Gstaad Palace

Gstaad Palace's own history page counts its rooms twice, a century apart. It opened on 8 December 1913 with 250 beds in 165 rooms. By 2018 the count read differently: 90 rooms and suites, down from 180, because, the hotel's own timeline says, "we renovate our rooms on average every 10 to 12 years" and, in recent cycles, combine smaller rooms into fewer, larger ones. That single sentence is the clearest evidence on the site of what "one of the largest hotels in the Alps" costs in practice: half the guest rooms it once counted, traded for the scale a modern luxury stay is expected to deliver per room. The Scherz family has owned the hotel since 1947, when Ernst Scherz began buying out the other shareholders after a takeover scare; his son Ernst Andrea Scherz ran it for 33 years, and his grandson Andrea Scherz has been at the helm since 2001. 3 generations, one company, and a room count cut in half on their watch.

Salle Baccarat, and the rooms next to it

Most Alpine hotels in this guide describe their event spaces in adjectives. Gstaad Palace's own event pages, and the booking widget behind their "Read more" links, describe them in square metres and seats. Salle Baccarat, the hotel's largest venue, is 240 square metres and seats 180 for a conference, 300 theatre-style, 80 in a U-shape, 230 for a seated banquet, and 300 for a standing reception. It began as a 1914 expansion project, opened as a ballroom in 1916, was renovated and renamed Chez Maxim's in 1954, then renovated once more and renamed Salle Baccarat in 1990, the version with the crystal chandeliers still standing today. Down the corridor, 4 smaller rooms carry their own published numbers: the Board Room is 54 square metres for 12 people around a conference table; Salle Bridge is 32 square metres, seating 20 for a conference and up to 40 for a standing reception; Salle Expo, on the ground floor, seats 40 for a conference or a cocktail reception; and Salon du Premier, the smallest, is 21 square metres and seats 10. Add them together and the hotel's own overview line, "from a conference with 10 people to a ball for 300 guests," checks out exactly against the 5 rooms' own individual figures.

A direct line for weddings, and the names behind the brochure

The general hotel line is +41 33 748 50 00. The events team runs on a separate number, +41 33 748 58 00, and a separate address, events@palace.ch, distinct from reservations@palace.ch. Gstaad Palace's own downloadable brochure for "Private Dining, Gala Events & Weddings" is signed, at the bottom of its second and final page, "Your Groups & Events Team," not an anonymous department. The same brochure names the pair who actually cook a wedding dinner: Culinary Director Franz W. Faeh, who has run the kitchen since 2016, and his Sous-Chef, Luca Gatti, who the document says will personally walk a couple through any allergen in a dish. Menus, the brochure states twice, are "tailor-made and created with our Culinary Director... according to your wishes," not selected from a fixed card.

163 days a year, and nothing published in between

Gstaad Palace's own calendar lists exactly 2 open seasons a year, and describes nothing outside them. For 2026, summer runs 19 June to 6 September; for the 2026/27 season, winter runs 15 December to 7 March. Add both windows together and the hotel's own dates keep it open 163 days a year, split by a long closure in spring and another in autumn. A couple choosing a date here isn't picking from a calendar the way they would at a year-round hotel; they're picking a week inside one of 2 fixed windows, or waiting for the next one. The hotel's own general terms and conditions treat this as a real operational risk, not a formality: the cancellation clause for the hotel operator names "late opening or non-opening" of a season, alongside natural disasters and road closures, as a case where the hotel can cancel a confirmed reservation without owing damages.

What renting the whole Palace includes, and what Salle Expo adds on top

Beyond booking a single room, Gstaad Palace sells full exclusivity under the name "Rent a Palace": the entire hotel, including every suite, restaurant, the GreenGo nightclub and the spa, for a minimum stay of 2 nights. The page adds one line easy to miss: "By the way, you also have exclusive use of our Salle Expo," phrased as a bonus rather than a given. Read against the room-by-room breakdown above, that line only makes sense if Salle Expo isn't automatically part of an ordinary single-room booking, meaning a couple renting just the Board Room or Salon du Premier for a smaller wedding doesn't get Salle Expo thrown in; a couple renting the whole Palace does.

The hotel doesn't publish a flat rate for full exclusivity the way it publishes room-by-room seating figures, so what "Rent a Palace" actually costs stays a request-only number. What it does publish, in the same terms and conditions, is the deposit structure behind any group booking: a first, non-refundable security deposit tied to the number of rooms reserved, due within 10 days of a signed contract; a second deposit of 40 percent of the total invoice, due 4 months before arrival; and a final 40 percent, due 2 months before arrival, with the balance invoiced after departure. Cancel a group booking close to the date and the same document sets out room-by-room forfeiture: up to 4 months out, 20 percent of daily rooms can be released without penalty, the rest carrying a 50 percent fee; inside 3 days of arrival, everything not already released carries a full 100 percent charge covering rooms and every food-and-beverage service already organised.

CHF 42 for a canapé, CHF 90 for a waiter after midnight

Where most grand hotels in this category price a wedding on request, Gstaad Palace's own wedding brochure runs a page headed "Our Services and Prices." 4 canapés as an aperitif start from CHF 42. A 3-course dinner starts from CHF 130 per person, a 4-course dinner from CHF 168; a 5-course menu is upon request. Wine starts from CHF 75 a bottle for white and CHF 80 for red, champagne from CHF 125. Stationery is billed by the piece: a seating plan costs CHF 10, printed menus CHF 10, and name cards CHF 5, with printed menus explicitly marked mandatory once a private dinner reaches 15 people, the same 15-guest line the hotel's separate general terms and conditions use to define when "additional terms and conditions" for private dining, gala events and weddings apply at all. Staffing carries its own hourly rate, a detail almost no other venue in this guide states in writing: a hostess costs CHF 120 per hour, and any waiter kept on past midnight costs CHF 90 per hour on top of the standard rate. The brochure closes with a plain operational note: any change communicated within 72 hours of the event will not be refunded, and the hotel holds no reservation until it receives final confirmation from the guest.

Nowhere on the wedding, celebrations or Rent a Palace pages does the site name a civil registrar, a Zivilstandsamt, or say whether a ceremony held at the Palace could be the legally binding one. The site simply never addresses it, so a couple would need to ask the events team directly whether Bern's cantonal authorities have approved a room here for a civil ceremony.

A Scherz chaired the world's largest luxury-hotel consortium, twice

Gstaad Palace's legal notice records a company most of its marketing copy never mentions: Royal Hotel, Winter & Gstaad Palace AG, headquartered in Saanen, entered in the Commercial Register of the Canton of Bern under company number CHE-101.473.212. Its listed board president is Mark Ineichen, not a member of the family; Andrea Scherz appears in the same filing as Board of Directors Delegate, the operating role rather than the chair. The family's real influence shows up somewhere else on the site: the hotel's own history page states that Ernst Andrea Scherz became president of The Leading Hotels of the World alliance in 1974 and held the position until 1989, a period in which the consortium grew from 90 member hotels to more than 220. His son Andrea Scherz was made the alliance's chairman again in 2022, taking over a consortium that has since grown to some 400 hotels worldwide, of which Gstaad Palace has been a member for over 60 years. 2 generations of the same family have each, at different points, chaired the referral network that a large share of this category's other listings, from Relais & Châteaux members to Romantik Hotels affiliates, depend on for exactly the kind of international bookings a foreign couple planning a Swiss wedding represents. No other venue in this guide's Bernese Oberland list can make that claim, because no other venue's owning family has held that chair.