When the hoteliers were organizing the winter Olympic games. Beyond the local networks in St. Moritz in 1928

Abstract

After an almost continuous growth since 1850, with the First World War, the tourism sector, in Switzerland as elsewhere in the West, faced its first real crisis and had its actors to develop more refined strategies for the first time to “attract” customers and "retain" those who were already there. In this context, it should be noted that the hoteliers of St. Moritz, along with broader tourism networks, took advantage of a unique historical configuration between the two world wars to improve the reputation of the resort and enlarge its offer, both in the winter season with skiing and other disciplines like bobsleigh, but also in the summer season, especially following the opening of traffic to cars in the canton of Graubünden in 1925. In our article, we seek to analyze the involvement of hoteliers in the organization of the 1928 Olympic Games, both to understand the ‘local’ network behind the organization of a major sporting event and to take an innovative look at the development of tourism in the inter-war period. We based our analysis on municipal archives (political authorities, tourist office, hotel infrastructures, ski club), never really used in historical work on the winter Olympics.