Distinctions:
Swiss Historic Hotels
Historic Hôtel of Europe
Typically Swiss Hotels
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History
 In 2009, the Hotel Masson celebrated its 180 years. Almost two centuries of history of the hotel business in Montreux, of the first years of tourism, of the Belle Époque, of the Roaring Twenties and of times of crisis, to finally come to an era of authenticity.
The Masson is the story of two hotel-keeping women: Elise, who built up the Pension Masson in the middle of the 19th century, and Anne-Marie, who is presently running the Hotel Masson.
In 1985, Anne-Marie and Philippe Sèvegrand took over the hotel from her parents René and Jeanne Jaquier. The young couple met at the Lausanne Hotel School, had two daughters and... three Lhassa Apso of contest!
 From the parents’ time, they inherited an untouched establishment, both in its settings and in its equipment, for the Jaquier fortunately never had enough money to change the furniture, which has therefore remained the same for more than 100 years! Hardly enough to have the first bathrooms and the telephone installed.
When the Jaquier bought the small hotel in 1947, the former owner, Charles Baer, had wanted to take a picture of the young Anne-Marie standing in front of the famous balcony wisteria. He intended to keep a memory of the hotel he had succeeded in protecting from the war and the years of trouble that preceded it, since he had bought it in 1930.
 The Masson owes its unchanged appearance to Charles Baer, for the Baer family did not have enough money to make it look “modern” either... As a matter of fact, it was a lack of financial means that saved the Hotel Masson!
In the history of the little, traditional, family-run hotel, there was nevertheless a slightly mysterious interlude with Marthe Spalinger, who only managed it for five years.
She had bought the inn from Jean Baptiste Genelin in 1925. We know almost nothing about him, except that he must have been one of Charles-Albert Rolli’s (Elise Masson’s husband) last descendants, or one of her nephews’...
 Along with some twenty distant cousins, Jean Baptiste Genelin had inherited one of the 24 shares of the hotel and in 1913 he bought all these scattered shares back. Unfortunately for him, World War I was impending and sent the hotel business into the trenches of an unprecedented crisis. For 12 years, he nevertheless unfailingly ran the Hotel Pension that Charles Albert Rolli, Elise Masson’s husband, had left one day in 1906, finally rejoining the woman he had assisted for more than 25 years..
 When admiring the 1875 wrought-iron balcony and its twisting wisteria, one should remember Elise Masson, the very first manager of the Masson, who got married in July 1873, at the age of 54, to her wine waiter, a man from Berne she had hired two seasons earlier so that he could attend to the well-supplied cellar of a wine maker’s daughter who had become a hotel-keeper.
One should admire this woman who was adventurous enough, when her father passed on his wine-making house to her, to turn it into a pension for tourists; who never stopped improving the comfort of her hotel in order to keep her prestigious guests satisfied: the French historian Jules Michelet in 1861, but also the Russian, English or German aristocracy staying in the Montreux region.
 And one should thank Jean-François Masson, Elise’s father, who along with his wife decided, in 1855, while he was still alive, to bequeath his property to their two children, wishing to avoid “the trouble of managing, which has become tiring to them” (sic)!
 This is how the magnificent house of a Vaudois wine-maker, built in 1829 close beside the Chillon Castle, became a magnificent historical hotel, part of the regional heritage.
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