Arnaud Champenois is Senior Vice President, Global Brand, Marketing and Communications at Belmond (LVMH). LUX Leaders & Philanthropists Editor, Samantha Welsh speaks with Arnaud Champenois about hospitality, sustainability, and how 2024 is set to be a game-changing year for Belmond

Belmond Legends – Mount Nelson Hotel (Photographed by Rosie Marks)

LUX: ‘One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.’ (Henry Miller). When did the first shoots of experiential hospitality emerge?

Arnaud Champenois: Experiential travel continues to grow in popularity as the world has become an increasingly mobile place. Prior to the 1980s, airfares were sky-high and the majority of commercial flights were to highly anglicized locations, very much on the beaten track. During this time, travel was also fairly limited to western travellers.

As ‘untrodden’ locations became an option, boomers were somewhat pioneers of experiential travel – which in that time was defined more as ‘activity-packed’ exploration holidays. Then came the internet, followed by social media and the trend snowballed from there…

Since then, the term ‘experiential travel’ has evolved. Modern luxury travellers now want something different. Tick-box, fast and thoughtless travel is in the past. Travellers want to go much deeper into a destination rather than purely seeing it and ticking it off their list. They wish to stay longer, try local delicacies, enjoy traditional music and crafts, understand the people, discover the real local treasures. They want to live the stories, not just hear them.

Follow LUX on instagram: luxthemagazine

Luxury travel is now providing this kind of experience, but to do this long into the future, it is vital that we as travel companies play our part in protecting and preserving the most cherished traditions and heritage of the destinations and communities travel relies upon and strive to make a net positive impact.

LUX: Looking back or looking forward, what is Belmond’s approach to restoring heritage buildings?

AC: History in built environments is fundamental to creating a sense of community and character. They are examples of a particular time and style of architecture that would otherwise be long forgotten. Whether it’s a building’s historical roots, its distinctive architecture, the materials used or some aspect of the decoration that’s particularly interesting, these buildings are visual reminders of an area’s cultural heritage, the people and industries that once and still do, establish an area.

But the hospitality industry caters to the travellers of today. Though many are interested in the historic cultural elements, they want to experience that heritage in an authentic way, whilst being allowed modern-day comforts.

MITICO 2024 – Copacabana Palace (Daniel Buren, Escala colorida para Copacabana Palace, trabalho in situ, 2023)

We believe we have a responsibility to be custodians of this timeless heritage, and to help preserve and enhance it for future generations. Our renovation and rejuvenation strategy follows our property-first approach to honour each renovation’s storied and timeless heritage; whilst celebrating the authenticity of each place and injecting contemporary soul to ensure they live on for years to come. We need our more historic assets to live and breathe and be enjoyed, not just be consigned to a museum.

Last year (2023) we revealed four major rejuvenations – the painstaking renovation of Maroma in Riviera Maya, the re-imagining Coquelicot, Belmond’s new luxury barge Coquelicot, Venice Simplon-Orient-Express and Splendido in Portofino. We will continue to reimagine and rejuvenate, arming each property with the contemporary allure, enriched storytelling and meaningful guest experiences that propels them to be the best in their markets.

MITICO 2024 – Daniel Buren at Mount Nelson Hotel, 2023

LUX: What is the role for art in offering responsible hospitality?

AC: Art is a powerful medium which can support local communities giving both local established and upcoming artists a stage to reach new, larger audiences, whilst connecting guests to local cultures, inspiring and facilitating the appreciation of art.

One such example is Belmond’s partnership with internationally renowned contemporary art gallery, Galleria Continua in which we host large-scale art installations by global artists, across several of Belmond’s legendary properties. Entitled MITICO, the installations invite guests to see cultures through a different lens. Through MITICO’s acclaim and the representation of globally renowned artists through Galleria Continua, we have been able to further support local artists. Such as with the following two initiatives, equally launched with Galleria Continua: La Residencia in Mallorca’s “Artist in Residencia” programme, now in its second year. And PANORAMA, a city-wide exhibition conceptualised and organised by Italics bringing ancient, modern and contemporary art to the town of Monferrato, where Belmond will be a proud partner for the third year running.

In Cape Town at Mount Nelson, we’re working with young talented curators Heinrich Groenewald and Shona van der Merwe of RESERVOIR, who have curated an exhibition across the hotel with works from the Norval Foundation. Whilst at Castello di Casole in the undulating Tuscan hills, the hotel works closely with the archaeological museum in Casole d’Elsa, as most of their artefacts were found on the property grounds and even exhibit across the hotel.

Beyond events and installations, the curation of a rich portfolio of guest experiences centred directly around traditional art practices is a great way to support local communities. At Belmond we have a rich portfolio of experiences such as, traditional Peruvian pottery painting hosted by local pottery artists, exclusive Mexican folk art – ‘Mojigangas’ – workshops with resident artists and Balinese egg painting with third-generation egg painters, to name a few. Not only does this support the livelihoods of local artisans, but these guest experiences also help to ensure the continued existence of their crafts.

MITICO 2023 – Villa San Michele ( Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Teenager sculpture greets arriving guests. Photography by François Halard)

LUX: Why is l’art de vivre a core value for Belmond?

AC: The French concept of l’art de vivre takes its cues from France’s particular penchant for the finer things in life: art, wine, dining, fashion, even romance. At Belmond, we understand the components that make up the wonderful world of luxury and, with more than 45 years’ experience, we like to think we are well placed to help our guests appreciate the art of living well!

Contemporary creativity is wonderfully engaging in helping guests celebrate l’art de vivre of the destinations we operate in. Beyond in-person art installations and photography exhibitions, a good example of how we have celebrated the distinct character of our destinations is Belmond Legends, which is a contemporary photography series that offers alternative perspectives.

With camera in hand, exceptional talents from the likes of Jalan and Jibril Durimel, Thomas Rousset and Rosie Marks immersed themselves in each iconic hotel and destination to encapsulate intimate, dynamic and authentic moments that provide a glance into genuine guest experiences within these destinations. The photographs offer a progressive and personal perspective on these already iconic destinations – showing each property in a new light.

Beyond the topic of art, we help guests celebrate l’art de vivre through many experiences that enrich the mind, body and soul; from historical tours and enriching activities such as open water swimming in the Scottish Highlands as part of the Royal Scotsman itinerary, truffle foraging in Tuscany, or private culinary classes at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.

Belmond Legends – Villa San Michele (photographed by François Halard)

LUX: And finally, can you share a taste of this year’s art program?

AC: Since Belmond’s inception, we have had an intrinsic connection to the arts community, with our portfolio spanning heritage buildings and vintage trains – museums of ancient decorative crafts. Our ambition is to continue highlighting this historical aspect of our portfolio, whilst maintaining its relevancy in contemporary culture through photographic artistic collaboration.

BELMOND LEGENDS brings this concept to life with its incredible roster of international contemporary artists, whilst we lend our properties’ remarkable landscapes as their canvas.

So far, the project has brought an entirely new perspective on 11 of our legendary properties as captured by 10 internationally acclaimed photographers – Chris Rhodes, Francois Halard, Letizia Le Fur, Coco Capitan, Jalan and Jibril Durimel, Thomas Rousset, Rosie Marks, Jeano Edwards, and Jack Davison. With more announcements to come at Photo London in May 2024.

Belmond Legends – Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (Photographed by Coco Capitán)

belmond.com

A view of the Hotel Metropole’s grand exterior

In the heart of Monaco is a grand yet intimate hotel that offers fantastic dining, a world-class indoor/outdoor pool, one of the best spas in Europe and a mystique that makes it even more than the sum of its parts. Darius Sanai checks in

The arrival at a great hotel is a key part of its story. The Metropole is situated on the Casino Square of Monte-Carlo, one of the most celebrated public destinations in the (luxury) world. And yet your arrival is refreshingly discreet. Your car turns into a driveway, lined with supercars, away from the public gaze. You are ushered into the lobby as if arriving at a grand private home. The lobby itself is a visual feast, but a discreet one: no overbright lights and high ceilinged grandeur, but a dramatic floral display, tapestries on the walls and intriguingly lit corners and a segue into a bar area to the right. This is a place for insiders – those who really know Monaco.

The hotel lobby’s floral displays change according to the season

Our room, a Prestige Suite, was lavish and contemporary, a hard act to get quite right. Chandeliers and rich drapes, pale furnishings and walls, blonde wood loungers, floor-to-ceiling windows. A place of light, comfort and silence in a town that can sometimes be very hectic.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

The Metropole is famous for its food, and on the first evening we had a highly memorable meal, not at one of its celebrated restaurants but in the cosy heart of the bar, off the lobby. This is where Monaco residents go for casual dining. It’s comfort food, Monaco-style: a fabulous gazpacho, delicate artichoke with parmigiano, and a brilliant summation of Mediterranean cuisine: minestrone with monkfish, black beans and guianciale. Sublime yet simple.

