something that really we weren't just to get somewhere where we actually felt we didn't belong. But we only belonged once we told the truth and connected at a human level with the service person instead of thinking of them as the establishment. They're actually just people representing the establishment.

50:52The Gstaad Guy:So it's a real cliche. I think a lot of people have this hot take of like, oh, I don't like people who are rude to staff. It's not actually about... Not being rude is easy. I think connecting truthfully is actually the hard part. I think a lot of... If you come in here the first time, let's say, yes, we don't make it very easy in the high season. You know, we have these signs, you know, hotel guest zone, you know, and we really do it that the guest who does stay here does feel like it's their hotel they're staying in. Right. And it's not and it doesn't just become a scene. Right. And. And yes, somebody staying the first time, maybe you come into this lobby and you see, you know, staff interacting with certain guests and and it looks kind of friendly.

51:45And so it can be also quite intimidating, to be honest with you. And you have to be open for the experience, right? Sit down and not have a feeling that just because, yes, you're going to somebody and you're sort of going out with your status, right, is going to... It actually makes it much more difficult for a member of the team to help you have a great time, right? It makes it super difficult because you're not opening up. You have no trust. And if you can establish that trust, and our team tries, you know, they know this is key, right? once they have the trust of the guest they can create this great experience and not only is it rewarding to the guest it's extremely rewarding for the staff more rewarding than the financial benefit actually

52:48The Gstaad Guy:I think now more than ever as well the social media part of things has made this hidden gem less hidden I'm a part of that problem so I'll apologize publicly but I remember when I came here for the first time four years ago this was truly a hidden gem that I hadn't even heard much about and I'm someone who's deeply curious about this industry and this micro world of St. Moritz and what exists within and I told the Stadtgeist story of my experience here and so many different people told different stories of their own experiences. And I think now the cat's out of the bag. The world knows. It's always a thin line.

53:40When you talk about the hotel, you're something, you know, the palace is an idea, right? It's not a service and it's not a product. It's an idea. And it's a different idea to every guest. It's what you want it to be, right? And I think often when I make a statement on how I see how the hotel is, you know, I alineate other people, right, that think differently of it. That's so interesting about because the building looks like this, because we're in a, you know, this fairytale place in the mountains. It's making sure we let people experience it the way they want to experience it.

54:27The Gstaad Guy:Because you don't want to define it for someone else. Exactly. Exactly. So this is a tricky part. So we spoke about the lobby lighting, the amazing staff that works in the hotels. But I've been to beautiful hotels around the world with very well-lit lobbies. I don't really want to hang out there. And I've been to hotels with great staff in the lobbies, also don't want to hang out there. And then sometimes I go to a lobby and I really want to spend time there. and I still have a hard time figuring out what it is that makes a good lobby great. Sometimes they can be very well furnished, full of beautiful art.

55:11The Gstaad Guy:Something's missing. I think that the hotel's living room, the lobby, is such an iconic thing. And this lobby here in particular, there's like this controlled chaos. It's like this beautiful, every corner is so different in terms of people there in terms of furnishing in terms of energies you have light you have dark you have views you have coziness and if you wrote that down on paper you'd think listen this is never going to work there's too much happening here but somehow it works beautifully I'd love to know why that is and what you think it is that makes a good lobby a great lobby I think a good lobby I mean there's many many elements But I think a good lobby needs to be like the heart of the hotel, right?

56:03It needs to live. And so it needs a fair amount of animation also, right? You need to make sure that there's either entertainment or it depends where the hotel is, right? But one interesting observation was when I first started here, I learned a lot about lobbies in this hotel, for sure. it's the first time I walked into this lobby and I love interior design I like when somebody expresses an idea through design, through material through texture, furniture so I came in here and it's like oh my god this is a mess and I actually asked to change some of the furniture initially all the team said no no we can't change anything here and it's like sure okay fine we don't change but we need to find the same fabric to do it again and and so i once asked so what is so special about this there's no real pattern there's no specific color nothing and a lot of people said well there's a reason why this table is terrible because mr so-and-so used to be there and their family and this and that and and sure this positioning of furniture but also it's not sometimes you go into a lobby and it's a beautiful design statement so you look at how beautiful it is here you sit down you don't look at the furniture you look at what's happening you know the people the light and I think if you can create that that the lobby itself doesn't become the piece of attention but your experience in the lobby, the people you're with, the moment you're having, and have a feeling I'm surrounded by like-minded people.

