Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains

Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains

You arrive not in St. Moritz Dorf, the village on the hill, but below it in St. Moritz Bad, the lakeside spa quarter at 1,822 metres in the Upper Engadin, where the Grand Hotel des Bains opened in 1864 around the iron-rich Mauritius spring that had drawn the sick and the aristocratic to the valley long before anyone came to ski. The building has been remade several times, given the look of a northern Mediterranean palace in 1887, then the neo-baroque towers and neo-Gothic corner bay windows in 1906, then a new lounge and hall in 1927, and in 2001 a team of Viennese architects restored the facade and interiors from old photographs and etchings, which is why it now presents itself in pastels with pale blue shutters. Kempinski, founded in 1897 and the oldest luxury hotel group in Europe, reopened it in December 2002 after fourteen months of work, and today there are 184 rooms and suites plus the Alpine Suites, apartments of one to five bedrooms, run by general manager Konstantin Zeuke, with Jonas Starkowski, who joined as a commis in 2015, as executive chef since 2024. The rooms are mid-transformation; a CHF 16.5 million third phase finished for winter 2025/26 brought 67 more units into line with local materials and alpine craftsmanship, taking the renovated total to 151, after a wing of 26 rooms and junior suites was redone in 2023. Les Saisons is the main dining room, now with a small enclave for tasting menus, and the 1927 hall has become Neora, open-flame Greek cooking and the first Greek restaurant in the Engadin, which replaced the Michelin-starred Cà d’Oro in 2025. Flavio Briatore’s Majestas Group runs both Crazy Pizza and Billionaire, a dinner show and club now in its second winter here, the lobby bar is now Quintessence with a Macallan room, and a Beluga igloo in the park serves vodka and caviar in the snow. The Kempinski Alpine Spa covers roughly 2,800 square metres, with an outdoor pool added in 2023, Kneipp baths, a separate ladies’ spa with three saunas, and a private fountain drawing directly from the Mauritius spring, and since December 2025 the Image Regenerative Institute of Professor Carlo Tremolada has offered longevity medicine beside it. This is a large, polished, seasonal grand hotel that runs like a small town in winter, with families heading to the Kids Club in the morning, skiers crossing Via Mezdi to the Signal cable car, and a later, louder crowd filing into Billionaire after dark. The service is Kempinski service, multilingual, formal and well drilled, more corporate than idiosyncratic, and the building’s best moments are its oldest ones, the towers, the high-ceilinged hall, the spring itself. Bad has none of the boutique density of Dorf, so the shopping on Via Serlas means a short ride up, but the trade is easy skiing, the lake on your doorstep and a spa built on the reason the town exists. You should not come if you want a small, family-run house with the eccentricities that come from one owner’s taste, or if you want quiet evenings, because the Briatore programme sets the tone of the building on winter nights. You should come if you want the lift across the road, a proper spa with water from the original source, children looked after by professionals, and five places to eat and drink without putting on boots. The short version: A 184-room grand hotel built in 1864 over the Mauritius spring in St. Moritz Bad, run by Kempinski since 2002, with the Signal cable car across the road, a 2,800-square-metre spa, Greek cooking at Neora and Flavio Briatore’s Billionaire in winter.