The glamorous Hotel Metropole Bar was designed by architect and interior designer Jacques Garcia

The bar is a place to see friends as they swoosh back and forth to the lobby and the restaurants beyond: so we chose an excellent Pink Kiss, the house cocktail, gin-based, refreshing and balanced, to toast them.

The hotel recently opened its gastronomic restaurant, Les Ambassadeurs, by chef Christophe Cussac, who has overseen the food and beverage option at the hotel for almost two decades.

For LUX, though, the Metropole’s culinary piece de resistance is Yoshi, a small but exquisite Japanese restaurant situated in the courtyard, with a flower garden outside – a great indulgence considering the price of real estate here. The lacquered chicken – a delicious dish somewhere between teriyaki and yakitori – was memorable, the grilled black cod fleshy and fulsome with miso, and the miso soup refreshingly umami.

The Obento menu at the hotel’s Michelin Star restaurant Yoshi offers a light refreshing lunch option

Beyond the rooms and the cuisine is the spa, the hotel trying its hardest to ensure you never have to go anywhere in Monaco outside its domain. A wander down a corridor leads to a big terraced pool area, with views across town, a health food restaurant attached (with requisite, impossibly perfect men and women perched at the bar). The service at the pool is magnificent, intuitive and thorough without being overbearing. The pool miraculously turns into an indoor pool in winter, the walls of its pavilion swathed in Karl Lagerfeld frescoes.

Read more: Badrutt’s Palace St Moritz, Review

Just downstairs from the pool, we were wafted into the transformational world of the Bastien Gonzalez ‘Pedi:Mani:Cure’. If you ever wondered why women in Monaco have hands that look 20 years younger than they are, you now know the answer, although seeing a teenage girl emerging from the spa after us did beg the question of whether her hands disappeared altogether into a pre-natal state.

Designed by Karl Lagerfield, the ODYSSEY installation and heated pool is covered throughout the winter and al fresco during the rest of the year

But we digress. More than the magnificent hardware, any memory of the Metropole is dictated by the even more magnificent service. Not a given, even in this part of the world, it gives this uber-chic grand hotel in one of the world’s most iconic destinations the feel of a fantastic, extensive private home – albeit one with some of the world’s best chefs cooking for you, and a butler who can rustle up a fantastic club sandwich and cocktail if you just feel like chilling with your house guests in the drawing room. The Metropole is an absolute LUX favourite.

Find out more: metropole.com

The Fairmont Tazi Palace Tangier pool

LUX checks in for a resplendent yet restful stay at the Fairmont Tazi Palace, Tangier in Morocco

What drew us there?

The hotel is a super impressive, sprawling 5-star establishment, high up in the hills above the Medina in Tangiers. It used to be the home of the Sultan of Morocco’s representatives in the city, and has been restored to the highest standard. Everything feels opulent and grand; the reception area’s 12 metre high ceiling was particularly memorable, as well as the slick pool and vast surrounding area featuring daybeds and cabanas. The grounds are peppered with eucalyptus, pomegranate, palm and olive trees.

A suite’s private panoramic view terrace

Authentic Moroccan touches are everywhere, from the artwork to textiles and mosaics from local artisans decorating its 7 stories. Whichever floor you find your room on, incredible views are a certainty, as the hotel looks out onto the entirety of the buzzing city from high above. You have the privilege of surveying the busyness from your own secluded, peaceful space.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

How was the stay?

Out of the 133 rooms at the Fairmont Tangiers, we enjoyed a classic and comfortable Deluxe room. It was bright and airy with white and blue accents. Despite the Tazi Palace being a hotel of considerable size, we felt very tranquil throughout our stay.

The Deluxe King room with views of Tangier

We’d never been to Tangier and the hotel staff could not have been more accommodating – nothing was too much trouble. Fabien, Yassine, Zineb and their team were fabulous, organising a personal tour of the Medina and a drive around the city and the wild beaches where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic.

Crudo, one of the five dining options at the hotel

We loved being shown the Penthouse and Katara Suites, with the Katara being almost 4000 square feet. Other key highlights included our meals at Parisa, where we were lucky enough to dine twice. Authentic Persian and traditional Moroccan cuisine were both on offer. We highly recommend the slow cooked lamb shoulder in tomato sauce.

The Speakeasy Innocents bar, inspired by West Africa

We stayed during Ramadan so were able to experience the Ramadan Iftar Buffet at Crudo, another one of the hotel’s dining offerings. This was an experience in itself; I have never seen so many different dishes on offer in one restaurant! Crudo was centred around sharing delicious food, as opposed to à la carte. There is also the Rose Room, where we enjoyed a delicious light lunch one day.

Read more: St Regis Mardavall, Mallorca, Review

Anything else?

The Spa is seriously smart and refined, with staff second to none; I indulged in a wonderful massage. Another option for relaxation is to grab a cocktail from Innocents, the uber trendy bar with live music and West African art covering the walls.

The spa which combines Moroccan-inspired techniques with products from Sodashi, Maison d’Asa and Swissline Cosmetics

Finally, convenience is always key: the hotel is only 10 minutes from the city centre and 20 minutes from the airport, so it’s an easy option for a quick round trip or a longer stay.

Find out more: fairmont.com/tangier

One of the hotel’s garden suites

The Jumeirah Carlton Tower is a London legend, recently lovingly refurbished. In an unmatched retail location in Knightsbridge, can it regain its 1960s glamour? Darius Sanai checks in to our Hotel of the Month

It’s peak pre-Christmas shopping season and the Jumeirah Carlton Tower is a short stroll from Harrods and Harvey Nichols and basically inside the Sloane Street branch of Hermès, preferred by locals to the Bond Street boutique for its more thoughtful buying. It’s also a dash from the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland.

What’s the lowdown?

Fashion week tribes all have their favourite hotels, and it’s safe to say that until the pandemic, the Jumeirah wasn’t on their radar. It was more old-fashioned luxury where international visitors sipped tea in the lounge while their kids came back from shopping at Hermès next door. All that changed with the biggest refurbishment in the hotel’s 60 year history, which happened during the lockdowns.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

Everything from the bar, to the public areas, to the restaurant, spa and rooms, has been recreated with a contemporary eye. That in turn refocusses attention on the standout points the hotel always had, but which became lost as its original star faded. It’s in Knightsbridge, right on Sloane Street, but overlooks a peaceful garden square and has views across the city from all sides, unlike any of its competitors. It has the biggest and best indoor pool in London, and, did we mention, it’s right next to Hermès?

Al Mare Restaurant

The new Italian restaurant, Al Mare, takes the superstar corner position on the angle of Sloane Street. It’s a big, light, airy, New York midtown type of space, and it’s been transformed into a casual chic venue with just the right mix of both, like a grown up Soho House. We recommend one of the booths by the window, and picking from the imaginative and light options from the menu, like tuna tartar with oscietra caviar and ponzu – though there is plenty of comfort food also (we enjoyed a rigatoni al tartufo after a long night out).

You don’t need to go out though, as the hotel’s bar has been pole-vaulted into the top tier of London bars courtesy of an all-star bartending team and some very original cocktails, and relaxed, cool decor.

Getting horizontal

Our suite had a view along the length of the garden square, where we could see locals walking their dogs and children, from a great height: and across the rooftops to the whole of London, from the Battersea Power Station to the City. Even more striking were the bespoke touches: a Berluti shoe polish kit, slippers and products all monogrammed for us, as were the pillowcases. Delightful and very relaxing.

Read more: A tasting of Dalla Valle wines with the owners

Even more relaxing were the new poolside cabanas, replete with an excellent selection of magazines (including LUX). Given the conservatory feel of this huge indoor pool, on a sunny day in February you could settle down and pretend you were, well, somewhere sunny.

The spa and swimming pool

Flipside

Staying at the Carlton Tower doesn’t have the bragging rights of nearby hotels like the Berkeley or the Lanesborough, but we feel that is going to change quite fast.

