The "Caux mountains" had always been used as a pasture for local farmers while the road to the Jaman pass was the shortest route towards the Sarine and Simmental valleys.

In 1875 taking into account the rapid development of tourism on the lakeside where the first hotels had opened in 1837 in Montreux and in 1841 in Territet, Emile Monnier decided to transform his chalet on the Caux Mountain into an inn with a view to welcome the ramblers who started to explore the mountainside.

In 1890 Faucherre bought a stone quarry in the area and built the Caux Grand Hotel in three years, all the needed material being brought to the construction site by mules for lack of other means of transportation.

The first round of works consisted of an additional floor on top of the Grand Hotel, which immediately increased its capacity by 80 beds.

It was difficult job given that there were up to 800 workers on site and that the progress of the construction was under close personal scrutiny from Ami Chessex, who used to walk up from Territet twice a week and did not hesitate to issue orders contradicting Daulte's.

Nevertheless, the building and decoration works were completed in a little over two years, and on 7 July 1902, the Caux Palace Hotel was officially inaugurated in presence of the president of the Canton's executive, Mr Cossy, and of the whole Vaud government.

Visitors included celebrities such as Sacha Guitry, Paul Morand, Romain Rolland, Edgar Wallace, prince Ibn Saud, future king of Saudi Arabia, John D. Rockefeller and the maharajah of Baroda.

His personal room at the south-west angle of the building enjoyed an outstanding view and was furbished in lemon-tree wood furniture, especially designed for the maharajah.

Winter sport facilities included ski and sledge slopes, three ice rinks for skating and a bobsleigh track.

In 1919, war had at last stopped and everything could have returned to normal, but exchange rates were high for the Swiss Francs and the Caux hotels did not completely correspond with the new expectations of the customers.

A fourth financial restructuration was insufficient to mend the situation and the board put the hotels up for sale as the losses piled up.

The Caux Palace Hotel reopened in May 1944 as a detention centre for English and American Air Force pilots escaped from Italian prisoner camps.

It later turned out, however, that the caretaker of the Caux Palace Hotel, Robert Auberson, had been able to hide and store a lot of valuable pieces of furniture, as well as crockery and cutlery.

A graduate in theology and political science from Geneva university, Philippe Mottu had been associated with Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group since the mid-1930s and in 1943 he had had the recurring thought: "If Switzerland is spared by war, our task will be to put at the disposal of Frank Buchman a place where Europeans, torn apart by hatred, suffering and resentment, will be able to meet each other.

During six weeks, a team of international volunteers toiled day and night under the guidance of Swiss engineer Robert Hahnloser and his deputy, Dutch architect Jap de Boer, in order to repair the inside of the house.

In 1946 and 1947 a series of needed transformations were performed in order to adapt the building to its new destiny: conversation of the ball room into a theater, new, larger entrance hall, etc.

The arrival of the Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS) in 1995 as a tenant outside the conference season has allowed the Caux Foundation to do more to maintain and improve the ageing building and its surroundings.

In other instances, there was a need to adapt to the requirements of the teaching activity of SHMS: creation of classrooms and of a new amphitheater, addition of an internet café.

However, from the cultural heritage viewpoint, the most interesting piece of work was the renovation of the great hall and of some historic rooms in 2007 and 2008 with support from Foundation Pro Patria, Loterie Romande and JP Morgan Chase.

[7][8] The challenge was to clean up and to restore the wall and ceiling frescoes of the great hall which had been created by Bernese painter Otto Haberer [fr] in 1902.

[8] These renovation works were led by specialists Olivier Guyot et Julian James and supervised by the “Monuments and Sites” section of the Vaud state, as well as by Swiss architect Eric Jaeger for the Caux Foundation.

[9] Caux, "where the thousand windows of a hotel burned in the late sun", is one of the locations featured in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night (1934).