Beau Rivage Hotel, Geneva review

Why book? 
Honestly, you don’t need a reason.

Hotel address: Beau Rivage Hotel, 13 Quai du Mont-Blanc, 1201 Geneva
Website: beau-rivage.ch
Telephone: +41 22 716 66 66
Price: From £390

Set the scene
You’re halfway down the Quai du Mont-Blanc, on Lake Geneva’s rive droite, facing the water. To your left, the elegant curve of the Bains des Pâquis jetty, with its toy-like lighthouse at the end; opposite, the mesmeric plume of the Jet d’Eau, the stately façades of the Quai Gustave-Ador and the spire of St Peter’s Cathedral. On the far shore you can discern the leafy billionaires’ colony of Cologny and, in the background, the rippling silhouette of the Alps, including, on a clear day, Mont Blanc itself. Turn your back on all that. Step inside the hotel. Soaring, salmon-coloured columns rise from a mosaic-tiled floor; you feel yourself caught in a tractor beam of natural light, drawing you, or at least your gaze, ever upwards. So there you are, head tilted backwards, at the still centre of a glossy vortex of loveliness. Your first impression is likely to be something along the lines of: ‘Gosh.’

The backstory
A matter of particular interest at the time of writing. The Beau-Rivage opened in 1865. For 155 years it was owned by the Mayer family. Five generations of Mayers were born and grew up, lived and worked there. Then, at the end of 2020, the Mayers sold the hotel to another family, the Casacubertas, from Barcelona. What next? What next, indeed.

The rooms
Superb, ranging from the deeply traditional to the profoundly traditional. This is no place for wacky experiments. That said, there is a good deal of modulation in mood and tone between individual rooms, depending on the size, situation and particular admixture of Victorian, Edwardian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco design elements. The larger suites are stupendous. The smaller ones are stupendous too – plush, gilt-framed, wainscoted, typically with at least one or two pieces of furniture or objets d’art of a kind you would expect to find in a museum or the saleroom of a posh auction house, rather than a hotel. Many rooms have quirks that reflect the peculiarities of an old building that has evolved slowly over time – your bathroom might turn out to be only fractionally smaller than your bedroom, for instance, or there might be a small sauna where you expected to find an ironing board. These oddities are to be treasured. The most recent spate of renovation, which concluded in 2018, saw the addition of 17 rooms on the fifth and sixth floors, including half a dozen split-level ‘duplexes’ and a new Royal Suite, which really is pharaonic. Another nice feature of the hotel is the fact that its façade is not straight and, as you might expect, parallel to the Quai du Mont-Blanc, but has several angles. These little tilts make quite a difference to the lakeside outlook.

Food and drink
The main fine-dining restaurant, Le Chat-Botté, opened in 1967 and remains a thriving local institution. Michelin-anointed chef Dominique Gauthier has been there for a quarter of a century. The frogs’ legs in tempura for which he is famous might almost be a practical joke – a means of persuading squeamish foreigners not merely to try them but actually to enjoy them. The fact that Gauthier is also able to draw on one of the best-stocked wine cellars in the city does nothing to hurt his cause. Though serious about what he does, he is also very down to earth – there have been recent ice-cream and Sachertorte collaborations, as well as a life-affirming Fondue Therapy package. In addition to Le Chat-Botté, he oversees the outdoor restaurant La Terrasse – which becomes La Terrasse Alpine in the winter months, with heated vintage gondola cabins from Gstaad. Downstairs is a Thai restaurant, Le Patara. With all these distractions, Albertine’s, the little bar that you pass on your way from the lobby, might easily be overlooked – though not by this reviewer, in whose opinion it is one of the hotel’s loveliest spaces. Formerly a reading room, it retains a certain serene seriousness of purpose, uncommon in bars these days, that is very becoming.

The spa
In a world in which so many hotels make such a song and dance about their vast, elaborate wellness facilities, the Beau-Rivage makes do with a single treatment room – its Bellefontaine Suite – in which one therapist takes care of one guest at a time. Which is refreshing in itself.

The area
It is difficult to imagine anything untoward occurring on this opulent stretch of the Quai du Mont-Blanc. Yet it has seen one or two hairy moments over the years. In 1898, Elisabeth, Empress Consort of Austria was stabbed outside the Beau-Rivage by an Italian anarchist while on her way to board one of the paddle steamers that ply the lake to this day. A small bronze plaque marks the spot. She was a guest at the hotel at the time and died in her suite shortly after the attack. There is a cabinet containing a pair of her gloves and a piece of bloodstained ribbon. The effect is less morbid than it might sound. Glamorous, tragic Sissi is a big draw. The fact that she is remembered for dying here – rather than, say, for throwing a fabulous party, getting tight and leaping naked into the lake – seems not to put her fans off in the slightest. The Sissi Terrace Suite is booked solid.

The service
Beyond reproach, and as clued-up as it is polite and efficient. The concierge desk at the Beau-Rivage has long served as a sort of finishing school for future holders of the coveted Clefs d’Or.

Eco effort
Considerable, commendable and, given the hotel’s willingness to provide statistics, apparently also a source of some pride. It intends to be 100 per cent carbon neutral by 2025. All of its greenhouse-gas emissions from energy consumption are offset; so too are those linked to its sales team’s work-related flights. The hotel also encourages ‘soft mobility’ among staff by providing them with bicycles. It has adopted the so-called GeniLac programme, a thermal-exchange network that uses water from Lake Geneva to cool and heat local buildings. Similar schemes have been very successful elsewhere in Switzerland; authorities say it will reduce the city’s fossil-fuel consumption by 39 per cent by 2023. The hotel’s current waste-recycling ratio is 76.5 per cent; it plans to reach 85 per cent by 2025. Unused hygiene products are recycled through a charity, Youth for Soap, and unused kitchen ingredients – two thirds of which are sourced locally – are resold at low prices through the Too Good To Go association. The hotel also sponsors three Les Miels de Stéphanie beehives in nearby Satigny, which provide the honey served at breakfast.

Accessibility for those with mobility impairments
The entire hotel is wheelchair-accessible, with special entrances off the Quai du Mont-Blanc to the lobby and the key public areas, including Le Chat-Botté and La Terrasse. Lifts service all floors. The Henri Dunant Suite has a second bathroom adapted for wheelchair users, with grab rails in place.

Anything left to mention?
The Beau-Rivage has a permanent population of more than 150 angels in various forms – painted, sculpted, carved. You will feel entirely at home among them.