The Fairytale Story of Kurt Rufli
Above, Kurt Rufli in 1988 at Amari Hotels & Resorts corporate office at Amarin Towers Bangkok. Right, a happily retired Rufli, who is celebrating his 80th birthday in January 2025
By Karl Wild, 15 Dec 2024
This article is a translation of a feature in Hoteliers magazine, Switzerland, titled The fairytale story of Kurt Rufli, written by Karl Wild, famous Swiss journalist and author/publisher of the annual guide, The 100 best hotels in Switzerland. The article is published with the permission of Karl Wild
Of the many fabulous stories that have been written about Swiss hoteliers abroad, that of Kurt Rufli is perhaps the craziest. Or the most unbelievable. Or the most beautiful. And yet there was nothing to suggest it would be so at the beginning.
Rufli interned in the kitchen of the Zurich hotel, Savoy Baur au Ville, now the Mandarin Oriental Savoy. “I would do it again,” he said. He attended EHL, the hotel management school in Lausanne, and took up his first job in Cape Town in 1967 “with shaky English skills”. He then worked as financial controller for Karim Aga Khan’s hotels in Porto Cervo at the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia and finally got a job offer at The Peninsula Hong Kong in 1973.
Rufli’s career seemed to be going like normal. Then everything changed.
On the way to Hong Kong, Rufli wanted to relax for a few days in Pattaya, which was purer at the time, and checked into the Nipa Lodge Hotel. At the bar, he chatted with a few people who asked where he was going. When they realized that this was a young Swiss man with expertise in the hotel industry on his way to a good job in Hong Kong, they exchanged meaningful glances. Six hours later, Rufli was general manager of the hotel – at whose reception he had just checked in as a guest.
The people Rufli was talking to were managers of the construction group Italthai, which had built the hotel, but was not paid for building it. They were builders, and needed proper expertise to run hotels. “I simply couldn’t turn down the offer,” said Rufli, who canceled his move to Hong Kong. “Beautiful women, incredibly nice people, wonderful beaches, swaying palm trees – it was a can’t-get-any-better type of thing,” he recalled. It was simply unique for a young man from Switzerland.
Asia’s Hotelier of the Year
Italthai immediately entrusted Rufli with its neighboring hotel, Orchid Resort. The company liked the incredibly capable young Swiss, but also the hotel industry. So Rufli founded a hotel group under the name Amari Hotels and Resorts, which became the largest hotel group in Thailand at the time with its four and five star hotels. Travelasia magazine, one of the most respected travel magazines in the Far East, named Rufli Asia’s Hotelier of the Year in 1998 for this achievement. Hans Lerch, then CEO of Kuoni Travel, described his friend Rufli as “a brilliant hotelier and manager”. Lerch should know. He moved to the Far East at the same time as Rufli.
Diversification in the industry
When the Asian crisis dragged on at the end of the 1990s, Rufli was unwilling to lay off long-standing employees and lose their know-how when the economy recovered. He entered the music business with a franchise agreement and shortly afterwards took over management of the Royal Industries factory, which manufactured baby products and sold them in 55 countries. After he had managed the turnaround there, the Thai business media counted him as one of the top businessmen in Thailand.
When Rufli left Amari in 2008 as managing director and shareholder (“Just a small one”), he left behind a flourishing, highly profitable company with a wide range of hotel management services. During his time at Amari, he opened 20 hotels with roomcount ranging from 40 to 600. He brought countless young Swiss people to Bangkok and trained them in his famous talent factory. “There must have been hundreds,” Rufli estimated. “They then spread out across the globe.”
Big names
Many became friends with whom he still maintains contact today. Adrian K. Müller, owner of the Hotel Stern in Chur and Swiss Hotelier of the Year 2021, is one of them. He was general manager of then Amari Airport Hotel in Bangkok before moving to Shangri-La Bangkok. Before his surprise return to Chur, Müller was considered the favorite for the top job at the world-famous Mandarin Oriental Bangkok.
