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History
How it all began
At the instigation of the Reverend Joseph Ruden, three men from Zermatt purchased some land on the Riffelberg from the citizens’ commune of Zermatt and, in 1854, erected a small guesthouse there.
The construction of the eighteen-bed establishment proved to be both difficult and costly, for other than a beautiful setting, stone and sand, not much else was to be found in this untamed neck of the Alps at an elevation of 2548 metres (8360 feet). Everything had to be brought up by mule or manually carried up the slopes: wood from Riffelalp, and everything else from Zermatt.
Many of the locals muttered dire predictions about the venture’s early demise, not entirely without a whiff of schadenfreude. They were to be disappointed. For once, a hotel, standing remote from any civilisation, turned out to be entirely in tune with the fashion of the day: faced with burgeoning industrial masses, the feudal classes were fleeing into nature. The Riffelhaus, built midst in the Alps’ mightiest mountains, also made its mark in opening the golden age of alpinism: in 1855, in only its second year of business, alpinists sojourning at the hotel made the first ever successful ascent up the Dufourspitze, Switzerland’s loftiest peak.
The success of the Riffelhaus roused Zermatt’s most venerable inhabitant – envy – from his half-slumbers. Some of the villagers tried to sell another plot of land up here to an hotelier from the outside, an action that was contrary to the original agreement. This would have prompted our founding fathers to start proceedings against their own commune, were it not for the fact that nothing would induce them to do such a thing. To take the wind out of envy’s sails, and because they did not have the funds to expand the business, they sold it in 1862 to the citizens’ commune of Zermatt.
In so doing, the founders were not seeking to make a vast profit. Instead, they were looking to wake the villagers up, to show them that – despite all views to the contrary – the future of their impoverished village lay in tourism.
The Riffelhaus was in urgent need of expansion, but the commune too lacked the necessary funds. A Solomonic solution was found: Alexander Seiler took over the Riffelhaus’s debts, which had accumulated to 15,000 Swiss francs, and expanded the hotel using his own capital. In return, the people of Zermatt agreed to bring the building materials to the site and let him have the lease for a further fifteen years.
With the building work complete, the by now fine-looking hotel offered thirty bedrooms, two reception rooms and a new kitchen.
Situated at an altitude of 8,360 feet in the middle of a beautiful skiing and hiking area, the Hotel Riffelberg has acquired an excellent reputation far beyond the Valais. The hotel was renovated in 1982 and has over 60 beds.
(Text taken from the book “Hotels Erzählen” by Ernesto Perren)