Rates: From £750 per night (approx. €900/$1,000)

Book your stay: jumeirah.com/london/the-carlton-tower

Darius Sanai

The leafy terrace at Mandarin Oriental Ritz in Madrid

In the first part of our luxury travel views column from the Spring 2022 issue, LUX’s Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai checks in at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz in Madrid

“A little bit more, Sir?” A bartender is holding up a bottle of artisanal gin, having already emptied what seemed like a half-gallon of it into a bowl-shaped glass, filled with ice, slices of limon (a kind of lemon-lime cross) and juniper berries. I look up at the trees, the expanse of the square behind them, the outline of the grand Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum beyond, and the moon above, and think: yes, why not. I have arrived.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

If the arrival is a key part of any hotel experience, the post-arrival at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid, was pretty important, too. I had left my bags to be taken to my room as I wanted to catch the last embers of daylight from the bar’s terrace, which sits above the garden restaurant, itself almost contiguous with the trees of Retiro Park. You are in the centre of one of Europe’s most vibrant and dusty metropolises, but surrounded by nature (and, in my case, soon immersed in a very good small-producer gin).

The hotel’s royal suite

Neither of Europe’s other two grand Ritz hotels, in London or Paris (the three were born siblings, created by César Ritz to redefine the grandeur of hotels at the start of the 20th century, but are now owned and operated separately), offer such an outdoor experience, or indeed such a refreshing one. I am not speaking of the gin here, but of the decor: Mandarin Oriental’s magic wand over the previously grandiose but fusty Ritz Madrid has created lavishness with a certain elegance and contemporary class.

It’s a perennial question: what to do with a grande dame hotel – in this case, one of the grande dame hotels – to bring it into line with what a new generation of traveller expects, while not destroying its soul. I have seen hotels with decorative ceilings ripped out, with hip bar designers imposing darkness where there was once light, and with questionable contemporary art replacing dusty but meticulous classics.

The hotel’s Belle Époque façade

Fortunately the Ritz does not fall into these traps. Our Mandarin suite combined fresh but classic colours – pale walls, pale gold furnishings – with hints of MO style, such as black lacquer detailing. The service was up to date, effortless and effective without being stiff: just the right balance to cater for a wide variety of traveller.

Read more: Chef Ángel León: Ocean Sustainability Supremo

And the food in the Jardin (Garden) restaurant was also spot on: kimchi chicken skewer, Thai sea bass ceviche, grilled sole with artichokes. You can delve into the paella menu, as many others were doing. The hotel may claim it has updated its Belle Époque origins to work in the luxury travel world 110 years after it opened (I don’t know, I didn’t check, but it’s the kind of thing a hotel would say) and in this case, they would be absolutely right.

Find out more: mandarinoriental.com

This article appears in the Summer 2022 issue of LUX

Culture A’s hospitality projects include London’s new wellness hotel Inhabit, which will open this summer. Image courtesy of Inhabit Hotels

Anne T. Rogers is the founder of Amsterdam-based art consultancy  Culture A, which curates collections and experiences for a range of clients from hotels to luxury retail and residential. Here, she speaks to Candice Tucker about visual storytelling, AI-generated art and how to curate a collection at home

Anne T. Rogers

1. What inspired you to create Culture A?

I’m a trained art historian and experience strategist. After years of working in curating, interior design, and retail design, I saw the opportunity to position art as an experience as well as an investment. I started Culture A to curate and produce art as something that transforms a public space. Art is an important design differentiator, particularly for clients such as hotel owners, property developers, and retail brands. We find the best art suitable for investment, visual storytelling, or pure aesthetics.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

2. Why do you think there’s been such a dramatic rise in experience culture?

It’s an interesting time where we’re focusing on the benefits of community, but not at the risk of the individual. Self-love, self-care, wellness: these are all hot topics right now. I think the rise of experience culture is tied to this. Generally speaking, we like to be a part of something that feels bigger than ourselves, but also have the space to find our own interpretation and act upon that feeling. Experience culture is about encouraging engagement and acting on it. For me, art is visual storytelling, and visual storytelling is a key component to experience design. Looking at art encourages discussion, individual interpretation, and personal connection. How many other consumer goods spark such freedom of expression?

An artwork by Amsterdam-based artist Camille Rousseau for Inhabit London. Image courtesy of Culture A

3. Where does your curation process begin for a hospitality project?

I adopt the mindset of a guest, dig into the brand story, and ask: how can the art experience enhance the customer journey? For hospitality projects, I approach curating through the lens of experience design versus museum design. It allows me to consider diverse audiences and how to best integrate art into the context of a brand. For example, when curating the art collection for Inhabit, a new London hotel focused on wellness, I really wanted to illuminate the brand’s vision for health and wellbeing. To start, we did a deep dive into research around wellness, urban oasis, colour psychology, and nature in London. We then developed curatorial themes in relation to Inhabit’s ethos and sourced our pieces accordingly.

Read more: Alia Al-Senussi on art as a catalyst for change

4. Could you share any tips on how to curate and frame art in your home?

Build a collection slowly and one that reflects your tastes and interests. Frame it professionally to avoid damage and maintain the investment. Don’t ignore key vantage points in your home. Where does the eye instinctively go when you scan the space? Hang art in those areas and study how each work relates to the other in the context of the space. This could be done thematically, by scale, by colour, or a mix of all three.

An art scarf designed by designer Lisa King. Image courtesy of Culture A

5. What artistic and design trends do you foresee emerging this year?

A growing demand for slow and considered art and design. People will ask themselves, “What do I really need and what do I really enjoy?” It’s a time to re-configure and refresh the spaces already lived in. As for design presentations and sourcing, virtual viewing rooms are certainly on the rise. I recently completed a project that was largely approved because of how successful the artwork looked in our virtual reality demo. Right now, we’re also experimenting a lot with AI-generated art driven by a brand’s heritage and image archive.

6. Which contemporary artists are you currently keeping your eye on?

Landon Metz, Matt Gagnon, Sarah Crowner, Kapwani Kiwanga, Martine Gutierrez, Miya Ando, Loie Hollowell, Douglas Mandry, Tyler Mitchell, Nicolas Party, Anne Hardy, Hugo McCloud, Emily Kiacz, and Wyatt Khan. Also, anyone working with AI technology to generate art and design.

Find out more: culture-a.com

Steam cooking can preserve the nutritional value and flavour of delicate vegetables such as mushrooms

The ancient art of steam cooking has gained new impetus with the revolution in healthy and mindful cuisine. Lisa Jayne Harris looks at the artful kitchen innovations from design-led German luxury appliance maker, and chefs’ favourite, Gaggenau

Alice B. Toklas, the celebrated 20th-century literary salon hostess, had one golden rule for cooking: “one must respect the quality and flavour of the ingredients”. Steaming is the most direct way to achieve her objective; it is an efficient way to cook that leaves the food tasting exclusively of itself. Just consider the simple excellence of steamed asparagus with French butter, one of Toklas’s stand-by dishes for entertaining.

Phil Fanning, the executive chef and owner of restaurant Paris House in Woburn and Gaggenau culinary partner, agrees: “You’ve got nowhere to hide with steam: It’s all about the quality of ingredients.” This is essential when you are working with delicate seasonal vegetables like asparagus, new potatoes or peas, but it is just as significant with good quality meat, baked goods or pastry.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

However, healthier eating is another powerful motivator behind the steamed food trend. Boiling vegetables reduces much of their nutritional qualities, such as vitamins C and B1, and other mineral salts readily dissolve in water. Lightly steaming does not disturb the food’s cellular structure or its aromatic compositions the way boiling does, so you preserve more vitamins as well as the colour and texture for a more health-conscious cuisine. “Gentle steam cooking can actually improve the nutrient status of food like asparagus, spinach and tomatoes,” advises registered nutritional therapist, Catherine Arnold, “It makes their nutrients more bio-available to the body.”

Gaggenau’s 400 and 200 series combi-steam ovens are ideal for the precise cooking of seafood

Gaggenau has pioneered steam cooking in the home for the past 20 years and continues to do so, including combination steam ovens: “Whether you’re cooking in pure steam, or in combination with traditional heat, you’re getting the health benefits of steam cooking, as it maintains food’s nutrients, colour and shape,” says Gaggenau’s category manager, Simon Plumbridge. Steam can improve other healthy eating habits such as juicing, too: “Our juice extraction setting gently steams hard-skinned citrus fruit such as oranges, so you get a much higher juice yield without impacting nutrients.”

Steam cooking is also gaining traction with chefs and home cooks because of the innovations in steam-cooking technology. For all its benefits – puffed soufflés, sumptuous bread, those crisp layers in a croissant – mastering the technique used to require an intimidating level of precision. Today, keen cooks are investing in internal temperature probes, gadgets and state-of-the-art appliances to emulate high-end restaurants at home. “The UK’s food scene has massively improved in the past 30 to 40 years, and this growth in skill and quality is reflected in passionate home chefs’ kitchens too,” Fanning reflects. Our private kitchens are becoming more technologically advanced, and ovens that enable amateurs to cook like professionals are both a luxury and an enabler of creativity.

