Hôtel du Théâtre

Hôtel du Théâtre

Swiss tourism is cer­tainly af­fected by the strong Swiss franc but pow­er­less it is not, as the ex­am­ple of the Hôtel du Théâtre in Yver­don-les-Bains shows.

«Bi­en­v­enue Mon­sieur, com­ment allez-vous?» The re­cep­tion­ist greets the guest with dis­arm­ing cor­dial­ity and of­fers him a drink. «Je peux vous réserver une table dans le restau­rant à côté pour ce soir?» No trace of cur­rency in­duced de­pres­sion in the small lobby of the Hôtel du Théâtre in Yver­don-les-Bains. «Of course the strong Swiss franc is a chal­lenge for us», says the owner Pierre-André Mi­choud. Don't com­plain, do some­thing! is his credo. In­stead of cut­ting prices he in­vests. Ex­ist­ing guest rooms are being ren­o­vated, new ones built, the ser­vice is per­fected just a lit­tle bit more, and the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence for the guests is con­stantly im­proved. And the Guests enjoy the at­ten­tion and the pro­fes­sional treat­ment they get. They feel they are being ap­pre­ci­ated. Not sur­pris­ingly, the oc­cu­pancy rate of this small mid-price hotel reaches a re­spectable 65 per­cent. And the Eu­ro­peans haven't stopped com­ing since the Euro ex­change rate floor was dropped. «My Ger­man and French guests as­sure me they will pay more for bet­ter ser­vice», says Mi­choud. Mean­while, many of them have be­come reg­u­lars.

More about this busi­ness at www.​hot​elyv​erdo​n.​ch

Hotel Suc­cess Fac­tors

Func­tion­ing Mar­ket Econ­omy

Image removed.In 2003, Pierre-André Mi­choud and his wife bought this for­mer apart­ment build­ing by the train sta­tion in Yver­don-les-bains, turned it into a hotel and step by step made it into a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. Their se­lec­tion of local part­ners for con­struc­tion and fi­nanc­ing was guided by the rules of the free mar­ket. With­out much in the way of seed cap­i­tal they man­aged to suc­ces­sively build up a good busi­ness. Part of the rea­son why this was pos­si­ble is that their am­bi­tious pro­ject was not held back by ex­ten­sive red tape and cum­ber­some reg­u­la­tions. For his part, Mi­choud now sees the Hôtel du Théâtre as a part of Yver­don-les-Bains—and the town re­turns the favor.

 

 

 

 

Free and Open Labor Mar­kets

 

Image removed.The bi­lat­eral agree­ments with the EU, in­clud­ing the free move­ment of per­sons, are an im­por­tant key to suc­cess for the ser­vice-ori­ented tourism in­dus­try. The Hôtel du Théâtre de­pends on skilled per­son­nel that is not al­ways avail­able in Switzer­land. The hotel often em­ploys cross-bor­der com­muters from France. «Ap­pli­ca­tions from Al­sace are es­pe­cially ex­cit­ing be­cause the re­gion has so many highly trained and mul­ti­lin­gual hotel pro­fes­sion­als», says Pierre-André Mi­choud.