My father Jürgen Pfannkuch launched the VIEWS magazine in 1985. Supported by then hotel director Georges Rey, Rey's son Michel and, in particular, the owner Charles Kracht and his son Andrea, he developed the concept for what would be one of the world's first luxury hotel guest magazines. The concept has been updated repeatedly since then and continues to prove its worth even now, over three decades later. A close and almost familiar bond with the Baur au Lac took root and grew over the years. His visionary marketing approaches and communication strategies have had a formative influence on many top Swiss hotels in the same period, during which time the world has changed. The hedonistic years of the 1980s were followed by the upheavals of the 1990s and the nascent digitalization of the new millennium. Again and again, crises have been mastered and successes celebrated. Precious few of the print magazines from »the early days« are still with us. VIEWS, however, is very much alive and well. Together, my father and I discovered our love of Asia and its people – a love he time and again painted in vivid, vibrant colors in his detailed and highly personal travel reports. He never feared the challenge of adventure or even hardship. On the contrary, he went looking for it, ever eager to introduce his readers to undiscovered places. There were weeks-long jeep tours at the foot of Tibet's majestic 8,000-meter peaks, lonely nights on mosquito-infested rivers in the jungles of Borneo, dizzying mountain ascents in the kingdom of Bhutan. Yet he also valued the creature comforts of the luxury hotels he encountered along the way. A profound passion for his subject matter – the places and people he visited – coupled with a heartfelt love of language and obsessively meticulous research brought these experiences to life in his articles. In this edition of VIEWS, he bids us share in his last great adventure: a journey to the tigers of Rajasthan, the Golden Temple of Amritsar and the glaciers of Kashmir. Jürgen Pfannkuch passed away unexpectedly in October 2017. Christina and I would like to thank the Baur au Lac, especially the Kracht family and General Manager Wilhelm Luxem, for the support and sincere compassion they have shown us at this difficult time, and for their unshakeable trust that we will carry my father's life work forward in the future.
VIEWS MAGAZINE
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