57:57I think once you can create that and it takes, you know, if I could tell you the playbook of how to do that, I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd run a wonderful company doing nothing else than lobbies. So there is not a one playbook. but there's definitely the decision to take it as a stage and to create, right? Sort of create a place people want to be in, create a place where you can have a great meal, a great time. It should be different at 10 o 'clock at night than at noon. It should be different in the morning than in the afternoon. So creating that and being aware that it needs to be created, that it's not just a thing that a designer puts and a builder builds and then it's there.

58:52There's people working in there and there's things that can happen. So I think this is a decision to make this a topic of your day.

59:02The Gstaad Guy:Lobby culture has grown on me every year that goes by. I love the coziness of a lobby. I think Parisian hotels do lobbies very well. But I do think there's this very special energy to a mountain lobby, especially a palace lobby like the Stade Palace and even the Alpina and Stade and here at the Bedruth Palace. I think it has to do with the activity during the day as well. When people have a very active day outdoors and everyone's doing their own separate thing. Some people might just be going on a walk or cross-country skiing or even off-piste skiing. And everyone comes back to kind of compare notes about the weather and get cozy.

59:46The Gstaad Guy:And it's kind of like this meeting spot after an adventure. Yes. Like after a long day and after an adventure, it's very different to that being the first activity as it is in a city like Paris. Yes. Or like in an urban lobby, I think in a mountain lobby, especially in St. Moritz. The active lifestyle is such a deep part of our culture here. And it's how even, you know, summer, obviously, you know, everybody talks about this, but it is true that summer has this renaissance, right? And summer in the mountains. I love summer in the mountains. And it is, it's also for us a learning, like, how do we, this lobby is something very different in the summer.

1:00:29Yeah. In the summer at three o 'clock in the afternoon, people are in the garden. they have a you know we have a terrace in the garden there's this uh the fresh alpine air maloya wind you know things like that really that that are very memorable that you will you will always remember yeah but then they come to the lobby uh the lobby starts to get alive at like six seven eight o 'clock whereas during the winter at 4 p.m here it's yeah it's a thing right so the lobby really as I said you need to keep working on it understand it where is its place in the day for a guest but it's very fortunate amazing lobby

1:01:17The Gstaad Guy:I would love to talk about mountain living because I feel like that's a growing trend lots of people want to get out of the cities and move to the mountains to places like St. Moritz I think partially due to the quality of life, the fresh air we're speaking about, the safety, the community, and maybe a regression to traditions and a lifestyle that in many ways was healthier, away from what a lot of cities expose us to. Are you seeing a lot of that trend here? we have an incredible growth in business in general but also in the summer and I think it has a lot to do with what is your personal space so if you're in a big city and yes it's the pace that you have but it's also where you're in your own space versus you're in somebody else's space or you're sharing.

1:02:28Sharing is difficult nowadays, right? Here you go out and you have time for yourself, which is also very valuable. But you're in the nature and it's a bit more grounded, right? You feel grounded as a person. I think that's... I don't know why it's coming back now the way it comes back. and even if the hotel is full in three minutes you're out and you could be alone somewhere, right? Which is the advantage of having such a huge valley, right? Which in winter you only see it sort of limited because you go skiing. It's a bit, your movement is more restricted, right? Because it's minus 20 degrees outside.

1:03:17And in summer it's, I mean, just look around at the night. you can go it's magical you can go swim in a lake in 30 minutes you can you can just be you can make uh i often say you know you have i take the kids out sometimes take a guest with us and they go walk 30 minutes in the summer and uh there's fireplaces and it's very swiss we already have the wood there also the communes take care of that and just make a fire sit have a conversation swim in a lake things that often remind people also of their childhood so I think it's a lot of

1:03:59The Gstaad Guy:positive things coming our way yes that balance of nostalgia and curiosity I was at a summit last summer in Stockholm and one of the speakers was talking about the emotions of nostalgia and the emotions of curiosity and that nostalgia actually makes us feel old while curiosity makes us feel young because the young feeling of everything is new and I want to explore it is a very youthful feeling and at some point in our lives all we can think about is the past and I was talking about this idea recently to a friend and they brought up that actually there can be so much curiosity in nostalgia. There's like this actual gray area where you can actually really be deeply curious about the past as well.

1:04:55The Gstaad Guy:And that's something I feel here because I never lived this last generation. I only ever lived in an incredibly digital era and a very modern way of living. But I'm so curious about the past and I can't say it's nostalgia because I never lived it. so there is this curiosity about past traditions like that fireplace like this childhood that could have been I grew up in a city so I also never did that campfire thing but it feels like something I could have done and for a lot of people I think it feels like something they want their children to experience so they want to bring them to places where they can spend time where they are, yeah, safe, where they have space, where they're surrounded by like-minded people and where they can, you know, experience something together.

