About Me - Sharing The Passion of The High-End of Travel Switzerland

Dear visitor,

Welcome to High-end travel Switzerland and thank You for visiting.

About me: My name is René Murmann and I was blessed to be born in a beautiful mountain valley in the Swiss Alps.

I grew up in the tiny village of Kippel, which is located in the Canton of Valais-Wallis in the south of Switzerland. I guess you can say that I was extremely fortunate to have been born in such a beautiful place.

Growing Up In The Swiss Alps

Most of my childhood was almost like the one from Heidi and Peter. Probably because the valley I grew up called Lötschental was isolated for decades before it opened up for tourism. In the winter however, it was more like growing up in a sports fantasy world. Nevertheless, it was never boring one moment, especially not in the wintertime.

That's when I went skiing with my brothers and other children from the village. At that time back in the 70's, there was not much infrastructure for tourism - only a chair lift and a ski lift that actually my father built. And accommodation possibilities were also limitied.

I still remember that we were cut off for 2 - 3 weeks in a row because of avalanche danger in our valley. That of course was great for us children because that meant no school...

There was almost no crime except for the light bulbs on lanterns or sometimes a window that we broke with rocks or snow balls while we played.

Carnival is in the months of January and February, a time when we were scared running from terrible "Tschäggättus. This very famous tradition can still be seen today in the valley today where I grew up and people from all over the world are coming to take pictures from this unusual event.

During the summer when there was no school, I went with my aunt up to the mountains. Together with my cousin Antoinette, we had to take care of a herd of cows during the summer. My family was never really much into farming, except for the potatoes that we planted every spring. But once in a while my father passed by with English or German guests when they were on their way up to one of the summits of over 4,000 m (13,123 ft).

My father was a mountain guide in the summer and a ski instructor in the winter. My parents were also business people and owned a sports shop. My younger brother and me were well known during our ski careers and competed in some of the World Cup races.

I always had a passion for travel to see the world one day and discover different cultures. At the age of 18, I became interested in helicopters.

Actually, it began much earlier in my childhood, when helicopters started to supply food and relocate guests from our valley while it was cut off from the surrounding world.

We had often no electricity to make bread and to heat the houses because the avalanches damaged the power lines. Old fashioned wood stoves for cooking and heating were the norm at that time. Of course today, some power lines are laid underground and avalanches are released artificially so that it doesn’t cause problems that much anymore.

Discovering The World As A Helicopter Pilot

After studying languages and terminating ski racing, it was off to Canada. Just before my 23rd birthday, I few to Toronto, where the owner of that aviation company personally drove me to Niagara Falls, Ontario.

It was with "Niagara Heli-Air" that I met Superman Star "Christopher Reeve" and flew a trip with him and his girlfriend over Niagara Falls as a freshly certified helicopter pilot. As he told me on board the helicopter, he already possessed his private fixed wing license and was thinking about getting his rotary license too.

My plan was to stay in Canada for 2 to 3 years and than return back to Switzerland. As it turned out, I ended up staying 14 years, mostly in Vancouver, British Columbia. I still have many good memories of the "Great Canadian North", from the different provinces and territories right up to the Arctic.

I remember one Saturday afternoon while flying in Northern Quebec. That same morning, I flew some wealthy Germans to a nice river for salmon fishing. Right after that, it was off with two geologists to study a construction site for a new hydro dam.

For the afternoon, a sight seeing trip with two young beautiful ladies from the province of Quebec was on my agenda. I only knew that they were singers, young rising stars who came to give a concert. Of course I had no idea who they were, because they weren't as famous at that time and just started out on their very successful careers.

Celine Dion even lived in Crans-Montana in Valais-Wallis for a while and represented Switzerland in the Eurovision Song contest in 1988, which she won with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi" (Don't leave without me).

I have traveled and worked in many countries over the years. For a number of years, I worked in the Middle East, and in East Africa. Later I was off to South- and Central America in countries like Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Panama. Speaking different languages like English, French, Spanish, and of course my mother tongue German sure helped a lot to communicate with people.

It was a challenge flying in so many culturally different countries and regions. It wasn't always easy to withstand the temperature changes which reached from -50°C in the Arctic to +43°C in the desert in Yemen, Oman or Saudi Arabia. Regardless of that, I always had fun, no matter if they were arctic-, winter-, desert-, mountain-, or jungle operations.

Switzerland Is Not A Paradise For Everybody

Nevertheless, there was really no flying challenge like in Switzerland. I was at home with my family every evening and not changing between 5-star hotels and camps. I had the best equipment to work with in the Swiss Alps and I met many of the high society and Celebrities living in Switzerland and from abroad. My working place was at the heliport in Zermatt and in the town of Raron which is surrounded by the Swiss Alps and almost like in paradise.

We pilots flew often to Geneva to pick-up VIPs or celebrities and dropped them off to Zermatt or Verbier or some of the other Swiss Ski Resorts. For years, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia almost rented the entire helicopter fleet to get to Zermatt before he passed away in 2005. Many of the celebrities arrive very spontaneously and don’t want to know anybody who they are, as is often the case with Robbie Williams.

Today, I don’t fly helicopters commercially anymore even so I am nowhere near retirement age. Most of my life, I made a living from what I really loved doing, flying helicopters. Together with my wife Yta, we successfully operated a business in communication in Chile, South America, while we were stationed there. However, the bureaucracy was consuming a lot of time and to train the staff was sometimes such a nightmare.

However, I continue to enjoy flying helicopters privately and have a lot of fun working on this website. After doing much research on the Internet and ignoring all the hype out there, I stumbled over over a company and discovered how to set up a web business the right way. In other words, SBI showed me how to develop a website that is not just floating somewhere in cyberspace and never visited. This site - High-end travel Switzerland - is far from being finished, but it is a lot fun writing about it and connecting with people.

Basically, it is a mentoring program and an online video guide that explains you how to use all the tools that are built in like how to write, marketing tools, webhosting or a forum with every imaginable question asked. Click here to see some case studies about real people who built great businesses and all ranked in the top 1 – 3%.

You will quickly discover that it is by far the best program on the net today under the motto: Don’t just build a web site, build a web business! If you have any questions and prefer to talk to a real person, and they will be glad to help you. If you'd prefer, please feel free to contact me, if you'd like the "straight from the horses mouth" version!

It requires quite a bit of work at first like everything else worth doing but besides that, it is easy to use and build that even a child can do it. Now, I realize that most people visiting my website may not need this guidance since they already have successful offline or online businesses. But if you have children that you don’t want to spoil too much or neighbours that are less fortunate, than taking the time a build a site that gets visited is a good investment. It may just be possible and certainly very realistic that your children can finance their own studies, even so they don’t have to in most cases.

By the way, my hobbies are traveling and cultures, Internet, cross-country- and alpine skiing, to which I get sometimes invited with friends from all over the world. I also enjoy sports cars and flying helicopters.

Celebrities appreciate the discretion they receive from the ski resorts, from the luxury Swiss hotels and from the people that provide a service to them. I want to keep a certain discretion to them too, they want to spend their vacations or living in Switzerland without being constantly bothered by people chasing them.

FIRST YOU COME FOR A VACATION, THAN YOU COME TO STAY FOREVER!

See You in Switzerland

Rene Murmann
Author of High-end travel Switzerland

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