Interview with Jindřich Krausz, Director of Grandhotel Pupp

The first chapter of the story of the future Grandhotel Pupp of the CREDITAS Group began more than three hundred years ago, when a cultural venue called the Saxon Hall was set up on the same site, which was later taken over by the confectioner Pupp who changed directions towards accommodation and gastronomy. His descendants later resumed his efforts and at the end of the nineteenth century transformed the building into its present form. Another significant change occurred seven years ago when the hotel changed hands and Jindřich Krausz became the hotel director. They decided to purge it of the residue of previous years and also to follow a consistently Czech path. "Since 2018, we have been implementing the best possible Czech brands, we try to cooperate with them and offer our guests points of reference to experience the best of Bohemia in our hotel," explains Jindřich Krausz in a large interview in Vogue magazine.

How do you select collaborating brands and creators?
At the beginning we dealt with architectural issues and rebranding, we invited Czech companies to do all this, and we approached Studio Najbrt to tackle visual identity. In the hotel lobby, which we restored after it vanished in the 1990s, we have Moser vases by Jiří Šuhájek. During the renovation, we realized that there is always a clock above the reception desk that tells guests the time. So we approached the Olgoj Chorchoj studio and the Robot brand to create a bespoke wall clock for Pupp - it was made by Moser and Aleš Najbrt designed the numbers for our clock. And, playfully, we used the inscription Karlovy Vary - no Prague, no world capitals. We are unique in that we have two reception desks, and three months ago we spent hours fitting out a clock for the second one - it was designed by Rony Plesl, it's majestic, made of glass and it's forty kilos. Zdeněk Lhotský, who creates fused glass sculpture and is one of the few people in the world who can do it in this form (in 2018 he designed a four-and-a-half-ton sarcophagus for the Danish queen), made us elegant glass entrances to the hotel. It's a detail that nobody really notices, but there's a lot of work behind it. We are also working with another Czech watchmaker, Dalibor Farný, who has fitted the presidential and imperial suites with custom-made digital watches.

We've also changed the water brand throughout the hotel and now there's Mattoni, with the bottles designed by Pininfarina. When we renovated the Parkside section last year, we needed a central element for the large Marble Hall space - a large chandelier. In the more classical Riverside section is a chandelier that weighs eight hundred pounds and has been there for a hundred years. But since Parkside has a more modern design, we approached the owner of Preciosa Lighting, Mrs. Karlová, to create a unique custom chandelier. Our specification was a modern conception of crystal. The result is four hundred kilos and is suspended from a single anchor point from the glass roof.

How does this approach translate into beauty care and spa offerings?
We wanted domestic cosmetics in the rooms - nothing that they sell everywhere. That's why we've had a project for three quarters of a year with high quality Czech cosmetics Klara Rott, which we have implemented in the hotel - it's not that easy considering our size. In the spa we also use Czech brands Nobilis Tilia, the first bio-cosmetics in the Czech Republic, and Cannor from Pilsen. And since we also have a foreign clientele, we offer one foreign alternative.

The hotel has its own café. Does it also cherish tradition?
When I came to Pupp, the gastronomy here was a would-be French pastry, which is not at all in line with what the confectioner Pupp was offering at his time. We hired a great pastry chef who makes classic Czech pastries, and now people are queuing outside the café. And we also have a unique cake - the Pupp cake according to the original recipe, which was invented here and has been on offer for decades. It's our best-selling item. We serve classic Viennese coffee because the family behind the Julius Meinl brand originally comes from Kraslice in Karlovy Vary and had a shop on the corner of Pupp during the First Republic. We are a flagship.

There are several restaurants in the hotel. What makes each of them different?
For chef Ondřej Koráb at Grandrestaurant, the instruction is to offer modern Czech cuisine in a fine-dining style, using as many local suppliers as possible. That sounds easy, but in this big hotel it's a bit process-intensive. Nevertheless, he surprised and won the Czech Republic's Chef of the Year last year and in a few weeks he is going to Italy to represent the Czech Republic and our hotel at the European Championships. The latest one is a steakhouse, Meat & Bone. Since 2023 we have been renting the Quissisana Hotel, which is across the Teplá River. The three brothers who built the hotel at the end of the nineteenth century were Anton, Julius and Heinrich - and it was Anton who built the Quissisana for his wife Maria Mattoni in 1888. Since the 1990s, however, the hotel has not belonged to Pupp. We managed to lease it and after two years we took it over completely and use it as a dependence. And we've built a restaurant there that's contra - something else. We were inspired by the Savoy Hotel in London, where they have a grill concept run by Gordon Ramsay. We bought one of the top-class charcoal grills from Spain and the menu is based on the best ingredients from around the world - the best oysters, shrimp, fish. And steak meat of the highest quality - black angus, wagyu.