Embracing both the old and the new makes us all better cooks. “Lots of traditional techniques benefit from having precise control over the humidity,” says Fanning. “Take bread for example. For the perfect crusty baguette, you need about 30 per cent humidity for the first five minutes and then very little for the remaining bake. In a traditional convection oven that requires guesswork, but it’s easily and consistently achieved in a combi-steam oven.” Brands like Gaggenau are making this trend for precision steam cooking more accessible. Their combi-steam ovens can be controlled to within one degree, which continually revises the estimated cooking time based on temperature-probe readings from three different sensors. There is no more guessing: “Steam in its basic principle is an ancient way of cooking,” says Plumbridge. “But controlling the level of steam in combination with a fan is only achieved by modern technology – and that’s what brings professional results into the domestic home.”

Read more: Fashion designer Erdem Moralıoğlu’s guide to east London

Steam is also about convenience; rather than waiting for an oven to preheat, a good steam oven heats to temperature immediately. When you combine that with smart, Wi-Fi-enabled technology that lets you control the oven remotely from your office, or even set the bread to prove whilst you’re watching TV, you have all the benefits of ancient cooking just a voice command away. “Connectivity in the home has a lot of momentum at the moment,” Plumbridge observes, “But we’re more interested in future-proofing, so our ovens have the capacity to integrate with apps on any system such as Alexa or Cornflake smart homes.”

As much as new food trends are about keeping pace with technology, steam cooking also allows you to take your time. Next generation combi-steam ovens can sous-vide for up to almost 24 hours on a mains-connected water system or 11 hours with a tank, and cooking meat low and slow with a good level of humidity means it won’t be subjected to heat expansion and contraction, allowing for a more tender and juicy dish. Chefs also use steam to impart more subtle flavours into a dish, laying herbs under a piece of salmon to infuse the fish or steaming couscous in a traditional couscoussier, in which spices, onions and meat cook in the lower compartment and impart their flavour to the grains above.

“Remember that with a combi oven, steam doesn’t have to be 100ºC,” Fanning advises. “You want to cook vegetables as quickly as possible at that temperature, but steaming a piece of turbot at 60ºC or even lower will give you a much more delicate result. Oxtail or lamb shanks can be very gently cooked sous-vide in a combi-steam oven for hours with virtually no chance of overcooking, and duck legs, pork belly, haricot beans or lentils – if vacuum packed with a fat or oil – can be very gently and accurately made as a confit.”

Icelanders have steamed their bread buried next to hot springs for generations and Chinese steaming baskets have been piled with fluffy rice buns and hot dumplings for thousands of years. Steam cooking might be an ancient art, but revolutionary technology, a modern regard for putting ingredients first and a drive to lighten up our diets means that the technique is equally relevant today. True innovation combines the heritage of centuries of steam cooking with precision and performance that inspires. “That’s why Gaggenau ovens are all hand finished,” Plumbridge says. “Only when you piece a product together by hand, the good old-fashioned way, are you actually putting soul into a product. And that’s what really means something to people.”

Gaggenau’s factory on the French-German border

Precision Engineering

Darius Sanai takes a rare tour of the Gaggenau factory, pictured above, on the French-German border, and is struck by the melding of industry and creativity

The huge sheet of matte-silver metal looks, somehow, tempting and edible as it sits on the machine bed, like a giant slice of space-age food about to be sliced and diced. Lasers home in on a pattern of points on the sheet, and an instant later, it has a precise latticework of holes and is being washed clean. A few metres away, an operator is in charge of a machine that bends metal. It bends it a tiny bit, almost invisibly, but the bend makes all the difference, our guide explains, as it allows the finished product a smooth, textured finish with no sharp edges.

There is a lot of this in the Gaggenau factory; a lot of working with metal, bending and shaping it, machining it, turning it from sheets, delivered through an entry doorway in one building, into the slick kitchen appliances so beloved by professional chefs.

Yet metalwork was not what I expected when walking into the factory of a manufacturer of the world’s leading kitchens. It’s hard to know exactly what to expect; my experience of factories is confined to manufacturers of cars and watches. Both of these are very obviously made of metal in a way high-end ovens, cloaked in a kitchen design and so proud of their electronics and technology, are not. Yet there is far more metalworking going on at Gaggenau than in, for example, the Mercedes-Benz factory at Sindelfingen an hour’s drive to the east, or the IWC watch manufacture at Schaffhausen an hour’s drive to the south.

Read more: Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar & the artistic revival of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat

Perhaps this ought not to be surprising. We are after all in a real factory, rather than a mere assembly plant where components made elsewhere are put together. Gaggenau may now be synonymous with expensive homes, but, as a timeline in the visitor experience centre where we had arrived earlier demonstrated, it has a history in metal. It was founded in 1683 as Eisenwerke Gaggenau, an ironworks which made everything from agricultural machinery to road signs, by Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden. Gaggenau itself is a town in the Black Forest of Germany, which, catalysed by von Baden, became a significant industrial centre and still houses one of the biggest Mercedes-Benz factories.

Gaggenau also made stoves, and eventually specialised in the high-end, highly designed, highly technical kitchen appliances it creates today, eventually moving to its current site from its original home. From the sloping road leading to the current factory in Lipsheim, you can see the curved outline of the Black Forest clearly. “I live there, it takes 30 minutes to cycle in every day,” one of our hosts tells me cheerily. The fact that he lives in Germany and we are just across the border in France’s Alsace is irrelevant: this is the new Europe, and there is, in effect, no border.

It’s a scenic setting for a factory, and also an interesting one: just down the road is Bugatti’s factory (really, a very chic assembly plant), so you could in theory pick up your Chiron and then watch your new steam oven being made. (Actually, the factory tours are not yet open to the public, which makes it even more special.)

The factory is a series of buildings each of which is filled with numerous sections and stations doing different creative activities. Gaggenau’s production process is still very manual; there are 350 workers, many of them trained in astonishingly particular skills pertaining to components or electronics of particular products. There is an air of extreme concentration among the small pods of workers, but unlike in watch manufactures, you don’t get the sense that you are the nth tour to visit that day. Workers are not slickly trained to respond to your questions; some of them are so lost in concentration in operating a particular piece of hot, huge or smelly machinery that they seem surprised to see you there.

What does remind me of a watch factory, or perhaps a pharmaceutical firm, is a ‘clean room’, which we observe from the outside. The room, which sits in a corner of the factory, and the people inside, assembling delicate electrical components of Gaggenau ovens, look like characters in a sci-fi movie of their own.

There is, in another section of the factory, a testing station, where every creation is subject to testing on its accuracy, function, and so on. I lingered a minute or two here, eager to see a malfunctioning multi-thousand-euro oven chucked on a scrapheap (or actually, returned to production to be corrected), but it didn’t happen.

The tour ended and we walked back to the Experience Centre, with its view of the Vosges and walls of the latest steam ovens, slick and architectural, beauty made out of, if not exactly chaos in the factory but certainly industrial creativity. More interesting than any watch manufacture I have been to.

Find out more: gaggenau.com/gb

This article was originally published in the Summer 2020 Issue, out now.

Ombra Di Pantera is a new producer of Prosseco, and businessman Utsava Kasera’s latest investment

Utsava Kasera is an entrepreneur and investor with interests in luxury brands, fashion, art and tech. Most recently, his attention has turned to new Prosecco brand Ombra Di Pantera. Here, he tells us about this latest investment, finding a gap in the market and his new year ambitions

Utsava Kasera

1. How did you first come across Ombra Di Pantera?

I always wanted to be involved in the drinks industry and the stars aligned when I met the other promoters of Ombra Di Pantera over a lunch through a common connection. The opportunity looked very good and we are on an exciting journey now.

Our inspiration for ‘Ombra’ is delivered from a unique heritage and a fabled history which stretches back to the Roman wines of antiquity. In ancient times, traders who served wine in Venice’s Piazza San Marco would follow the shadow of the Campanile to cool their wine as there was no refrigeration, and the Venetian expression, ‘Ombra de Vin’, meaning ‘Wine’s Shadow’, is still used to order Prosecco in its original heartland. Another interesting fact about Prosecco is that typically a glass contains fewer calories than wine and there is a town called Prosecco nearby Venice, where the name of this bubbly comes from.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

2. What drew you to invest in the business?

The huge demand for Prosecco in the UK and lack of branding around it gives an opportunity to fill a missing gap in the market. The sales of Prosecco have overtaken champagne in the UK, which is now the second biggest market in the world after the US. Besides that, it’s a delicious Prosecco which embodies the elegance of Italian luxury and I believe it has the potential to make its mark in the sparkling wine world.

