Berlin, June 2023 – On 15th May 2023 Ulrich Schwer took over the management of Rocco Forte’s Hotel de Rome in Berlin. He succeeds Gordon Debus, who has successfully managed the hotel since August 2017 and who has made the decision to leave in order to pursue new professional challenges.
In taking up this role as General Manager of the Hotel de Rome, Ulrich Schwer returns to the city where he began his distinguished career in hospitality more than 20 years ago, as an apprentice at the Hotel Adlon.
Various positions abroad working for Fairmont Hotels – first at The Savoy in London, then at The Plaza in New York and the Scottsdale Princess in Arizona, with a stopover at Belmond’s La Samanna hotel on the Caribbean island of St. Martin – paved his way for an international career in the hotel industry.
In 2013, Ulrich Schwer returned to his home country of Germany, where he first worked at the Althoff Seehotel Überfahrt and then moved to the Althoff Hotel am Schlossgarten in Stuttgart as Managing Director.
He managed the Stuttgart hotel for almost 10 years before it closed for extensive renovations in 2022. Since then he has worked as a consultant, and in February of this year he became Interim General Manager of the new Hotel Telegraphenamt in Berlin.
With the appointment of Ulrich Schwer as the new General Manager of Hotel de Rome, Rocco Forte is placing the future direction of the Berlin hotel in the hands of a manager with international experience in the luxury hotel industry, who for two years in a row – 2021 and 2022 – has been recognised as one of the top 50 hoteliers in Germany by the Aral Schlemmer Atlas.
On the subject of his new role in Berlin Ulrich Schwer says: “I am hugely delighted to be able to work once again for a 5* luxury hotel group like Rocco Forte, whose hotels are characterised by their individual charm and their particularly relaxed atmosphere. It is a great pleasure and honour for me to be able to use my experience and expertise, in the city where it all began, to manage such a wonderful hotel in such a prominent location as the Hotel de Rome on Bebelplatz, and to keep working with the team here to ensure its future success.”
