01 September 2026
Three Generations — the Family Behind the Mirabeau Drei Generationen - die Familie hinter dem Mirabeau

To understand why French art de vivre thrives on Valais soil at the Le Mirabeau Resort & Spa, one has to go back to 1975. That year, Meinrad Julen, a pioneer of Zermatt hotellerie, built a new hotel in the village: 80 beds, along with public spaces very much in the taste of the seventies, all floral patterns and bold colours. He found the name on his travels. On a trip with the hoteliers' association, Meinrad Julen stayed at a Hôtel Mirabeau — he liked the French sound of it so much that he simply named his newest project after it. It was an early hint of what the house would one day become.

Four years later, the second generation took over. Sepp and Rose Julen were newly married, with their first daughter Anna on the way, when they took charge of the Mirabeau in 1979. Sepp Julen had learned his trade from the ground up: first a chef's apprenticeship, then years honing his craft in French-speaking Switzerland, and finally a degree from the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, before joining the family business in 1974. Together with Rose, he expanded the house step by step — a pool with sauna was added, but above all came an idea that was bold at the time: French cuisine in a Valais mountain village. In 1987, the couple opened Zermatt's first French gourmet restaurant, the Corbeau d'Or. The nouvelle cuisine served there certainly stirred discussion in the village — and shaped the house's reputation for more than three decades, until the third generation redirected the gastronomy in 2014. The French touch has remained to this day. Sepp Julen was involved well beyond his own house: for more than ten years he served as president of the Zermatt Hoteliers' Association and sat on the board of Zermatt Tourism. Within the business, the family held to a simple rule: every guest should have personal contact with a member of the host family at least once a day. In 2004, Sepp and Rose set another milestone, building the Alpine Residence — junior suites of aged fir and larch wood, granite, wool felt, linen and loden, along with the Alpine Hideaway Spa and an underground passage connecting to the main house.

The third generation grew up between the lobby, the kitchen and the reception desk. Marie Julen studied, like her father, at the EHL in Lausanne — and there met Francis Reichenbach, the son of a hotelier family from Gstaad. After years working in Europe and Asia, the couple returned to Zermatt in 2014 and set their own accents: the Restaurant Veranda was created, and with Marie's Deli came a concept whose name tells another chapter of the family story — great-great-aunt Marie ran Zermatt's first delicatessen in the 1960s. On 1 June 2018, after forty years at the helm, Sepp and Rose Julen handed over operational leadership to Francis and Marie Reichenbach-Julen. For Marie, it was a return to the place where she grew up — for her, the hotel is both family business and home at once. Under the leadership of the third generation, the hotel has grown into a resort now spanning four buildings: alongside the rebranding as Le Mirabeau Resort & Spa came the new building with family suites and apartment units, an expanded spa, and most recently the new outdoor world with a heated outdoor pool, garden and terrace. So the couple carries the house forward with that same blend of Valais down-to-earthness and French art de vivre that has defined it since 1975 — while writing the next chapter at the same time.