The well-established hotel owner Gabriel Monnet inaugurated the hotel on May 3, 1842. He used to have an inn on the Rue du Simplon in the heart of town and simply transferred the inn's name to his new hotel, now on the water's edge. Building waterfront hotels to substitute for hotels in the city's heart was all the rage during this period: several hotels in Geneva had done it (for instance, the Couronne in 1836 and the Ecu de Geneve in 1841), as well as in Luzern (the Schwanen in 1835).

When the Hotel des Trois Couronnes in Vevey was built, there were few hotels on the shores of Lake Geneva that could measure up to it as far as size and interiors were concerned. At best, the Hotel des Bergues in Geneva, inaugurated in 1834, or the Hotel Byron in Villeneuve near Castle Chillon, opened in 1841 were comparable to this new hotel.

In 1863 the town council of Vevey decided to build a quay along the waterfront which caused the hotel to lose its direct access to the lake. Around 1890, the hotel underwent a radical change: in the briefest of time, it was changed from a neo-classical building to a neo-baroque triple-wing structure grouped around a northern courtyard.

Despite these changes, when one steps through the hotel's doors one feels set back in time. The historic rooms are carefully kept in character with the hotel and they still evoke the spirit of the "grande epoque" of the Swiss hotel industry. Current management has been careful not to infringe on the hotel's lengthy history in any changes that modern-day convenience may require.