3. What sets Ombra Di Pantera’s Prosecco apart from other brands?

Ombra is traditionally crafted from a single vintage, using superior Glera grapes from our delicately cultivated Conegliano vineyard, to deliver a pure expression of the very finest Prosecco. The Prosecco is created ‘in bianco’, meaning the fermentation is without the skins creating the delicate sparkle that is captured over 60 days to produce a fine, persistent perlage. The steep hills of the vineyard provide the perfect conditions to grow  Glera grapes, which require cultivating and harvesting by hand relying on traditional methods refined over a thousand years. Ombra Di Pantera is dedicated to celebrating the traditional heritage and craftsmanship of Italian viticulture to deliver an authentic, exclusive Prosecco experience and can stand up to any high quality champagne or sparkling wine in blind tasting.

Ombra Di Pantera’s Prosecco is made from Glera grapes grown on their vineyard in Conegliano

4. How does the company fit into your wider investment portfolio?

My investments are across a wide spectrum of industries from tech to hospitality. I particularly invest in industries and projects, which I am passionate about rather than just looking at the numbers. Having said that, Ombra compliments a couple of my investments, which are in private members club, one called 1880 in Singapore and a wine bar chain in London called Vagabond.

Read more: Knight Frank’s Andrew Hay on the best emerging markets for real estate investment

5. What are your ambitions for 2020?

I would like to focus on making Ombra di Pantera bigger by aligning with more luxury partners and concentrate on strategic growth of the brand. I am also a co-founder of ‘Sidehide’, which is a tech app for hotel booking, providing a seamless experience for users and I will be involved in the launch and marketing campaign during 2020. Lastly, I would like to do some volunteering work with one of the charities I am involved with, and learn to play the piano.

6. How do you switch off?

I have a passion for whiskies and cognac. Enjoying a dram of Springbank 21 years whisky or Louis XIII cognac in company of friends relaxes me. Recently, I have started taking out time to cook and I am enjoying it at lot. Travelling is another passion and therapy of its own kind for me.

For more information visit: ombradipantera.com

“I worked in nature as if it was in the studio. The vineyards seemed to me a very poetical, mysterious and playful environment.” – Marie Benattar

Louis Roederer makes what might just be the world’s most famous champagne, Cristal, and a range of others all renowned for their sophistication and complexity. Less known is the family-owned company’s visionary art foundation, and foray into the luxury boutique hotel industry. Darius Sanai speaks to CEO and 7th-generation family scion, Frédéric Rouzaud, about photography,
art, hospitality, and almost everything except champagne

Frédéric Rouzaud

Travelling from the heart of London to the heart of Paris is, in some ways, like stepping from one luxury universe into another. In Mayfair, every conversation is about money – what’s for sale, what’s being sold, who might buy what. A brand is a currency, there to have its value inflated and sold on to the next wheeler-dealer.

Paris may be the home of the global luxury industry, but despite this, or perhaps because of it, it is – mostly – not considered appropriate to have the same conversations. For every private equity group buying and selling companies like card sharps distributing aces, there is a celebrated company (don’t call them brands) that has been in family hands for centuries.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

This is one of the first thoughts that flows through my head when I meet Frédéric Rouzaud in a hotel lobby in the chi-chi 16th arrondissement. Through the Maison Louis Roederer, Rouzaud may be the family owner and CEO of one of the world’s most celebrated luxury brands – who doesn’t know Cristal, after all – but it’s apparent that this thoughtful, understated and gently smiling gentleman in a dapper suit is a different breed to many modern CEOs. Louis Roederer is a Maison, not a brand.

Photography by Michel Slomka

We settle in quickly to an easy conversation about art, and in particular photography. Recently, Louis Roederer invited young abstract artistic photographers to create images of the champagne house, its cellars and grounds, giving them carte blanche to interpret whatever they wished, however they wanted.

The results, which have never been publicly exhibited, are published on these pages. But Rouzaud, who expresses an enthusiasm for photography and 20th and 21st century art, is doing so much more in the world of art through the Fondation Louis Roederer (a private foundation), and has a plan to develop a collection of luxury boutique hotels. Here is a polymath who is plainly not interested in being pigeonholed. And, of course, the Louis Roederer brand owns several wine estates and makes some of the world’s most celebrated champagnes – not just Cristal, which needs little introduction – including a personal favourite, the complex yet ethereal blanc de blancs.

“I found in champagne perfect elements related to dreams… it appears as a perfect opportunity to explore a fairy direction.” – Marie Benattar

LUX: Tell us more about your hotel projects?
Frédéric Rouzaud: We bought our first hotel last November, in the Alps in France. A hotel seems far away from the wine world, but not so far when you look for a long-term strategy that you need to have for hotels. Like for wine, it’s about the French ‘art de vivre’. It’s about gastronomy, the experience and wine. My idea is to create a small boutique hotel collection, and also by having some private houses open to private consumers who would like to live a very nice experience around wine in our different properties. [Outside of Champagne] we have wine properties in Provence, Portugal, two châteaux in Bordeaux, one in California. The idea is to create a small collection either by buying hotels like we did in the Alps or by creating some hotels within our winery sites, which are generally very nice places to stay.

Read more: Wes Anderson & Juman Malouf curate an exhibition at Fondazione Prada

LUX: Will there be a particular aesthetic?
Frédéric Rouzaud: We will try to make people feel comfortable and at home. We will work with some designers that have this sense of conviviality, [to create] a nice experience. We will adapt to each place – the style, the sense of the place. It will be a five-star hotel that is casual and comfortable, family friendly.

“I worked at night by the light of the moon. I have aspired to build mirage images in order to reveal what can not be mastered by man, the very power of nature. The artificial lights were developed to unmask ghostly presences, unreal scenes, dreamlike horizons.” – Lucie Jean

LUX: There is a very powerful partnership between your Maison and the art world. The photography for the prize that you do is very abstract. Is that something you initiated yourself and how has it grown?
Frédéric Rouzaud: The story started 20 years ago, when we met the president of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. They have a fantastic collection of more than five million images – old photographs from the beginning of the creation of the photography – but they didn’t know what to do with it because they are more book-orientated. So they asked us if we would be interested in helping them show the fantastic collection to the public. That is how we started our collaboration, and we did a lot of very nice and interesting exhibitions there. We sponsor all of the exhibitions and they are fantastic. It is a very serious, rigorous and interesting collection of photography with plenty of artists.

“Views from above of the symbolic interiors of Roederer were completed with images of starry skies from the vineyards. This face- to-face seemed to us to be a poetic metaphor for what champagne represents, a kind of cosmic union between earth and sky.” – Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat.

LUX: What about the young photographers we feature here?
Frédéric Rouzaud: We asked the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to select for us eight or ten young photographers who went to Champagne; there was lots of creativity and they decided to photograph Roederer as their own perception.

LUX: What did you think of what they did?
Frédéric Rouzaud: I think it was great. I think it was so different and their approach was phenomenal.

LUX: You must have a personal passion for photography to give it such support?
Frédéric Rouzaud: I am interested by art and photography – because photography is really a contemporary art form. I think it is approachable for people who sometimes do not understand or find it difficult to approach contemporary art. Photography is always approachable, understandable… and I see a big future, a big potential for photography. It is a very nice, aesthetic art.

“The intervention of man gives a very graphic aspect to the vines. I sought, through the strength of this vegetation and nature,
visual haikus which would plunge us between the lines from what is immediately visible.” – Lucie Jean

LUX: Do you collect photography yourself ?
Frédéric Rouzaud: I have some, I don’t only collect photography – I collect many things. I buy lots of intuition and inspiration (laughs). I am not a collector in the sense that I buy everything, I am more for going into galleries on the weekends/ auction sales to see what is going on – I can buy photography, a chair, a lamp…

Read more: Geoffrey Kent on travelling beyond the beaten track

LUX: Does your foundation have a physical home that people can visit?
Frédéric Rouzaud: No, not yet. The purpose of the foundation is to help institutions and museums like Palais de Tokyo and Le Grand Palais to show to the public their fantastic collections. I think we are much more for that approach rather than to say, ‘Hey, look at my foundation, look at my collection, come and visit it.’ We are a small company, we are more for helping the French big institutions, like Bibliothèque Nationale, trying to choose the artists that really talk to us in a way – that is the first point. The second point is the different prizes that we have created now; we like to discover new talents. That is really the two things helping the institution with known artists – because there are lots of artists who we have sponsored who were known, but we also like to give prizes to new talents.

