GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss hotels are joining the rest of Swiss business in a frenzy of innovation – forget cozy charms of the past, with Verbier as the latest to join a trend of hot hotel options. The Valais resort this winter will see the opening of a sizzling new extreme travel hotel that will bring 160 jobs to the village.
But the real news isn’t the hotel itself for the moment: it’s the job interviews.
WVerbier is hiring 160 staff with titles that include “whatever/whenever agent” and “public style attendants”. The interviews will be held in three locations between 21 and 28 August, in Verbier at 2,200 metres (this is an edgy hotel in every sense), in Lausanne and in Monte Carlo. Applicants will face a hiring jury that includes Mafalda Kyambel, founder and editor of Tribu magazine, Jonathan Charlet, 2012 Freeride Snowboard World Champion, and Pierre Frolla, who holds the world record for deep diving.
The hotel will consist of four chalets at the foot of the Médran lifts, but that’s as close as you’ll get to traditional, with an in-house DJ, a restaurant under the direction of Madrid chef Sergi Arola (Michelin, two stars) and sophisticated architecture. Next to it are the 15 WVerbier “residences”, apartments for sale or rent that are part of the main system of services.
The hotel is part of a pattern that will be increasingly common in Swiss resorts since citizens voted to limit the number of second homes and “cold beds”, a term for little-used privately owned separate chalets. Residences with services, rented out for part or all of the year, will replace some private chalets.
Verbier isn’t alone in embracing new-style hotels. Greg Oates at Skift, a hotel industry site, writes that “a slew of edgy hotels and conference centers are opening in Zurich, Basel, Davos, Lausanne and Lucerne. It’s all part of an aggressive attempt among locals to transcend the country’s conservative reputation as the world’s bank, cheesemaker and chocolate factory.”