WELCOME, MR BOND

As snow blankets the Alps, glitterati from around the world will flock to Gstaad and its Palace Hotel, this year as every other. But what is the enduring appeal of the 'palace on the hill' above the fairytale Swiss resort to the world's old and new money?

We are living at a time of unprecedented development of choice for those who wish to travel. The democratisation of travel afforded by the coming of the jet era in the 1950s, and the subsequent package holiday boom, is widely recognised. But an equal, or perhaps greater, democratisation has happened much more recently. The technology of jet travel hasn't changed much since the 1980s - the Airbus A321 you're flying on tomorrow won't get to your destination any faster than the Boeing 737 your predecessors flew on in 1986. But people are flying, for leisure, to places that weren't even conceivable - were mere unknown dots on a map - 25 years ago.

For a Briton, the idea of going to Thailand or Mozambique on holiday a quarter of a century ago was so oblique as to be almost preposterous. Yet now they are mainstream destinations: Thailand receives 20 million tourists a year. Countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina and Chile are on the mainstream tourist track: so much so that they are losing their 'bragging rights' to even newer nations on the tourist map (for which read Indonesia, French Guiana, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Libya...).

This change has been wrought by a number of reasons. Geopolitics means many more countries are considered safe and acceptable to travel in: all the 'mainstream' countries listed in the last paragraph were governed by unsavoury authoritarian regimes back then, all are, to a greater or lesser extent, democratic now. The internet means that you can book a transfer from Phnom Penh to Hanoi, and check the layout of hotel rooms there, from your sofa in Knightsbridge. And travel is cheaper: even if you fly everywhere on British Airways or Singapore Airlines, your ticket costs a fraction of what it would have done because of competition from low-cost airlines.

So, with the world at our fingertips and a long weekend in Patagonia or Namibia a real possibility for a London-dweller, where does that leave the world we used to live in, where a glamorous holiday involved blasting the Bentley down a French highway to the Alps or the Cote d'Azur?

Perhaps surprisingly, in many ways that old world is doing very well indeed, thank you. Of course, Europe has its share of former holiday glories fallen on hard times, as a visit to a Victorianera resort like Vichy would demonstrate. But these seem predominantly to be victims of the original era of jet planes and mass travel. Resorts and destinations that were thriving in the smaller world of the 1980s seem all to be thriving now. You'd note this from a stroll around Porto Cervo or Ramatuelle in the summer months, when the world's uberwealthy are keener than ever to play. And you can also go and observe this phenomenon anytime in the next few months, when the skiing jet set, who now have points as far as Hokkaido and Jackson Hole within relatively easy reach, are still flocking to the resorts that were great names a quarter of a century and more ago.

My favourite piece of evidence for this comes from Switzerland, for a century the home of the glamorous winter (and summer) holiday. Despite the plethora of big-name international luxury hotels frequented by high net worths coming to visit their bank accounts in its two global financial centres, Zurich and Geneva, the two hotels with the highest room rates in Switzerland are in mountain resorts: Badrutt's in St Moritz and the Palace hotel in Gstaad.

The Gstaad Palace, in particular, has been a legend for decades. Drop in this winter and you will find yourself in a real-life James Bond film set. A horse and carriage shuttles fur-clad guests, looking too beautiful and immaculate to actually ski, to predinner drinks in the village below. A procession of Ferrari FFs, Bentley Continentals, Porsche Cayennes, Mercedes AMG G-Wagens and other four-wheel drives queue into the car park in the evenings, to drop their occupants off at the GreenGo nightclub in the hotel, where the women look like Bond femmes fatales and the men like Bond himself - or his nemesis. Clattering off all the diamonds and sapphire-encrusted watches is a Babel of tongues of the contemporary wealthy: Russian, English (in various accents), German, Mandarin Chinese, and a spot of old-money Italian and French. Come at Christmas, New Year or in other holidays, and the word 'playground' acquires another meaning: if you want to participate in a children's fashion show of Bonpoint, Baby Dior and mini-Marc Jacobs, this is where to bring the family.

Moreover this is not a winter-only hotel: you're just as likely to find the reception populated by members of the Forbes rich list in July and August, when Gstaad hosts the Hublot polo championship, Open tennis championship and Menhuin violin festival.

I was intrigued as to how the Palace kept its place at the pinnacle of European hotels in an era when its clientele really could go anywhere, so I visited in summertime. Gstaad has been frequented by the likes of the Shah of Iran, David Niven, Liz Taylor, Yehudi Menhuin, King Juan Carlos of Spain, and, most notably, Babar the King of the Elephants, (in Laurent de Brunhoff ’s Barbar Goes Skiing), over the decades, many of them staying in summer as well as winter, so I felt in good company.

The hotel sits like a pink palace on a small forested hill above the village, with views in every direction: on two sides, lush Alpine meadows, dotted with church spires, barns and cows, and on the other two sides, dramatic, forested mountainsides rising to high peaks, snow-covered even in summer. From the turret in my living room, I had a Google Earth-style view of the village, the trees and the valleys.

Going down to dinner, along a corridor lined by display cabinets containing some of the world's most expensive watches (all for sale) I discovered one reason for the hotel's enduring appeal: the staff. The privately-owned Palace doesn't go in for slick six-star OTT service like an international chain. Instead, the staff are calm, measured, quite formal and utterly professional. I watched regular guests being looked after and guided as if they were old friends. There was no false bonhomie or palliness: guests are Sir and Madam, chairs are pulled out and pushed in, napkins rearranged, needs anticipated. When I asked for my unfinished bottle of wine to be taken up to my room as I rose from dinner, it got there before I did. Only to be expected perhaps in a hotel that is at the pinnacle of the country that is at the pinnacle of old-world hotel hospitality.

But old-world service is not enough: the Palace's owner, Andrea Scherz, has invested heavily in an extensive pool and spa area hewn from the solid rock underneath the hotel, with an accompanying series of indoor and outdoor hydrotherapy pools and a relaxation area with wraparound views of the mountains. There are tournament-quality clay tennis courts, and on them each morning at eight was a group of old pros who looked familiar enough to keep me guessing whether they were famous players from the 1960s; not to mention an Olympic-sized outdoor pool.

Many of these elements are available in other luxury hotels these days, but the Palace's skill is to weave them together in a way that attracts young and old, the nouveaus and the aristos. It does have a great advantage in its location in one of the world's most celebrated resorts, but more than any other ski hotel anywhere else, the Palace is actually responsible for making Gstaad what it is.

I cornered Mr Scherz one evening for a drink and asked him about this. "Gstaad is victim of its own success," he told me. "Real estate prices have soared to Monte Carlo and London levels. It is getting very difficult to find a chalet in Gstaad and for a good one, you need to have very deep pockets." His main concern is that the new centimillionaires will find it hard to get tables at his restaurants in peak season. As to the reasons behind the enduring success of the Palace - without which Gstaad would just be a picture-postcard Alpine village like many others in Switzerland - he was appealingly modest.

The Palace faces competition: a new five-star hotel, the Alpina, opens at the other side of the same hill, this winter. It will no doubt mop up the overspill and those seeking another type of luxury. And every super-lodge opening in the mountains from Japan to Utah must appeal to the Palace's guests too. But, like just a few other grande dame European hotels - the Splendido in Portofino and the Marbella Club spring to mind - the Palace defines its destination, and, more so, is as much a defining point for the world's wealthy at this point in time as it was 25 and 50 years ago.

palace.ch