Noordwijk’s economy depended entirely on fishing when Mayor Pické decided in 1880 that the town’s high dunes and North Sea coastline had greater potential as a seaside resort, and he personally broke ground on the highest point of the dunes in 1883. The finished hotel opened in 1885, and textile merchant Heinrich Tappenbeck bought it two years later, marketing aggressively toward wealthy German and Dutch travelers reachable by the new steam tram line. Members of the Dutch House of Orange and the Belgian royal family became regular guests, along with novelist Thomas Mann.
During the Second World War, occupying German forces requisitioned the hotel to house SS officers overseeing the Atlantic Wall defenses being built along the coast. A 1960s sale nearly ended the hotel’s run entirely, when a developer bought the property intending to demolish it; the Noordwijk city council blocked the plan, and the current owning family acquired it instead. A catastrophic fire during a January 1990 storm destroyed much of the building, leading to the reconstruction that created its present two-wing layout.