Reto Wittwer, president and CEO of Kempinski Hotels since 1995, has retired from this role and has handed the appointment over to his successor, Alejandro Bernabé.
Wittwer is one of the hospitality industry’s longest-serving CEOs. In the nearly 20 years since he was appointed at Kempinski, Wittwer focused the group’s offering on luxury hotel management services and grown the portfolio from 21 hotels to the 73 under operation today, with an additional 35 under construction or final development. He credits the success of this strategy to the group’s shareholders, who have focused on long-term growth and returns.
Bernabé is a graduate of the Hotel Institute Montreux in Switzerland and has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Massachusetts, as well as an MBA from Reims Management School in France. Bernabé started his career in F&B, working in Switzerland, South Africa, France, and Sri Lanka, before joining Kempinski in 1998 as pre-opening F&B manager at the Kempinski Hotel Plaza in Jakarta. Bernabé was made responsible for the group’s operations and development efforts in Southeast Asia in 2013.