1:05:57On this podcast, we always play a game

1:06:00The Gstaad Guy:of à la poubelle versus fantastique. Yes. Could you possibly share a couple of things that you would love to change and therefore throw à la poubelle? in the world that surrounds you and maybe a couple of things you would celebrate and want to see more of that you call fantastique. Mediocre breakfast à la poubelle. I agree. I agree. I would say... You've set the bar very high, by the way. The breakfast. The harp. Smoked salmon. Tableside. You can't find that in many places around the world. It's good. It's not that difficult. So we have to encourage, you know, encourage everyone. Yeah, let me think.

1:06:45Interaction, like talking to people and finding interaction in service, we need more of. I remember when we started introducing this chat system, right? So that guests can ask for anything, any time of the day through their WhatsApp. And it's great. And we need it. It's fine, right? We need it. but how my team in certain instances has decided to sabotage the system. And I give you, you know, somebody asked through a WhatsApp, which is probably written with JGPT, to be honest with you, a guest, a huge WhatsApp saying, well, what do you recommend for restaurants is to the concierge. And the concierge wrote back, why don't you come down?

1:07:35I'll explain it to you. And so this is kind of, okay, I hope they don't do it every day, but I do think these interactions are special. Yeah, special.

1:07:50The Gstaad Guy:Fantastique. Fantastique. When they happen. I think knowing when to interact as well is an art. I was staying at a hotel recently, which will remain unnamed out of respect. But every time I was chewing, someone would speak to me. and then when I'm not chewing no one would speak to me so knowing exactly when to approach a guest as well is an important thing I find and you guys do a great job at that loyalty programs a la Pugel people who will stay somewhere because they're falling for the points marketing scheme I just at least for if you want to do luxury I don't see it I guess the real loyalty program is the relationship you build.

1:08:37The Gstaad Guy:Correct. Well, coming back to hotels, you know, what's good in hotels? What is fantastique? I believe luxury has evolved really positively. So the quality of things in a luxury hotel, I think, in general, has grown tremendously. And I would say that give more is fantastique. like be generous if you want to do luxury I'm not saying be wasteful and don't have a great business case but that's not really what it takes right it takes to understand the guest and be generous with your thoughts also for the listeners today who maybe have not been to Switzerland and may not have a clear differentiation between Switzerland and its neighboring countries and how luxury establishments exist within.

1:09:33The Gstaad Guy:I know early on we spoke about the mechanical watch versus the extravagance of diamonds set on a watch, which in my opinion is a bit more French. The mechanical watch is a bit more Swiss. Is there anything else you can tell us to help paint a picture of what Switzerland uniquely is and how in many ways the hotel is an ambassador of that? Switzerland is many things to me right first off of course I was born here and I think the strength of the country lies a lot in in the ability of its people to be part of something right so I think there's no you know in some countries and I experienced that travel you know I traveled lived in different countries it's a bit yes we are here and there's a government and then there's us, right?

1:10:29And I think here it's more of a feeling we're part of this and because we are here, it works. And I think that spirit is a super important element of what it means to be Swiss, right? And St. Moritz has always been an international destination. So we've always been host. And the qualities in the hotel that I would say are Swiss are its spirit of innovation, which this country is very innovative in many areas. But it's also quality.

1:11:12And what quality means? When does it start, right? And I believe the level is very high in general of what is perceived as quality versus what is perceived as not so much quality. And I think the art of hosting, being a host, and we like to be hosts. And I think in Switzerland, you see it a lot when you look at those hotels that we have in Switzerland. A lot of them have individual owners and there's a story why they were created. And rarely is it the story of a Lira estate investment portfolio play, right? or somebody that thought, yes, in the end, maybe it became that. But most of the great hotels that I know in Switzerland, there was a story, a person, an idea behind it.

1:12:09And I think that's very unique to Switzerland. Absolutely. That we have so many of them, right?

1:12:15The Gstaad Guy:I love that. We love having you here. And thank you for spending some time. No, thank you. Making the road up to the mountains. Thank you. It's always so inspiring to be here more than anything. It makes me think about what was, what can be. I rub shoulders with so many incredible people like you and always feel like I'm learning something new while I'm in St. Moritz and at this hotel. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Stade Guy podcast. If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.

1:13:00The Gstaad Guy:And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. A la prochaine and a big hug from the Start Guy.