Highlights

Guests at Schloss Fuschl enjoy five star-plus luxury. By adopting an integrated approach, modernization of the hotel complex was completed in record time.

Text: Jörg Beckmann, Photos: Hotel Schloss Fuschl

July 1, 2006, is a glorious summer’s day. While millions of fans in Germany eagerly await the World Cup quarter finals, a silver Rolls-Royce glides almost silently down the winding hotel drive and comes to a stop in front of the entrance. The chauffeur opens the rear door to allow an elegantly dressed couple to step out of the hotel’s own limousine. As the concierge greets the new arrivals by name and another employee attends to their fine leather luggage, the couple’s first glance takes in the manicured hotel grounds and the adjacent lake surrounded by wooded hillsides, before settling with a smile on the boat house. The silence is a balm – just a few birds twittering as the wind wafts gently through the tall trees. ”Wonderful”, they murmur with a nod.

5 stars plus: a dream hotel in just ten months

In a few days the Salzburg Festival is due to begin. The couple has booked tickets as they do each year, and in keeping with tradition they will spend two weeks at the Hotel Schloss Fuschl, just 20 minutes from Salzburg city center.Many other Festival visitors have also long appreciated the perfect service and discretion of this five starplus hotel nestling on the shore of the picturesque Fuschlsee.

Ten months earlier there was not a trace of luxury, seclusion or silence. On September 1, 2005, Bilfinger Berger took control of the hotel with a workforce numbering up to 500. Construction machinery, cranes and tons of rubble obscured the view of the lake and the sound of excavators reverberated to the opposite shore.