He is 50 years old, he is Dutch and he has a broad professional background in the international hospitality industry. Apart from his native Dutch, he is fluent in English, French and German. He is the new General Manager of Royal Mougins Golf Club. His name is Jurgen Wondergem. He lives in Valbonne together with his wife Ilona and their two dogs.
After his three years of managing Royal Mougins, John Kouwenberg has decided to spend his time on the golf course and not just looking at it from a distance. Officially, he handed over his responsibilities to Jurgen Wondergem on January 16, who then became General Manager of all the departments within Royal Mougins, including the hotel, the golf course and the restaurant.
Jurgen Wondergem comes well-prepared to Royal Mougins. After having graduated from a hotel school in Holland, he worked at the Hilton in New York, before moving on to Kansas City to assist at the opening of a major hotel. In 1986, Jurgen Wondergem and a partner bought a restaurant in San Fransisco, which they sold after the earthquake in 1989. Next step was the running of a restaurant in sunny Palm Springs, California, but when he was offered a management position at the Marketing Board of Tourism in Holland, he and his wife decided it was time to leave the US.
It is said that once you get the taste of working in the hotel business, you never want to do anything else. So, when the opportunity came to open a luxury resort in Théoule-sur-Mer, close to Cannes, Jurgen Wondergem did not hesitate. “It was in the early nineties,” he remembers, “and as my wife has the same hotel background as me, we couldn’t resist. We have always worked together, and we ended up having three wonderful years on the Côte d’Azur.”
The next stop for the Wondergem couple was a 27-room, Relais & Châteaux hotel in Holland, the smallest five star hotel in the country. This was followed by the opening of another Dutch five star hotel, after which the couple took over the management of a Belgian member of the Relais & Châteaux chain, the superb Hostellerie La Butte aux Bois, a 40-room manor house in Lanaken close to Maastricht.
The last three years before arriving at Royal Mougins, Jurgen Wondergem has worked as General Manager of Le Kempferhof in Alsace, a well established golf club with a course ranking among the 1000 best courses in the world by the Guide Rolex 2011. There are many similarities between Le Kempferhof and Royal Mougins. First of all, both courses were designed by Robert von Hagge, both are private golf clubs with approximately the same number of members, and both have a small, luxury hotel on site. “Apart from knowing Royal Mougins by name, I had no prior knowledge of the Club before I came for my first interview,” Jurgen Wondergem tells us. “This may be due to the fact that although I am a golfer myself I didn’t get to play around a lot – during my three years at Kempferhof, I only played the course once... I am quite sure that I will not have more time to play here at Royal Mougins. Instead ,I will use every opportunity to listen to what the Members have to say about their Club and learning the ropes. Obviously, I shall also rely on the advice of John Kouwenberg, Joost Rieter and the other heads of department. Through listening to and learning from the Members, guests and the staff, I will do everything needed in order to continue the positive trend the Club has experienced during the last couple of years – economically as well as socially.”
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