Travellers' Checks | The rise and fall of César Ritz and dawn of the luxury hotel - read all about it in new book
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Of all the hoteliers who have given their names to, or had them taken by, the international hotel industry – men such as Conrad Hilton, Hyatt Robert von Dehn, John Willard (JW) Marriott and William Waldorf Astor – none is as synonymous with luxury and fine living as César Ritz.
The first great hotelier, Ritz and his chef de cuisine, Auguste Escoffier, were already well known across Europe when they were invited to run the revolutionary new Savoy Hotel, in London, in 1889. Together they laid the foundations for the modern luxury hospitality industry, and the pair thrived until 1897, when they were dismissed for fraud. With reputations intact, however, and unlimited financial backing, they quickly opened the Ritz Paris in 1898 and the now-demolished Carlton Hotel, in London, in 1899.
The cancellation of a meticulously planned post-coronation banquet for King Edward VII at the Carlton in 1902 is said to have sparked the depression that caused Ritz’s withdrawal from the hotel business. He took little interest in the opening of his namesake hotel in London in 1906, and even less in the one in Madrid, Spain, in 1910.
The following year, an American businessman bought the rights to use the Ritz-Carlton name, and today’s thriving Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is merely a descendant of that initially unsuccessful venture.