“For me, photography is a way to discover and observe the world, to embrace its complexity without feeling too much gravity. It is also a way to take time, spend it and even try to stop it.” – Marie Benattar

LUX: Is the private sector becoming more important in supporting art?
Frédéric Rouzaud: Museums don’t always have the means to do these exhibitions for the public so they seem very happy to have that kind of foundation to help. I think it is very important, yes. Even if in France it is less usual to have funds from a private company or foundation like it is in the UK, it is very normal. But I think it is coming and definitely there are never enough funds to help art. If the approach is quiet, organised, long-term and focused on what we like, I think there is no reason that it doesn’t work, because again in our approach we are more behind museums that have the savoir faire, the connection. We prefer to be maybe a little bit behind the scenes.

LUX: Are wine and art similar?
Frédéric Rouzaud: Of course, there is a link. But I always say to my team, ‘Don’t consider yourselves artists. We are not artists. We are artisans, dedicated to nature, trying to interpret each year what nature likes to give us: climate, size of grapes, concentration…’ And we try to make, modestly, with that, a wine that we sell. Artists have total freedom. We don’t. We have to ferment the wine, we have to press the wine, it has to be vigorous. It’s close to the artists’ work – but we don’t have the freedom. The only thing you have to do as an artist is express what you have in your head. So there is a very natural link between the world of wine and the world of art, but we are not artists.

“The need and the desire to create cannot be explained. It’s like a breath, a small voice and sometimes even a cry that animates you and takes you to creation.” – Laura Bonnefous

LUX: Is it true to say the world of wine is more objective than art?
Frédéric Rouzaud: Yes, in the world of wine we have to follow rules, some tools, some gestures. In art, you do what you want – you are much more free. We are free in the way that we are free to search the best soils to plant the vineyards, we are free to search the best way for pruning the vineyards, the way of fine-tuning our grapes, our methods, our pressing process, our fermentation, our storage – we are free for that. But at the end of the day, the focus has to be a bottle of wine that is appreciated by the consumers. An artist, if he makes something and it pleases collectors, it is good. If it doesn’t please them, it is fine also!

Read more: Spring Studios’ Founder Francesco Costa on building a creative network

LUX: With wine, is the product the most important thing? Or the brand?
Frédéric Rouzaud: (Laughs) The brand comes after the product, in our approach. We do small quantities, small production in our own vineyards. We don’t buy grapes, we don’t buy wine, so it is a small production and we produce a small quantity of wine – not enough for the world and we are fine with that, because we don’t know how to do more at that level of quality. For us the brand is more a Maison; it is a family-owned company and we make a product the best way we can and if it becomes a brand, fine! But we are not trying to make a brand and then make the product. We were founded in 1776 and my brothers and sisters have done a great job to make a brand today – called Roederer – but still the team is really not in that approach of branding. We are really behind our product, behind our vineyards.

“A Cristal bottle is transparent; I tried to make the production process transparent by highlighting the talented people working in the vineyard, the cellars, the factory, the office…” – Sandra Reinflet

LUX: Tell us why you chose Val-d’Isère for your first hotel?
Frédéric Rouzaud: Why Val-d’Isère? This resort in terms of value, authenticity, purity of skiing… it really is the resort in France, if you like to ski. I like to ski and I have been to lots of resorts in France. After testing Val-d’Isère you will be disappointed if you go elsewhere – if you like to ski. Plus the fact that it is a historic hotel, one of the first of the resort, and it belonged to a family – the same family who built the hotel.

LUX: How important is China for you?
Frédéric Rouzaud: It is small yet. We are very strong in Hong Kong, but China is quite small at the moment. First, we do not have the volume. Second, the market is very young. Sometimes champagne is considered as goods which should be offered for parties. I don’t know why – champagne as a commodity. In an emerging market like that you have to sponsor a lot if you want to be in some places and we are not in this game, because we do not have the volume. We have such a respect for the wine itself that we don’t like to give it for free. We only do it sometimes, as a special prize.

LUX: We were talking about biodynamics…
Frédéric Rouzaud: We are running the Cristal estate in Champagne, 100% biodynamically, it has been ten years now so we are very happy with it. I am not a technician, but I have tastes; the grapes and maturities, the balance of the grapes concentration, acidity, level of alcohol – and it is working very well.

LUX: What difference does it make to the products when you make it biodynamically?
Frédéric Rouzaud: It is difficult to express but I think it gives it more vibrancy, more life in the wine.

Find out more: louis-roederer.com

This article was originally published in the Autumn 19 Issue

The Rocco Forte Balmoral hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland

Since he created it in 1996, Sir Rocco Forte has grown his eponymous luxury hotel group to include multiple properties in key destinations across Europe, with a major expansion this year within his family’s native Italy. And there are plans for the boutique group to move into the US, Middle East and Asia. LUX’s Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai speaks to the group’s chairman and founder about new openings, changes in the hospitality industry and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur

Sir Rocco Forte, Chairman of Rocco Forte Hotels

LUX: Rocco Forte hotels is currently in a period of planned rapid expansion – why now?
Sir Rocco Forte: We had a period of consolidation after the financial crisis and have gradually come out of that and the business profitability increased. We’ve improved the quality of the management team. Generally taking the company forward, it was the right moment to start expanding again and looking at adding additional properties…

There are a huge number of different luxury brands within Marriott. Having said that, I think there’s an opportunity for the niche player somewhere, a business that is much more personalised in its approach to its customers, where attention to detail is extremely important. I think people are looking for things which are more individual, more related to where they are going. They want the rubber stamp wherever they go. I think it is going to get more and more difficult for these big companies to actually deliver that, and for a smaller organisation like mine, it’s easier because the top management is hands on. The business and the detail of business has some advantages.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

LUX: How has the landscape and your business philosophy changed since you started?
Sir Rocco Forte: It’s changed significantly on the technological side, the way people buy hotels in particular is much more a business done through the internet than there was than it was before, there are online travel agents who are becoming quite powerful. Customers are now more inclined to book through the web than going to direct to hotel. Then there’s the social media aspect which is also becoming more important, as a means of communication and promotion of properties. There is an interaction between guests who have tried properties and posted comments and so on. This is picked up by other people and used to validate their choice. TripAdvisor type sites didn’t really exist before and now people use it to make up their minds about hotels. Then you have the back of the house side of things; technologies have come in there and give management a greater ability to know their guests. There is increased technology in the rooms, television, wi-fi. Wi-fi became available 20 years ago and now people complain unless they had the fastest band available in the hotel. People used to pay for wi-fi and now they don’t want to pay for it anymore. Telephones, actual landlines have gone out of the hotels; they are hardly used.

In terms of the actual service side, the principles remain the same. The customer wants to be treated as an individual, wants to feel a warm welcome when he goes into a hotel, wants to be recognised. Maybe the relationship between the customer and the staff members has changed to some degree, it’s become slightly less formal, which is something that we did from the beginning.  I wanted to de-formalise the service to some degree. Then you’ve also got to keep up to date in a hotel because there are things that people have in their own houses that they expect to find at a hotel and it is a competitive market place.

The front hall at Brown’s, a Rocco Forte hotel in London. Photo by Janos Grapow

LUX: The marketplace is much more crowded nowadays with new players coming in and there’s Airbnb. What is it that has allowed you to keep going and growing with so much more supply?
Sir Rocco Forte: Airbnb doesn’t really effect the luxury end to any great degree. Airbnb has already started to show problems with consistency. There are plenty of niche players coming in and it does eat into the marketplace, but if you have a well-located hotel and you deliver an excellent service and have a regular clientele that like the place, it’s very difficult to prize a luxury customer away from a hotel that he’s used to and where the staff are trained to his needs. There have been a lot of new openings in London and there are more in the pipeline; there’s always a supply and demand equation. I think you’ve got to try and distinguish your hotel group from others and make a potential customer feel that they will get something special, something different if they come to you. The staff are the people who deliver the service and you’ve got to ensure that they’re motivated in the right way. They need to have the right training, the right philosophical background. We put a lot of effort into induction where we tell them about the family, the history of the company, the history of the hotel and something about the city where the hotel is located  so everyone has a sense of heritage and belonging as a family. It is my sister and myself and three children running the hotels, we know a lot of the individual staff members and it creates a sense of warmth in our hotels which you cannot necessarily find anywhere else.

