The Fleischer family had owned Voss Church since 1752, and in 1864 Fredrik Lyth Ørum Fleischer sold it to the municipality, using the proceeds to open a hotel with his wife Magdalene instead. The timing paid off: a rail line connecting Voss to Bergen opened in 1883, and the resulting flood of visitors forced an expansion. When fire destroyed the original buildings in 1888, the Fleischers hired architect Peter Andreas Blix to rebuild in the ornate Swiss chalet style still recognizable today, with steep spires and carved balconies.
The hotel drew European royalty by the turn of the century, and its corridors still display an original guestbook alongside King Leopold of Belgium’s gold tiepin. German forces occupied the hotel during World War II, though it survived largely undamaged while other buildings in Voss did not. Olaf Fleischer Tønjum, the fourth generation to run the property, oversaw decades of expansion in the postwar period, and the hotel remains under family ownership six generations after its founding.