Page 23 - The New Gold Standard

The Ritz-Carlton Experience

The Life of César Ritz
César Ritz was born in 1850 in the Swiss village of Niderwald. At
age 12 he was sent away by his parents to learn mathematics
and French—which he did with limited success. Lacking a clear
direction for his life, his peasant farmer father paid 300 francs to
an acquaintance in a nearby town to train César to become an
apprentice winemaker.
Initially struggling in the hotel industry, César Ritz devel-
oped his hotelier skills by working at premier hotels in France,
England, and Switzerland, but he aspired to own his own prop-
erty. Having worked at a poorly run hotel fraught with double-
bookings and luggage-handling problems, Ritz stated, “I did
what I could to pacify the clients, but ultimately I learned the es-
sential attribute of business: diplomacy.”
After a decade of managing the summer season at the lux-
urious Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland, César Ritz
became the general manager of the Grand Hotel in Monte
Carlo, where he met the master chef Auguste Escoffier.
Together Escoffier and Ritz opened a restaurant in Baden-
Baden, which led César Ritz to be selected to manage the newly
opened Savoy in London. Customers at the Savoy urged Ritz to
open a hotel in Paris. With help from Alexandre-Louis Marnier-
Lapostolle (who was indebted to César Ritz for suggesting the
name Grand Marnier for the liqueur that Marnier-Lapostolle had
invented), Ritz purchased a mansion in Paris and spent two years
preparing it to be his 210-room hotel. The Ritz Paris hotel opened
in 1898.
By the time of The Ritz Paris opening, César Ritz had a con-
trolling interest in nine other restaurants and hotels including the
Carlton in London.
In June 1902, César Ritz suffered an emotional collapse. Al-
though he was involved in planning the London Ritz, which

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