Hotel closures tarnish Locarno’s appeal

The hotel’s first 50 years were truly grand swissinfo.ch

Hotels in the southern lakeside town of Locarno are falling like dominoes, and the next to tumble could be the biggest of them all.

The Grand Hotel Locarno has hosted historic peace conferences and given birth to an international film festival. But it may not survive to celebrate its 130th anniversary next year.

“I can’t understand why no buyer has come along and expressed an interest in refurbishing this hotel,” says Alessandro Caristo.

If Caristo had the money, he would probably finance the restoration himself, since he has fallen for the faded charms of the grand hotel he manages.

This is the place where a series of peace treaties making up the Locarno Pact were initialled. The ornate salon, where Chamberlain, Mussolini and their fellow statesmen gathered, looks much as it did when they were here in 1925.

With the appropriate music playing in the background, you could almost be fooled into thinking you have travelled back to that moment 80 years ago, with the ink still wet on an agreement which failed to guarantee peace in western Europe.

Lustre lost

Elsewhere however, the hotel has lost its lustre. A thick layer of dirt caked on the skylight prevents sunshine from falling onto the world’s largest chandelier made of Murano crystal.

The carpets in the halls are worn and bathroom tiles chipped. The furnishings are an odd collection from various periods and styles, neither reflecting the hotel’s glorious past nor modern enough to appeal to today’s traveller.

The investment group that owns the building is expected to make an announcement in the coming weeks about its future.

The group is believed to be fighting attempts by the authorities to have it listed as a heritage site, so the historic structure can be sold and gutted or torn down to make way for luxury holiday apartments.

That has been the fate of about half of the hotels along the picturesque Locarno lakeshore which have closed over the past few months or will shut their doors by the end of the year.

As experience in other Swiss resorts has shown, apartments or chalets used as second homes remain vacant most of the year, depriving shops and restaurants and other infrastructure of a good chunk of their income.

“The lake’s ferry service will suffer, as will the mountain cable car company,” says Roland Vonlanthen, president of Locarno’s hotel association.

He says it would be a “big loss” if the grand hotel were to close down as well, because of its value as a heritage site and strong ties to the festival, which began in the 1940s in the property’s expansive gardens.

“We need a lot of hotel beds for big events like the Locarno International Film Festival and we now have 600 fewer because of all the closures,” he added.

Decline

A variety of factors have contributed to Locarno’s decline as a tourist centre.

Cheap airfares have enticed holidaymakers from the key Swiss and German markets to fly further south in search of warmer climes, which has led to a 20 per cent drop in hotel bookings.

“We can no longer get away with selling just sunshine and palm trees,” Vonlanthen explains.

An overheated property market has also played an important role, encouraging speculators to prey on ageing hotel owners whose offspring have shown little interest in carrying on a family tradition.

Symbol

“We would like to see the grand hotel listed as a heritage site, as an example of the early days of tourism and as a symbol of the rebirth of Locarno at that time,” says local politician, Mauro Belgeri.

Belgeri is spearheading moves to merge Locarno and the neighbouring communities into one political entity.

He believes the hotel could become the seat of the new council, with public money used to finance its restoration.

“Hotels have had difficulties securing financing, and I think the banks could do more to assist them since interest rates have been so low over the past few years. That’s been the case in Locarno and elsewhere in canton Ticino as well,” Belgeri says.

And that is why, he warns, “without any public funding, the grand hotel’s fate is sealed”.

“This hotel is a holdover from the Belle Époque and therefore should be saved,” Caristo adds.

“Tens of millions of dollars are spent in Las Vegas to recreate hotels like this and given Italian names such as the Bellaggio or The Venetian.

“We have an authentic version right here,” he says, “just in need of a fresh coat of paint. Everyone seems to be blind to its potential.”

swissinfo, Dale Bechtel in Locarno

Key facts

Locarno is located on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the southern canton of Ticino.
Famed for its mild Mediterranean climate, the region has been a popular holiday destination especially among German and Swiss holidaymakers.
It is home to the Locarno International Film Festival, held each year in August.
It launched an open-air pop music festival last year to attract a younger crowd.
Seal, Joe Cocker and Lenny Kravitz are headlining this year’s Moon and Stars festival, taking place in July.