Worldwide Hospitality Awards

Vitality Suite is a holistic approach to provide guests with additional personal space to focus, medidate, re-join their body and spirit.

The Kursaal is one of the most famous houses in Bern, Switzerland. Positioned on a hill with stunning views across the river and UNESCO old town, the site has been an important cultural meeting place for locals and travellers since 1860. Kursaal Bern became a franchise partner of Swissôtel/Accor in 2019. During this process, the hotel was redesigned by Nina Mair, thus implementing a new design philosophy.

Swissôtel Vice President, Lilian Roten, explains: “Our alpine heritage has its roots in craftsmanship, sustainable design and a conscious, active way of life. This is exactly what Nina Mair’s design brings to the new Swissôtel Kursaal Bern. It’s through these approaches that we offer our guests a sense of well-being, energy and joy of life.” Mair sought to balance Kursaal Bern’s legacy as a community meeting place with the needs of modern business and leisure travellers through a sophisticated yet homely atmosphere. Guests might come for work on a Friday and stay the weekend with family. The design is characterized by timelessness, a connection to nature, intuitive design features and soothing materials. Mair says: “My goal was to create a coherent ambience in which guests feel at home. Above all, local and renewable materials are used, combined with technical refinements to enhance each guest’s stay.”

Mair’s design uses space intelligently for a sense of openness whilst being pleasantly cocooned. Rooms feature customized, built-in furniture, multiuse zones provide cosy living or working corners and custom-tiled bathrooms open or close via sliding smoked-glass doors with curtains for additional privacy. Mair’s restrained material palette references the site’s history whilst creating a calm atmosphere. In her trademark style, the designer chose to simplify rather than overtly add to the space. Inside room entries and bathrooms, entire surfaces are laid with handmade Italian ceramic tiles in a fishbone pattern.

Vitality Suites provide guests with additional personal space to focus, meditate, re-join their body and spirit through yoga practice, as well as work on their health by following curated exercises that make full use of the Well-Being-Wall. Enhanced bathrooms help guests rejuvenate and recharge. Bespoke furniture and a calm material palette, pleasant to the touch, as well as the soothing spectrum of pale timber, mint green, soft pink and cool greys, characterize the contemporary interiors. A key feature of the Vitality Suite is the Well-Being-Wall, a cyber training that can be used in the privacy of one’s own hotel room. Enhanced bathrooms with custom made basins and thoroughly attuned materials help rejuvenate and recharge. Soothing black out blinds and acoustically efficient curtains ensure the rooms are conducive to rest. Intelligent and intuitive technical refinements enhance each guests stay. Sockets and switches are distributed throughout the room for the right connectivity in the right place. Custom-made woolen rugs by Nanimarquina and Hugo Jordan elegantly quote the corporate design of the hotel and caress the senses.The washing basins and shower trays were especially designed by the architects and realized by the company Laufen in custom-colours to match the existing surfaces and ceramic tiles. The beautifully minimalistic fixtures supplied by the German company Grohe, perfectly complement the high-quality sanitary obejcts from the Swiss manufacturer Laufen, creating a wellness ambiance that deserves the description „designed and made in Europe“.

Technological comforts have been implemented with discretion for a personalized sense of wellbeing. Customized baths with rainfall showers are luxurious whilst conserving water. Swissôtel’s signature Pürovel bathroom products, which use essential oils, organically produced in Switzerland revitalise the senses. The Vitality Suites guests can enjoy custom-made fitness walls, yoga areas and personalized training routines. The idea of the Vitality Suite is overall ‚well-being‘ versus simple ‚fitness‘.

The opening of Swissôtel Kursaal Bern in March 2021 marks the beginning of a new era for this celebrated site - presented through Mair’s sophisticated and empathetic design language.