He fell in love with Luhačovice like a Moravian dude

The saga of four generations of the Sehnal family has been firmly linked to the Palace Hotel since 1935, when Jaroslav's father, the visionary hotelier Adolf Sehnal, found the courage to take a summer lease on the then not-so-prosperous Palace Hotel to bring bustle, rhythm and new life back to it. "And the hotel! The 250 rooms, restaurants, entertainment rooms and other facilities were a mess, but it was breathtaking, and I fell in love with Luhačovice like a Moravian dude, so I wanted to manage everything and bring laughter, dancing, music, the smell of good food and the colour of great wines into the mess," Adolf Sehnal wrote in his memoirs of his first encounter with the hotel. In his memoirs, he also writes that if his predecessors failed, hopefully he will succeed. And it did. Even on the foundations he laid here, the largest flagship of the Luhačovice spa industry has grown today.

"Hotelkeeping was in my daddy's blood - I was even born in room number eight of the Hotel Černý lev in Ivančice, which he ran all year round. From 1935 onwards, we stayed in Luhačovice in the summer, where my dad rented the Palace every year," says Jaroslav and continues. "Dear Sehnálk", they wrote to him, and Werich even tells about their meeting in a book called Potlach."

It was precisely because Adolf Sehnal was a true visionary for his time and a great manager who traveled abroad to gain experience to bring the best to his hotels that he managed to restore the hotel's operations over time, thanks in part to advertising. "However, I did not carry it out on as large a scale as my predecessors. Yes, I was in favour of first-class guests, but I had to reckon with the fact that our country did not have so many, so letters were written, leaflets were sent, care was taken to keep the kitchen first-class, the service and cleanliness," he writes in his memoirs. In addition, he also dealt with any complaints from guests and staff problems in a pragmatic manner, so it is not surprising that, thanks to all this, the hotel gradually came to be spoken of mainly in positive terms.

"But then came the war and the German occupation. In 1939 we moved to Ostrava in Moravia, where my father started a café and another hotel and continued his business. He still finished the 1941 season in Luhačovice, but then he never went there again," Mr. Jaroslav said.

Although the Sehnal family has not yet followed up on this family history, it is because of their interest in it that they can tell this story so that it does not become a missing chapter in Luhačovice's history. And who knows how it will continue, since his great-grandson Jakub is following in his footsteps, albeit geographically different, and plans to follow the same route as his great-grandfather in his travels to discover the latest in the world of modern hotel and gastronomy...

Categories: Company, History, Luhačovice, Palace