We shouldn't forget Becher's Bar, which has also undergone some transformation.
We turned it into a fine-dining bar - guests get a story with every drink and we change the menu once every six months. Sometimes it is based on emotions, sometimes on first memories, sometimes on colours. We work with Becherovka as the most famous local liqueur. And I can disclose that there is a new space within Becher's Bar, which we will be opening on 13 April on the anniversary of the publication of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. Two James Bond movies have already been made based on that book, with Daniel Craig starring for the first time in the second movie which was partly filmed at the Pupp Hotel. The space will have a secret entrance and a speakeasy concept, i.e. a secret room that you don't normally know exists when you arrive at the bar. It will be called Splendid because Pupp was renamed the Splendid Hotel in Montenegro in the Bond movie, and also because the most expensive Moser collection produced for the British Royal Court is called Splendid. The bar will have thirty-five seats and a completely different menu based on Bond. And there will be some of the most expensive lamps in the Czech Republic. As Bond sipped martini cocktails from V-shaped cocktails, Moser made eighty of these glasses to the design of the architects who used them to create the lighting for the space.

Karlovy Vary is intrinsically linked to the film festival, but it is certainly not the only cultural event.
This was our earliest beginnings. When the Saxon Hall was founded in 1701, the first service Pupp offered was not accommodation or gastronomy, which came later, but culture - people came here to amuse themselves. We have renewed this cultural tradition, and we have a large, beautiful ceremonial hall. When I joined six years ago, we didn't do anything in our own production, but now we have an event every month. We already have a list of those events for this year on the web. The dramaturgy is different each time. Five years ago we started inviting Michelin chefs, each time from a different country - always in February and March. We started with Olda Sahajdák as a representative of Czech cuisine, then we had chefs from England, Italy and the Netherlands. And this year we invited three-star Michelin chef Viki Geunes from the Belgian restaurant Zilte and he accepted - he will be cooking here on 28 February and 1 March. These are two unique evenings for a maximum of fifty people. Virtuoso Night will take place on 12 April. We are collaborating with the National Theatre Ballet for Ballet Night, which will be held on 25 October. With the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra we are organising The Sound of Hollywood on 15 March, when the greatest film hits will be played in the hall. There was a Cabaret Night in December to lighten things up a bit.

Always in May we have a Food Fest, when the season starts - we invite the ten best restaurants from the country and it takes place in front of the Pupp Hotel. Six years ago I also found out that there were no wine festivals in Vary, so we started hosting them, always inviting the best Moravian winemakers. Not the mainstream ones you can see everywhere but the unique ones - they come to our hotel. They are selected by one of the best sommeliers in the Czech Republic and ten such winemakers are here for the last weekend in August.

One of the main things for us is that an event like this takes place on a Saturday - so that when a guest arrives on Friday for the weekend, they can experience a special event on Saturday and leave in peace on Sunday. We hold most of them in the summer, which came about during the covid when there was no film festival in 2020, but the restrictions at the time made it possible to hold events for up to 100 people. So we used the same technology in our hall - a big screen, a projector - only we arranged the sessions in a cabaret style and made the project Pupp Cinema Café. We've been going on for five years now, we just don't show art movies like there are at the festival - we don't want to compete - but we always take the most successful movies of the past year, buy the rights and show them over the summer on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays so that most of the guests who are staying with us over the summer can make it to the cinema café. The advantage is that the bar is open all the time, so you can buy drinks and get more comfortable watching the movie.

How can guests spend time in the wider surroundings of Karlovy Vary?
The advantage of Karlovy Vary is that it's in a valley - it's like Monaco and in the evening when the city lights up, it's amazing. You can dress smartly and take a stroll along the colonnade. On the other hand, it's absolutely great to take your outdoor gear and turn right after Pupp and run up to the lookout and walk the spa woods and trails. I go there myself and it's surreal. So whether you’re in the mood for sporty or elegant, you can be both here and you don't have to go anywhere for it, you can enjoy both experiences right away. Tonight I'm heading for night skiing, because from Pupp it's half an hour to the slope on Klínovec.

We also have a ski storage room in the hotel and we provide related services to our guests, so they do not have to wait in line for ski passes and the like, we can also arrange shuttle service. I like biking in summer - Roman Kreuziger and I have ridden various routes in the area and you can enjoy some beautiful rides there. Since the terrain is hilly, we have arranged to work with Specialized because they have the best electric bikes that our guests can rent. And they can maybe go to Loket along the Teplá river - I go there with some of my guests myself, even with children in a child seat. Loket is unique among fortified castles and chateaus, with its fortifications and the town preserved from the old days. Another unique experience, about twenty minutes by car from the hotel, is the castle and chateau Bečov nad Teplou, where you can find the second most important golden relic in the Czech Republic after the Crown Jewels, the Reliquary of St. Maurus. It was only discovered in the 1980s by sheer luck. You can see it every day during the season, you don't have to wait for a special display occasion. And since Vary is a city of crystal and porcelain, I would really recommend visiting the production factory in Moser and the museum there, it's really beautiful.

The interview was published in Vogue magazine. Author: Ondřej Lipár.