Luxury Hoteliers Magazine 2nd Quarter 2016 | Page 78

INDUSTRY INTROSPECTIVE By Alexandra Walterspiel I literally was born into this business! My father, the son of a hotelier himself, was the General Manager at the InterContinental in Frankfurt when I arrived in this world, and as was very common in 78 ILHA those days, we lived in an apartment on property. I spent the first 11 years of my life living in a hotel, first in Frankfurt and then at the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg. I learnt how to swim in a hotel pool, how to ride a bike in a hotel corridor and I loved it. I was best friends with the laundry attendants, loved visiting with the seamstress who had a little cubbyhole of a work area under the roof and I would “help” the bell staff move bags around when I was allowed to. My favorite place to go visit was the Patisserie,