Read more: Chaumet’s latest exhibition reveals the symbolic power of tiaras

LUX: Is it important that your guests can recognise the brand when they’re staying at one of your hotels?
Sir Rocco Forte: Yes, part of having a group is that, you get cross fertilisation and you get customers using more than one hotel, following the brand. So the brand is important because the customer knows that if he comes to Brown’s or goes to Hotel de Russie in Rome, he will get a certain type of service and a certain type of welcome.

LUX: A lot of your properties are significant and historic properties in individual cities, how do you imbue them with the Rocco Forte brand?
Sir Rocco Forte: The induction is consistent throughout the company that creates the blueprint on which the hotel is based. My sister who leads the decor has a strong agenda and sense of place. It is very difficult sometimes to please everybody. The thing is you get a hotel designer to design the hotel and there are the prototype rooms, but it is never quite finished, it is a design hotel, you are always adding little bits and pieces and so on, which gives a more personalised touch. My sister does that very well. She usually buys locally, which give the rooms a more homely feel.

The view from the Popolo Suite at Hotel de Russie in Rome

LUX: You have lots of developments happening in Italy at the moment – is Italy a particularly important destination to you?
Sir Rocco Forte: Italy is not the easiest place to do business, so in a way that is an advantage for us. Italy is a tourist destination, it is the prime tourist destination in the world. The American market loves Italy and that’s a very important market for travel. About 40% of our business comes from the States, you can get high prices for the rooms you sell, which in some destinations it’s impossible to do. So from that point of view, it’s attractive. The bureaucracy and the labour laws make it difficult, but the demand is there if you get the right hotel in the right location and at the price.

LUX: And Italy is underserved by luxury hotels, isn’t it?
Sir Rocco Forte: Yes, there’s no luxury chain across Italy, and we now have the opportunity to create one. We have six hotels and the three new hotels that we’re developing — we are doing a second hotel in Rome, a small 40 bedroom hotel in Puglia, and we have just taken on a place in Palermo, which is a 100 bedroom hotel and used to be a jewel of a place, but is now very run down and it’s been badly run for many years. It is a wonderful destination hotel. The city Palermo is having a revival, a lot of people are buying houses there, and doing them up. It is quite a good time to go in there and I already have a resort in south of Sicily, and Palermo is the airport you use for that so having the two properties working together is beneficial. But obviously, I need to be in Venice and Milan, I’d like to be on the Amalfi coast and some of the other heritage cities with smaller hotels. I am pushing to try and get there.

I also still want to be in the States…New York and LA and Miami maybe, I’d like to be in Paris, I’d like to be in Moscow, and probably another German city. Hamburg or Dusseldorf would complete the German equation. We are doing our first hotel in the Far East, in Shanghai, which will open next year. We don’t have a clear date, things get delayed quite a lot there.  It is moving forward, but slower than it is supposed to. That will be our first step into that part of the world. We will see. If I am going to travel to my hotels and if they are way out, that’s less attractive. I have to think carefully about it, about how far we extend geographically. Within Europe it is fairly straightforward.

Read more: Maryam Eisler’s new photography series reimagines pastoral romance

LUX: With the new portfolio that you are developing, are most of the hotels owned or managed, or both?
Sir Rocco Forte: The Palermo hotel we bought, but we probably won’t keep the ownership. We are talking to a partner about taking it on and leasing it back to us. The other two are leases, I prefer leases to management contracts because we’re in control with a lease. You have complete control of the property and you can do more or less what you want. With a management contract, the owner tends to interfere all the time. He thinks he knows how to run the property better than you do. If the hotel is doing well, he doesn’t need you, if the hotel is doing badly it is your fault. You take on more risk with a lease, but then it is a bigger upside and you have control over your own destiny.

A Junior Suite at Hotel de La Ville, one of two Rocco Forte hotels in Rome

LUX: As an entrepreneur, what qualities have you needed to get to this stage with RF Hotels?
Sir Rocco Forte: Very difficult to say. I think you have to have a passion for what you’re doing, what you want to do, and you have to really care, and have people around you who believe in what you’re trying to do, who will help you to do it. You have to have determination. Where there are obstacles you have to overcome them. You have to have the determination to overcome them, not take no for an answer, continuously try to move things forward. It is easy to get dispirited, upset and to give up. A lot of people do, but I am not made that way and I am always looking forward, always looking to see if I can do things better. It is that, and I think the minute I stop having a passion, then I should stop working. But I hope that will never happen.

LUX: Do you have dreams of passing on the business to your children one day?
Sir Rocco Forte: Yes, but my kid are still in the early stages and they might well reach a stage, where they don’t want to take on responsibility so we’ll see. At the moment, that’s the idea. And it’s good having them working the business, it gives a certain continuity to the business and it adds value to the business. In the short term, it makes us different to a lot of other companies and from a personal point of view, it gives me a huge amount of pleasure: my kids have left home, but I see them all the time. We’ve got something in common to talk about and to argue about, and to enjoy. You never know — I could go under the proverbial bus tomorrow. And then what happens? The business is in a position where it can continue to go forward, but then my family would have to decide what they want to do.

LUX: Talking about the younger generation, do you think that, as customers, their demands of the hospitality industry are different?
Sir Rocco Forte: Apart from the technological side that we were talking about it earlier, the way they dress is differently, but in the end of the day they still enjoy service and being looked after. It depends…a lot of them are brought up under very comfortable circumstances and they understand that way of life and I don’t think they are particularly different. All the ones I’ve seen using my hotels, seem to enjoy the facilities like anybody else. I suppose there is more of a consciousness of wellness and well-being and looking after yourself than there was in the previous generations. We meet those demands through the facilities that we have in the hotels already. But I wouldn’t say there is anything dramatic and to build a hotel for a specific sector of a population is narrowing your market quite considerably. I also think people whether they are millennials or older people, like the idea of heritage and like the idea of history, and they enjoy it when they experience it — I don’t think that has changed. Most people want to know what is the next thing? I don’t know what the next thing is, but I think hotels tend to follow trends rather than set them. Mine do anyway. I think in the luxury sector, that is more so than it is anywhere… You have hotels now that have no staff, you put a credit card in a slot, you get a room key and you go up to your room. And there isn’t a restaurant, there are communal rooms for people to use, you help yourself, all these sorts of things, but not at the top end of the market. I don’t see anything dramatic on the horizon.

Read more: Where I would invest £100m in property by Knight Frank’s Andrew Hay

LUX: Your portfolio is predominantly city-based. Have you ever been tempted to start a resort hotel in tropical climates? And if not, why not?
Sir Rocco Forte: Because anything I’ve looked at hasn’t really worked financially. I haven’t managed to find anything. The hotel in Puglia has a beach facility available, but it is not on the sea. And then there is a seasonality thing, which is difficult. When you are building a new hotel from scratch, to finance that on quite a short winter season, for example, is difficult because it closes, then it opens for a very short summer season and then it closes again…

A luxurious villa at Rocco Forte’s Verdura Resort in Sicily

LUX: And what about the residences model that a lot of new hotels seem to have now, is that something you’d ever consider?
Sir Rocco Forte: It depends on the property, the location and the size of the property. But in Rome we’re now doing five luxury apartments, which are situated on the corner of Piazza de Spagna, which is within walking distance to our hotels (one is on top of the Spanish steps and the other one is on Piazza del Popolo). So that’s a new endeavour. Also we’re building some villas now in Verdura, which initially will be let as basically a sort of extended stay or hotel accommodation for families who want to stay together in one unit. We’re starting to get into that market.

LUX: Are there any other new developments in the pipeline that we should know about?
Sir Rocco Forte: My daughter has been working on the spas. The spa in the new hotel in Rome will be her spa design, which she thinks will be the first properly designed spa. She thinks that it has more activity and treatments and so on, which will encourage people to come and see. There are a range of creams that she produced which are properly organic so that is a bit of a new venture. Otherwise, we are continually looking to improve the facilities in our hotels. We are looking at the food side particularly. It is difficult for hotels to do restaurants well. We are always searching. A lot of places that have successful restaurants started out being run by restauranteurs, rather than hoteliers and then they have a few rooms as well. For example, Chiltern Firehouse or Costes originally, they had a few rooms and then they bought the hotel next door extending it. I haven’t found the key to creating really successful restaurants. Our restaurants are doing well by the standards of hotel restaurants. If we are doing 120 covers a day, we are happy, but there are restaurants doing 250 covers a day. Some hotel restaurants you go into, you never see anybody there. That is not the case with ours, but we can do a lot better than we do.

