From Sri Lanka to Uganda, from Jamaica to China, Hermann Dorner's fifty-year career in hotel management took him all over the world. Lacking the funds to attend any kind of hotel school, he began as a cook in Switzerland in 1943 and worked his way up the ladder through positions in his own country, also taking jobs in England and the Channel Islands, before taking up his first management post in a riverside hotel in Staines. Dorner's story is full of insight into the business and anecdotes about the peoples and customs of the countries that he lived and worked in. Born in Switzerland, Hermann Jakob Dorner started his career at the age of sixteen as an apprentice cook and to further his career obtained all the necessary experience in the various sections of the hotel business. He advanced to the high position of General Manager with worldwide knowledge of hotels.