Ladies Night Out in the Spa and the City Champagne Whirlpool in Lucerne

Crazy, what they come up with time and again in Lucerne‘s Art Deco Hotel Montana to keep the guest crowd entertained! The latest example: In the Penthouse Spa Suite they are offering a venue for as special sort of girls night out. The deal is in hot demand … all it takes is an idea!

What the bustling hotel director Fritz Erni and his team again and again have been pulling out of the hat in innovative ideas alone for years already is considerable. If he latches on to an idea, then there is not a lot of mulling it over. Anyone who knows this man knows he doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet!

Just about every franc of profit is reinvested in the hotel. The “upward spiral” is what the dynamic pacesetter calls it. Always guest-centric, he tries to sense needs early on and then – zap! – to implement them in a visionary way. The latest “accomplishments” like the glass walled conservatory definitely seem to hit the mark.

Penthouse Spa Suites – can be booked for ladies night out

On the top floor high above Lake Lucerne you will find six luxurious and generously equipped spa suites. With steam and experience shower, in-room Jacuzzi and roof deck, large B & O stereo TV and own fitness bike, the unique penthouse Spa Superior Suite is equipped with all imaginable hardships.

Not to mention the specially commissioned fragrance system, which can bathe the suites in your choice of four different scents…

So much for the technology.

Another use for the Penthouse Spa Superior Suit was recently advertised on this flyer for “ Spa and the City “: There is plenty of room for up to eight women in the corner suite for stag night or other ladies night. A sexy private butler and his Flying Dinner will be at their beck and call.

According to their advertising flyer woman will be able to watch chick flicks as long as she wants. Whew! No kidding…

Now, you don’t have to understand a great deal about women to suspect that this is probably just a beautiful theory!

Much more plausible to me seems what that is being bandied about in whispers with furtive looks: that it gets pretty rambunctious in the suites, namely, that the fair ladies who know their way around the intimate oasis will ring for the essentially topless butler, have free flowing champagne served and have the latest erotic playthings and Perosa lingerie modeled!

Voilà, Sex in the City after all! And in conservative Switzerland at that, in Catholic Lucerne yet! And neither the Heritage Commission nor Swiss Tourism has intervened? The mind boggles…

Be that as it may, because of the demand, they had to assign a reservation agent just to the job of coordinating the dates. The suites are for all intents and purposes fully booked on weekends ! It’s a unique phenomenon for a city hotel….

As to the story of the butler roping down to the Jacuzzi, this is how it played in a filmmaker’s imagination:

Day-Spa: Cosmetics and beauty oasis

Because the guests staying in this class of city hotel demand a spa, the smallest guest room was turned into a day spa in short order: Now hotel guests and walk-in visitors can recharge here with revitalizing, harmonizing spa treatments.

Manager Erni’s daughter Stephanie runs the spa with the same level of energy as her father; no wonder then that this amenity was a big hit from day one, even if it was a bit cramped. So, in April 2013, they took over the adjacent room as well so they could do more treatments. They exclusively use the popular ST. BARTH line of products.

Restaurant Scala with Chef Johan Breedijk

Chef Johan Breedijk who “honed his magic act” in top restaurants in Ascona has run Scala for the past seven years. And what this Dutchman with 15 Gault Millau conjures up on the plates of up to 120 diners is pure magic!

This connoisseur of olive oil lets takes his inspiration from by Mediterranean cuisine and adapts it with great facility to tastes north of the Gotthard Pass. A dash of charm can also be a great help in this at times…

What Johan Breedijk likes best is to be in the kitchen himself to ensure everyone in the kitchen knows the score: If a plate does not meet his expectations, all plates served to the same table go back to the kitchen and everything is cooked from scratch. He’s demanding down to his fingertips!

After a strawberry aperitif, for an appetizer we allowed ourselves to enjoy an essence of parsley with scallops and chanterelle praliné.

The main course this time consisted of a “sandwich” of Alsatian poulet suprême and shiitake mushrooms accompanied by an ingenious sweet and sour watermelon(!), zucchini, green asparagus and herb potatoes.

And for dessert we enjoyed a cherry gazpacho with poached peach ice cream and poppy seed glacé. The unaccustomed cherry juice let the dessert slide down so smoothly that everyone began to whine when all had been swallowed but there was still room for more.

At last, it dawns on us that the Chef treats his guests to a pleasingly light cuisine that accords perfectly with the hotel’s wellbeing concept.

Art Deco guest rooms

Oh, right, almost forgot about the guest rooms…

I was already familiar with the view: Lake Lucerne, the KKL (convention center), Lucerne’s old town, and so on. It’s all spectacular, as we know.

The rooms are modern in Art Deco style. Color wise, they are all different, but always with a distinctive dot or stripe pattern.

Strong emphasis is obviously placed on the bathrooms. After all, here is where the day starts, so it can be nice and bright and have a view…

The Penthouse Spa Suites are in space converted from the hotel staff’s former attic rooms. Today, the space is optimally used, if need be with an experience shower on the Suite’s upper level…

And there is also all of this: a whiskey bar, an original German Wurlitzer and one of Europe’s leading jazz clubs. But I will save that for a future review…

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No wonder then that the Art Deco Hotel Montana was also chosen as one of the best four-star city hotel of the year in Switzerland. It has the best overall rating among four-star hotels and the first one that is self-financed and not bankrolled as an “expensive hobby” by a wealthy patron saint. Congratulations!

Many thanks to Suzanne Nievergelt and Julie Freudiger of the Compresso PR and event agency for the invitation to this publicity event!