Life-long hotelier Herbert Laubichler-Pichler, now the managing director at Alma Resort Cam Ranh in Vietnam, reminisces highlights of his hospitality career. Spanning more than 50 years, his career has brought him into contact with the mega famous such as Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Arnie Schwarzenegger, Prince and Michael Jackson.
Text by Herbert Laubichler-Pichler
When I started working at my parents’ guesthouse in my native Austria as a bellboy at 10 years of age, never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the hospitality career that lay ahead and the people it would bring me into contact with.
I always worked during the summer seasons when other kids went on holiday; first greeting the guests, then washing dishes, cleaning the floor and, by the time I was 16, helping with the heavy dishes. We also had a farm and people would ask me: “Herbert, what do you want to be? A hotelier or farmer?” I’d tell them I wanted to be a farmer. My father, however, decided I would be a hotelier and enrolled me into the Kleissman Tourism School Salzburg, where I studied hotel management and became a certified chef.
