General Manager
Geneviève Marchand, CHA
Geneviève grew up in Lyon, in a family that ran a twenty-two-seat bistro below their apartment. She learned hospitality the old way — setting tables before school, learning which regular took their coffee black, and understanding that a restaurant is judged in the first ninety seconds. After hotel school in Lausanne she spent eleven years opening properties for other people, and by 2007 she had a notebook of everything she would never do if the house were hers.
In 2008 she and her husband Michael bought a tired 1940s farmhouse on twelve acres of prairie south of the Plaza, with a leaking roof, three good oak trees and a view that sold it on the spot. The plan was a six-room inn. The plan lasted about a year. Eighteen years later Praivelle House is twelve suites, a spa, a dining room and a cellar bar, and Geneviève still walks the corridors at half past six every morning with a coffee in one hand and a maintenance list in the other.
Responsibilities
- Guest experience
- Property and design
- Team culture
- Community partnerships
- Education
- École Hôtelière de Lausanne — BA in Hospitality Management
- Experience
- 24 years in hospitality
- Memberships
- American Hotel & Lodging Association · Select Registry
Keeps a hand-drawn floor plan of the original farmhouse framed behind the front desk, roof leak and all.
Enquire with Marchand
