Exclusive hotel's abandoned southern Europeans (5)

I believe the answer is:

swiss

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'exclusive hotel's abandoned southern europeans' is the definition.
I can't tell whether this defines the answer.

'exclusive hotel's abandoned southern' is the wordplay.
'exclusive' becomes 'sw' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'hotel's' becomes 'Ibis's' (French hotel chain).
'abandoned' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (middle letters abandon or vacate the word).
'southern' becomes 's' (abbreviation).
'ibiss' with its centre taken out is 'is'.
'sw'+'is'+'s'='SWISS'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for swiss that I've seen before include "William Tell's nationality" , "Eg, native to Geneva" , "Like William Tell" , "like Federer" , "Nationality of C. G. Jung" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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