The moment I stepped through the gates of Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, with its frescoed ceilings rising overhead and the sparkle of Italy’s Lake Como visible just beyond, I knew I wasn’t in your typical high-end hotel. For one, fourth-generation owner Jan Bucher, who took over from his parents in 2019, greeted me personally beneath those overhead paintings; as we sat in a vintage sofa in the lobby, he waved off any suggestion of a future, sleek reinvention. “If you want modern minimalism,” he said, gesturing toward the antique velvet upholstery and hand-painted walls, “you’re in the wrong place. This is like Versailles on the water.” Even the hotel’s new waterfront Beach Club feels well-worn and loved.
Somehow, his words didn’t come off as marketing nonsense. They felt deeply personal—because they are. Like a male Eloise, Bucher grew up within these walls. His father ran the circa-1850 hotel before him. His great-grandfather, who purchased the property in 1918, soon after the first roads arrived at Lake Como, and then his grandfather, were the owners before that. You can’t fake that kind of tenure. You also can’t fake the warmth that radiates from a place where the staff has known the owning family for decades and returning guests are welcomed like cousins rather than customers. “It would have been sad not to carry this into the next generation,” Bucher tells me, although the hospitality-trained heir says he was never pressured into taking over the family business. “It’s completely authentic to how it was 150 years ago, sort of like a museum, but with soul.”
Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni has been operating as a hotel since about 1850 and sits beside Italy’s Lake Como.
Photo by FTfoto
There’s an old adage in family business circles: “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves” or “hard times to hard times” in three generations. The founders work diligently to build a company, the second generation expands, and the third loses the company due to incompetence, entitlement, or greed. Add to that a hospitality landscape increasingly shaped by mergers, acquisitions, and brand consolidation, and it’s no wonder places like Villa Serbelloni may seem like they’re going the way of the rotary phone. Recently, private equity firm KKR Capital acquired Michigan’s Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, a fourth-generation property that had remained in the same family for more than 85 years. In Japan, the world’s oldest hotel (according to Guinness), Koshu Nishiyama Hot Spring, Keiunkan—operated by the same family for 52 generations, since 705 C.E.—was transferred to a corporate group in 2017 when no heirs wanted to take the reins.
Guardians of legacies
Despite the stacked odds, a surprising number of long-held, family-run hotels are still very much alive, and even thriving. According to Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), a global membership organization for independent luxury hotels, more than 80 percent of the 400 properties it represents are family led, including many in their fourth, fifth, sixth, and even seventh generation, according to LHW president and CEO Shannon Knapp. “These hoteliers are guardians of legacies,” says Knapp. “Hospitality is in their DNA.” That longevity shapes everything, from how staff are treated to what kind of jam appears on the breakfast buffet. “Travelers may not always articulate it, but they feel the difference,” Knapp says. “There’s a warmth, a presence, and an attention to detail that can only come from generational care.”
Italy and Switzerland have the highest density of these family-owned legacy hotels, according to Knapp. “There’s a strong tradition in those countries of hospitality being passed down like an heirloom,” she says. “Families feel a deep connection not just to the property, but to the destination, the community, the region’s culture.” That emotional ownership, she adds, gives guests access to something far deeper than a luxurious stay. “It’s insider access, emotional resonance, and a story to take home.”
Many of these hoteliers grew up sweeping floors and folding linens. Others left home, only to return later to carry on the family affair. “What we see a lot is this mix of reverence and reinvention,” Knapp says. “The next generation often brings fresh thinking—on design, sustainability, technology—while holding tight to the soul of the place.”
Mohonk Mountain House in New York’s Hudson Valley has been run by the Smiley family since 1869.
Courtesy of Mohonk Mountain House
The challenges of a family-run hotel business
Still, succession isn’t always smooth. Not every child wants to inherit a 19th-century property with low returns on investments and high expectations from both family members and guests. In some cases, no heir steps up at all. “When there isn’t a clear heir to carry on the legacy, families are forced to make a deeply personal decision that is never just about business, but about legacy, identity, and pride of place,” says Knapp. And when a family doesn’t have someone willing or able to take over, they face hard choices: Do they sell? Bring in outside management? Hope someone in the next generation changes their mind?
