The Cultured Traveller - Fourth Anniversary Edition, September-November 2018 Issue 23

traveller these days. There are just so many variables in hospitality that it’s hard to pinpoint what it is that makes a hotel truly great. Yet, whilst Hotel Grande Bretagne embodies most if not all of these qualities, it is something else that makes it one of the world’s great hotels: the people who work there.

After just a few hours as a guest at Grande Bretagne, which has stood proudly overlooking Syntagma Square in the epicentre of Athens for more than 150 years, I felt utterly bathed in a hospitality glow, blissfully happy and totally at ease in my imposing neo-classical surroundings. But this is not a new feeling for me when visiting the Hellenic hospitality industry’s grande dame - a city landmark which has been in the middle of the nation’s history for the entire 20th-century. I have felt the same, time after time at Grande Bretagne, ► Sep-Nov 2018 The Cultured Traveller 183