Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is a prestigious and world-class thermal resort. A place to make you better. As it says on the roof, “Everything’s going to be alright,” and when you’re staying, you certainly feel this warmth and positivity.
We visited the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz as part of a grand tour around this part of Switzerland. The Grand Hotel Des Bains Kempinski St. Moritz was our first stop. We then stayed at and reviewed the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz, followed by Grand Hotel Kronenhof in Pontresina before heading back down the mountains, taking a famous and picturesque Swiss train journey to the spa resort of Grand Resort Bad Ragaz.
Location
Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is set in the famous spa town of Bad Ragaz and around a 5-minute shuttle from the station, which has brilliant connections to just about anywhere in Switzerland, including a direct train service to Zurich’s main station, so it is easy to get to if you fly into Zurich airport for a weekend break, or you could combine a stay here with one of the best luxury hotels in Zurich like the Park Hyatt Zurich or the Widder in Zurich.
If you book any of these three hotels with our luxury travel concierge you can enjoy some wonderful free benefits including free breakfasts, resort credit, room upgrades and more.
The hotel offers complimentary pickups from the train station, and our driver couldn’t have been more welcoming and enthusiastic about picking us up. He wasn’t waiting in the car park as you might expect. He had bounded right up onto the platform to greet us off the train. This level of enthusiasm and service continued throughout our stay, with every member of the hotel staff trying to make your stay superb.
Style & Character
The hotel is located in a beautiful park that sits next to the pine-clad walls of a picturesque Swiss valley. The park is beautifully manicured and is packed with charismatic and uplifting artwork. This park actually houses Europe’s largest open-air sculpture exhibition. The art is a tiny bit nuts with large middle-aged ladies going paddling through strategically placed plant displays, random heads plonked on well-groomed lawns, and other crazy pieces, but this uplifting mix of Swiss modern sculpture and humor must be designed to bring joy, and it makes a walk around the park such fun.
The Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is set in a very grand building indeed. You are welcomed into an enormous marble-clad foyer with reception desks in the middle, a concierge desk to one side, and the stylish restaurant Verve by Sven to the other.
In front of you is a sweeping staircase with an ornate modern teardrop chandelier draped from the ceiling, and behind the staircase is a stylish bar with a glass fireplace and a terrace beyond where you can enjoy drinks alfresco on comfy sofas.
Marble hallways grace extravagant stairwells throughout the hotel, and these vast hallways seem to go on for miles, joining the various bits of the hotel to the Spa, gym, restaurants, and so forth.
The Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is housed in such a gigantic building that it’s possible to get quite disorientated and lost on the ground floor. This is largely because there are actually four interconnecting hotels on site, each offering luxury rooms and access to the rejuvenating spa waters of Bad Ragaz.
This glamorous hotel attracts many Middle Eastern clients along with Swiss families, and apparently, tennis player Roger Federer is a regular guest here, too. Most visitors come to enjoy the health benefits of the warm spa waters and the onsite medical clinic, which has around 70 specialists.
Rooms
Upstairs, the corridors are easier to navigate and lead to numerous large rooms overlooking the front driveway and the extensive and well-kept park beyond. Our room has a small but perfect balcony, lovely large windows overlooking the front of the building, and incredible beds. My family particularly loved the beds not only because they offered a fabulous night’s sleep but also because they were electric and propped you up or lowered you down into a sleeping position.
Our bathroom was large and sophisticated, with black marble work surfaces and walls, a big tub, and a separate shower room with sparkly golden flooring. The toilet cubicle within the bathroom also had the same sparkly golden flooring and some complicated buttons.
Service & Facilities
I can’t think of a hotel with more facilities than Grand Resort Bad Ragaz AG. There are so many it is slightly overwhelming.
The Spa here is a Narnia of pools. The main child-free mineral-enriched spa pool is gorgeously warm and palatial, with pillars encircling this relaxing pool. There is a relatively shallow lap pool behind this pool, and beyond these two pools, there are two kids’ pools hidden in a cave-like area with a particularly good infant play area complete with a little ones slide. There’s a relaxation walkway that feels like a cave with waterfalls and rock pools. I was admiring these from a distance before noticing another guest walking through the pools and under the waterfall. This bit is very much an immersive experience, and it adjoins the naked area. Finally, there is a gorgeous outdoor pool surrounded by loungers that offers a great place to relax if you’re blessed with good weather.
Beyond the pools, you can walk around the park, play on the two golf courses, or in the Casino, shop in the luxury mall that can be found above the kids spa pool, or play tennis. The main challenge here is to choose what to do.
Food & Drink
The restaurant choice is outstanding and well deserved. The hotel houses seven restaurants, 6 Michelin stars & a green star, which is the most of any hotel in Europe under one roof. We tried the one-star Verve by Sven, which was a lovely experience and is pictured above, and the two-star IGNIV by Andreas Caminada which is a sharing experience and completely blew our mind.
In fact, I have to rave about the latter as it alone justifies a trip to Grand Resort Bad Ragaz. For a start, the setting is completely unique and unlike the rest of the hotel, which is a mass of wide marble palatial corridors and communal areas. Step behind the gold door of IGNIV, and it feels like you’ve traveled up the mountain and back in time to a historic wine cellar or vault. The setting has arched ceilings and lots of nooks and crannies, and the scent of log fire fills the room with a mountain ambiance. Interestingly, the smoke is not from a fireplace. It actually originates from one of their exquisite smokey dishes. Little glass-pained windows high in the walls let in a small amount of light, but the room is dark and moody, with paintings on the walls to match the rustic yet modern atmosphere.
The staff here could not have been more welcoming, even though we were fine dining with a teenager. We were given a lovely seat in the corner, and great care was taken to include our son, even though he was not sharing most of the dishes with us.
And of course, the food, which is why you come to this restaurant, was out of this world. There were so many tiny dishes, each gifting such incredible flavors, many of which seemed to explode in your mouth.
It’s hard to pick a favorite dish as it was all so unusual, clever, and tasty. The pork-tasting dish from apple-fed pigs was amazing, the langoustine was so full of flavor, the vanilla souffle was the best we’d ever eaten (other chefs would hang their heads in shame if they tried this amazing souffle), and I loved the strawberry dessert which tasted more potently of strawberry than strawberries themselves. Our menu was accompanied by a non-alcoholic drinks experience that was equally taste-defying. We tried a Bloody Mary drink that was completely clear but tasted powerfully of tomato, along with several other weird and wonderful concoctions. My favorite was a fizzy herbal drink, which I could have drunk all night. They were also happy to deliver an excellent kids’ menu.
Conclusion
Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is an incredible hotel. It’s gargantuan in size, and I’ve never been to a hotel with so many facilities. If you want to rejuvenate, this hotel offers one of the best spas in the world. If you want to golf, tennis, or walk, this hotel is hard to beat. The highlight for us was IGNIV by Andreas Caminada (2-star sharing experience), delivering some of the finest and most interesting dishes we have ever tasted.
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