Across the pond in the USA, family-run hotels are rarer, but Mohonk Mountain House, the turreted Victorian resort in New York’s Hudson Valley, offers an example of multi-generational ownership. When I last stayed there with my kids, my father—who once worked in one of these now mostly shuttered mountain house hotels to pay for his city college tuition—ended up joining us last minute. Nina Smiley, director of mindfulness, found him a cot to tuck into our room and personally toured him around the property, sharing stories of demanding regulars and the freewheeling late ’60s. (The Woodstock festival took place nearby.) The Smiley family has run Mohonk since 1869—seven generations and counting. But that continuity hasn’t meant predictability. “It’s not always a straight line from parent to child,” says Tom Smiley, the resort’s current CEO. (He co-leads with his cousin, Eric Gullickson, whose title is president.) “Right now, we’ve got cousins, nieces, nephews all working here. It’s more of a family tree than a ladder.”
Mohonk is structured less like a typical business and more like a trust in stewardship. Every offer to purchase, which happens nearly weekly, is turned down without a second thought. No Smileys take dividends. Only family members who work at the resort get paid a salary. “We reinvest everything,” Smiley says. That includes making major capital infusions into areas guests may never see or which won’t yield a return on the investment for decades. Case in point: Smiley recently completed a multi-million-dollar overhaul of the kitchen and operations building, replacing a structure that dated back to the 1880s. “We did it because we’re going to be here for a long time, and it improved the experience of the kitchen staff dramatically,” he insists. “A private equity firm probably wouldn’t have touched it.”
‘We reinvest everything.’ That includes making major capital infusions into areas guests may never see or which won’t yield a return on the investment for decades.
That long-view ethos also shows up in how the Smileys and their relatives treat guests and staff. During the pandemic, Mohonk cut capacity dramatically and was able to keep most of its 800 employees on the payroll. “It wasn’t a financial decision,” says Smiley. “It was a values decision.” A similar mindset has kept the hotel almost completely television-free and family-friendly. (“Let nature be the entertainment,” says Nina Smiley. She’s Tom’s aunt and widow of Albert K. Smiley III, known to all as “Bert,” who was the previous president and CEO of the property.)
The Faessler family has run Vail Sonnenalp for five generations.
Courtesy of Vail Sonnenalp
That mindset is a common thread in so many other legacy hotels, including Baur au Lac in Zurich (run by the sixth and seventh generations of the Kracht family) or the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento (now led by the fifth and sixth generations of the Fiorentino family), which blend cultural memory with modern hospitality. In the U.S., Vail’s Sonnenalp Hotel is run by the fifth-generation Faessler family, who continue to deliver a blend of Bavarian warmth and Rocky Mountain charm. Similarly, Lewa House is the rare example in Kenya; it’s owned by the great-granddaughter of the original cattle ranchers who settled in this wildlife conservancy in 1922.
Encounters with familial owners and the stories they share—like the one recounted by Jan Bucher about how his dad would prank call the White House using the phone that Villa Serbelloni had installed when President John F. Kennedy was in residence—are what travelers remember most, more than the thread count or the brand of hand soap. And while legacy ownership isn’t scalable or easily replicated, it remains one of the few reliable sources of genuine hospitality left in the world.
“You don’t have to be a prisoner to legacy,” says Mohonk Mountain House’s Tom Smiley. “But you do have to be a steward of it.”
Five more hotels that have stayed in the family for generations
Beau-Rivage Palace, Geneva, Switzerland
Beau-Rivage Palace sits on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
Courtesy of Beau-Rivage Palace
For the Beau-Rivage Palace‘s 150th birthday, the founding Mayer family restored the façade and frescoes. Ten years on, the fifth generation keeps the family-friendly city retreat classy with floral arrangements everywhere you look and a hot-ticket Sunday brunch. From $850
Hōshi Ryokan, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan
Operating continuously under the same family since 718, this traditional inn is currently in its 46th generation. The hot spring baths and location near one of Japan’s three sacred mountains make it a bucket-list destination. From $200
Hotel Byblos, St. Tropez, France
This St. Tropez hot spot has been run by fourth-generation owner Antoine Chevanne for nearly a quarter of a decade, and he’s just given the 1967 party hub a glow-up, with a rooftop bar and an haute Italian restaurant. From $700
Hotel Santa Caterina, Amalfi Coast, Italy
A guest room at Hotel Santa Caterina in Italy
Courtesy of Hotel Santa Caterina
Operated by third- and fourth-generation Gambardellas, Hotel Santa Caterina delivers intimate experiences like cooking classes with local artisans and dinners in the lemon grove. Guests, too, return for generations. From $1,100
Hotel Waldhaus Sils-Maria, Switzerland
Select rooms at Hotel Waldhaus Sils-Maria have been restored to look as they were when the hotel originally opened in 1908 in the Swiss Alps. The fifth-generation owners, however, did invest $10 million in updating the rest of the storied property. From $200
