Marquet, Georges

( words)

Marquet, Joseph Hubert George (Georges) (Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, 19/09/1866-Nice (FR), 03.29.1947)

Belgian Georges Marquet was the owner of many fine hotels and the president of Les Grands Hotels Europeens, which included Le Claridge in Paris, Le Negresco in Nice, Le Palace and L'Astoria in Brussels, Le Chateau D'Ardenne in Belgium, Le Real in Santander, Le Continental Palace in St. Sebastian, among others. His family also owend the Ritz in Madrid from 1926–1978.

He also was manager of the Heliopolis Palace Hotel in Egypt. Like Heliopolis itself, the grandiose Palace Hotel rose out of the desert wastes in 1908-10 when lengthy sojourns in Egypt were a social ritual, and the hotel's register resembled a leaf out of Burke's Peerage.

Marquet was also the president of Minerva Motors at one time and had ties the devleopment of Polo in Europe, Casinos, and Ice Hockey.

On 2 July 1.916 the Racetrack of Lasarte in San Sebastian was inagurated, in presence of their Majesties the Kings of Spain.
Thanks to Georges Marquet, visionary of the epoch, he perceived a great opportunity to inagurate a new racetrack in a place without practically tradition to horse racing turf, but that given the situation in Europe, with the I World War, saw the opportunity of attracting foreign important persons related with the turf, especially from the South of France to participate in Lasarte.