Hotel Waldhaus (Flims)

Waldhaus Flims
The Waldhaus Flims (1877 & 2009)
General information
Location	Flims, Graubünden, Switzerland
Coordinates	46°49′35″N 9°17′11″E / 46.82639°N 9.28639°E / 46.82639; 9.28639
Opening	1877
Design and construction
Developer	Peter-Jakob Bener-Caviezel Paul Lorenz
Other information
Number of rooms	150 (2014)
Website
Official site

The Waldhaus Flims is a five star hotel in Flims, a resort village to the west of Chur, in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden (Grigioni/Grisons).

The hotel was founded in 1877 as the "Hotel Waldhaus" at a time when the tourism potential of the Swiss Alps was leading to rapid growth in the sector. In 2008, following a major building programme, the Hotel Waldhaus was rebranded as the "Waldhaus Flims Mountain Resort & Spa". In 2015 the business was forced by heavy indebtedness into bankruptcy and 900 shareholders lost their investment, although confidence was expressed that following financial restructuring, likely to include the sale to second home-buyers of holiday apartments included in what had by this time become a major hotel complex, the hotel would survive.

The Waldhaus offers 333 beds in 150 guest rooms, 16 seminar/banquet/conference rooms and 6 restaurants, distributed across several buildings. There are three main buildings. The "Grand Hotel Waldhaus" building is a grand hotel, its architecture resonant of the confidence engendered by rapid economic expansion during the later nineteenth century, in a style described as "classical feudal" ("klassisch-feudal"). The other principal buildings are the "rustic Grand Chalet Belmont" and the "Villa Silvana", in effect another small luxury hotel built in a "summer house" style. There is also a "Jugendstil (Art nouveau)" pavilion with a conference room, restaurants and bars. The Waldhaus complex is today the largest "hotel park" in Switzerland, with a total foot-print of 200,000 square meters, and around 24 separate buildings.

The origins of the Waldhaus go back to the foundation in 1869 of the "Waldhaus-Flims cure and lake-bathing establishment" ("Kur- und Seebadanstalt Waldhaus Flims"). Two businessmen from Chur, Peter-Jakob Bener-Caviezel and Paul Lorenz obtained a concession to build a spa centre. 60 shares, each of 5,000 Swiss francs, were offered for subscription, which was underwritten with a guarantee from the municipality. The company was also guaranteed exclusive use of the Caumasee (lake), and provided with a large undeveloped knoll, covered with larch woods and pasture, located beyond the foresters' huts on the edge of the village, for a price of 50 Rappen (half a Swiss Franc) per square meter. By 1875 all the shares had been subscribed and building began. A 120-bed hotel was built under the direction of a St.Gallen architectural firm called "Lorenz". The project also included construction of a sawmill, a post office with stable and refreshment facilities for horses and postmen, a laundry, a cow stall, a water supply from the Prausura Spring and a small bathing station by the lake. The Spa Hotel ("Kurhaus") was opened in 1877, with a fresh running water supply in the kitchen. The entire site was criss-crossed by a network of walking trails which connected the nearby Tuffstein Spring and the , or leading behind the Hotel Segnes to a viewing point for spectacular views of the rock cliffs. Many of these walking trails would later be destroyed to make way for further building development. Areas of the parkland, which had formerly been pasture, became forested now that they were no longer grazed.