Another is Peter Caprez, cluster general manager at JW Marriott Bangkok and Swiss Foreign Hotelier of the Year 2024. He started at Amari as general manager of the airport hotel in 1990 and opened the Amari Watergate in Bangkok as general manager in 1992.
Pierre-André Pelletier also had a great career. Rufli brought him to Amari after he graduated from EHL, and Pelletier worked his way up to regional vice president. Today he is COO of the global investment company Orca Holding.
Ingenious knowledge of human nature
The list could go on and on. It is clear why Rufli tapped into the industry’s reservoir in his home country: “The people had just finished hotel management school, were young, willing to learn, talented and not stuck in the prescribed corset of large hotel chains.”
Once they were there, he placed on them the value of discipline and correct behavior. Not just at work, but also in their free time. “That was extremely important for young men who arrived here at that time.” It goes without saying that they had to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It should be added that Rufli had an extremely good, almost brilliant, understanding of people and knew quickly whether someone would make it in this business or not.
No trouble letting go
When Rufli stepped down as the celebrated, highly-respected founder and top manager of Amari, he did so as he did with everything in his life: with the utmost consistency. He had no problems letting go and had no desire for the jobs that were offered to him, no matter how lucrative they were.
“I’ve completely said goodbye to work,” he said. “Since then, I’ve traveled all over the world, read hundreds of books, and taken care of my fitness and finances.”
He still loves beautiful hotels. His current favorite in Asia is NIHI, in Sumba, Indonesia, which he intends to visit soon. In Switzerland, he has a clear favorite: “Everything is just right at the Park Hotel Vitznau.”
“The journey is far from over”
“I always suspected that I would live in this part of the world one day,” said Rufli, who lives on Chidlom Road in Bangkok for nine months of the year. He is also a Thai citizen since 1998. At Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport, he always causes a bit of a stir when he shows his passport bearing his Thai name, Kom Roop-Rawin.
He spends the remaining three months in Switzerland and travels a lot. He has beautifully renovated the house in Zurich, where his parents once ran a restaurant. The three daughters from his marriage to a Filipino woman went the other way. His daughters live in Uitikon, Thalwil and Erlenbach.
Rufli has been with his current partner, a journalist from Singapore, for more than 25 years. “Happier than ever,” he said. And he is fitter than ever too: “I still have a long and beautiful road ahead of me,” he said, looking towards his 80th birthday. “Some guys just live to a ripe old age.”
And they remain unforgettable too, thanks to their extraordinary lives and their outstanding achievements.
“A great doer”
Adrian K. Müller, owner of the Hotel Stern, Chur:
“I was 27, and from the perspective of a young man from Switzerland, Kurt Rufli was the great doer and of course a role model. I will never forget that he gave me the chance to build an international career in the hotel industry. I have fond memories of him as a hotelier, CEO and above all as a leader. Disciplined, meticulous, focused, also strict, with clear objectives and vision. And always humanely correct, generous and empathetic. True leadership at its finest. Happy 80th birthday, Boss Kurt.”
“A true mentor”
Peter Caprez, cluster general manager at JW Marriott Bangkok and Foreign Hotelier of the Year 2024:
“Kurt Rufli was one of the few true mentors in my career. He was unsurpassed in organization, structures, discipline and execution. What I learned from him only became clear to me later, when I took on more responsibility myself. ‘Limits of authority’ was one of Kurt’s favorite topics. There was even a folder in which our respective authority limits were listed so that we as general managers understood them.
“The only constant in life is change, we learned that under Kurt’s leadership. Today we are friends and laugh heartily when we talk about the past over lunch. It seems only yesterday when many of us contributed to a book for his 70th birthday, published by his partner Raini Hamdi. Now we’re already congratulating Kurt on his 80th birthday. Time flies when you’re having fun. And I know Kurt is having fun. Happy 80th, Kurt, and many more wonderful years to come.”