One of the greatest names in world hotel business: Who is Caesar Ritz?
Ritz was born in the village of Niederwald in Switzerland, the youngest of 13 children of a poor peasant family. The owner of the hotel where he worked said, "You can't be a hotelier" and fired him. But he... The term Ritzy comes from the name of him and his hotels.
After his modest youth in Switzerland, he managed to become, in the words of the English King Edward VII, "the hotelier of kings, the king of hoteliers".
The best source about his life is the simple but sincere book written by his wife Marie-Louise, whom he married in 1888, 20 years after her death.
Cesar, born on February 22, 1850, was the 13th and youngest child of the Ritz Family. Cesar, whose father was a district governor in a town, was sent to the Trois Couronnes et Poste hotel in Brig as a wine waiter when he was 15 years old. Shortly afterward, the owner of the hotel, Monsieur Escher, said, "Hotel management is not a profession for you. It requires special talent and fine common sense. Unfortunately, you do not have that" and sent him home.
César Ritz, born Cäsar Ritz (23 February 1850 – 24 October 1918), was a Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels, most famously the Hôtel Ritz in Paris and the Ritz and Carlton Hotels in London (the forerunners of the modern Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company). He was an early hotel chain founder known as "King of Hoteliers, and Hotelier to Kings," and it is from his name and that of his hotels that the term ritzy derives.
But Cesar did not give up despite this failure. In 1867, he went to Paris and continued to work in various hotels and restaurants. Ritz went to Vienna in 1873 and worked at the restaurant Les Trois Freres Provencaux next to the Imperial Pavilion where members of the European royal families were hosted. Ritz had the opportunity to serve kings, princes, and princesses here.
He caught the attention of the Prince of Wales, who would ascend to the English throne as Edward VII. That year, he was at the Grand Hotel in Nice as a restaurant manager during Christmas. Now he worked in the Swiss Alps in the summer and on the French Riviera in the winter.
The London Ritz opened on May 24, 1906. Despite the fierce competition from proven hotels such as Claridges, Savoy, and Berkeley, the Ritz soon became the "in" hotel in London. But Ritz, who had been battling a serious illness since the year he opened the hotel, lost this battle and died on October 26, 1918.