Discover the full Rocco Forte portfolio: roccofortehotels.com

The entrance to the Corinthia Hotel in Westminster, London

Under the leadership of Alfred Pisani, Corinthia Hotels has grown from a single family-owned banquet hall in Malta to a global luxury brand with properties in 9 destinations and forthcoming openings in Dubai and Brussels. LUX speaks to the Maltese businessman about the challenges he’s faced, his guiding principles and the importance of creating a strong employee culture

Founder & Chairman of Corinthia Hotels, Alfred Pisani

LUX: You developed one of the first deluxe hotels in Malta on your family’s estate. Can you tell us about that story?
Alfred Pisani: It’s a long story but I’ll try and abbreviate. Basically, I was not planning to become a hotelier. My interests when I was at college were mathematics and science; a very logical style of thinking, which I think is very important to our life anyway. My father had just bought a beautiful, majestic villa with some 20,000 square metres of land and wasn’t quite sure whether we were going to live in it or he was going to do business in it. Unfortunately, he passed away four months later, and suddenly, together with my brothers, I had the responsibility of deciding what to do with this property. The place had not been lived in for a number of years and obviously deterioration had taken place, so our first step was to try and put that right. I went to the bank and got a loan, which my uncle supported me with in terms of security, and we first started using this magnificent hall for receptions and weddings, parties and so on.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

Then one day someone came along and said, ‘Why don’t you provide the catering as well?’ so we brought in an outside caterer to help us with that request. After that, we organised a proper kitchen, and then we opened our own restaurant. Two years down the line, there was a big drive from the government to give incentives to entrepreneurs, as the country was changing the economy from  one totally dependent on a naval and military base (as the English were pulling out), to one where we would have industry and tourism, to create a new economy. So I applied, and I went with my own drawing of a forty-room hotel to the appropriate ministry, but we were told we wouldn’t qualify unless we had a minimum 150 rooms.

The opening of Corinthia Palace in Malta, 1968

A few weeks later, I went back with an elongated hotel with 156 rooms. And the guy said to me, ‘So you have money for 40 rooms, but do you have room for 156?’ I said, ‘Well, no, but the bank does. They’re going to give us the money.’ He was amused, but I still went through the motions. I went to one bank, and then another, and then another, and eventually I found one large enough to handle the job. The same question was asked about our equity, and I told them the equity was the building, the ground and our effort. We got 100% funding, and this is something I’m still proud of today. That was unheard of then. But I assume the timing was part of the whole success; there was a tremendous push to bring in foreign currency and to create a new industry.

Then when I came to build the hotel, I found the local contractors were very busy and too expensive, so I decided I’d be the contractor. I actually employed people from the street – literally. And I’ve never built a hotel as fast as that. Never. Today I keep saying to everybody, ‘We do so many drawings that we’d have enough paper to build a hotel out of it.’ But obviously things have become very much more complicated with all the electronics and everything. It’s quite remarkable, though, what one can do when one is determined. I remember buying a second-hand mixer to do the concrete, and we would throw in the aggregate, the sand and the cement and I’d hold a pipe and I’d look it and say, ‘Hmm, yes, the consistency looks right, let’s pour.’

Read more: New luxury hotel Chais Monnet opens near Bordeaux

You know, it’s remarkable with what you can do with nothing. We would work from 6 o’clock in the morning until about 11 o’clock at night, day in, day out, for around two years. And then we opened and it was successful. Again, there were coincidences that helped us along the road and we took the opportunities. Some decisions were very difficult to make in terms of bringing in new partners and going from one playing field to a more advanced one with new shareholders and new standards. And you have to remember that we didn’t have a home market. The banks couldn’t come aboard with us, because they just didn’t have the capital to do that. So, each time we went to an outside destination we’d have to talk to banks who didn’t know us. That didn’t make it easy. You really had to prove yourself. And you had to appoint new architects too. This was what I found most difficult. If you got your first step outside your island wrong, it would just knock you out. So you couldn’t afford to get it wrong. At that time, I didn’t think like that: I just went and went and went. I never had a doubt in my mind. I suppose that’s the beauty of youth, when you are full of enthusiasm and determination but you are limited in your expertise and experience: that combination worked well for us.

Ladies enjoying the pool at Corinthia Palace, Malta in 1968

We have always focused on trying to achieve the best. I don’t think in the early days we gave more importance to visibility as to the quality. I have a strong conviction that quality will win the day. You have to get every step right and then the results will be right. I had a natural tendency to focus on the details and trying to get everything right with the strong belief that that was ultimately what would produce the results I wanted. We don’t have a real measure. I used to say, ‘If I sow one hundred seeds, ninety-five will grow, because that’s part of nature.’ So as long as you move with the current of nature, the results are going to be further growth. There were these very strong principles from a very early stage, and I was constantly trying to share my beliefs and direction with everybody else.

LUX: What do you think sets the Corinthia apart?
Alfred Pisani: Well, today, after so many years of growing a hotel out of a very small country, we have brought another element into our consideration. Not only do we believe in ‘doing it right’ in order to generate a positive return, but we’ve gone one step further by saying we want to “uplift lives”. It will probably take a long time to appreciate what I’m trying to say; I didn’t think like this when I was younger, but it’s something people get to eventually. If you want a more productive outcome from your colleagues – I don’t like to call them employees – you must identify a sense of caring. If you share your knowledge, give a helping hand and show respect, this creates a more committed work force, where everybody is aligning the energy. It’s just like in a magnet: when you align all the atoms instead of having them in disarray, you create a magnet. Simply by infusing a sense of discipline and purpose, you can align everyone’s energies to think in the same direction. You create an energy where, like a magnet, though you can’t see it, you can sense it.

So, from being totally focused on wanting perfection, it has translated itself over the years into saying how can you make everyone within the family more successful as an individual? You must sleep well, eat well, socialise – work is just another aspect of this holistic responsibility. If you can get your engine to be firing correctly on all cylinders, you just get your efficiency a bit higher; you fine tune it. That’s what I think sets Corinthia apart. We have a very close interaction with our personnel. We call it the family. I truly say this with all sincerity: people who have come to the company, and even those who leave the company, will always remain Corinthians. They will always show respect. I say this with a lot of conviction and satisfaction.

A suite at the Corinthia Hotel in London

LUX: We’ve been discussing your properties in Malta – is that your biggest market?
Alfred Pisani: If we go back to when I opened my first hotel in 1968, at that time, with Malta still having a semi-colonial relationship with Britain, all we knew was the UK. We bought everything from the UK, right down to the smallest screw. Our tourism came from the UK, I would say 99%. There was no corporate business because there was no business. People came mainly in summer. Their stays would be long stays – one or two weeks – and it was all handled by tour operators, who distributed the brochures and displayed the hotel across the UK. They would come over in August and agree the rates for the following year. Everything was agreed a year in advance.

Read more: Luxury watch designer Richard Mille on creativity and supercars

Over the years the government and hoteliers realised that it was necessary to diversify for the future and effort was put into marketing it in Europe. And this has, over the years, mainly succeeded, because now we have visitors from all over. Possibly Britain is still number 1. I think it’s a healthy situation to arrive at. When we came to open in London, we knew what the story was. In the five-star business, you had the home market and the United States. So we made a big effort in the United States to win our share of the five star business coming to London, competing against all the other well-known brands, who have been there for a very long time. I think we did very well in penetrating the market in the space of two or three years.

The Pool at ESPA, Corinthia London

LUX: What’s the biggest challenge in investing in other countries?
Alfred Pisani: As I said earlier our bankers, our lawyers, our everything could not move with us. We had to look for destination  where their business had a similarity to us such as resort businesses, holiday businesses, and where it was not too expensive that we could not afford it. I couldn’t dream of coming to London or New York so to begin we built five hotels in Turkey and because I didn’t feel confident enough I looked for Turkish partner.

After 1990 when there was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, tremendous opportunities were available in Russia and all the Eastern European countries came by cheaply. Now, we were, I think, even ahead of the banks! We went into St Petersburg and Budapest and so on and they were good opportunities. We visited every single east European country that had now opened, but what I didn’t have, because I don’t think we were wise yet or we didn’t have the reputation yet, was funding and support from a consult team of banks and institutions which was somewhat of a handicap because the opportunities I met were tremendous.

Read more: The Secret Diary of an Oxford Undergraduate

LUX: And you’ve got properties opening in Brussels and Dubai?
Alfred Pisani: We bought the property in Brussels so that belongs to us, but in Dubai we are purely in management. We will run our flag on one of the most beautiful hotels to be built in Dubai and it will be Corinthia, but we are not the owners. We have supported it in the designs – it will be stunning and it’s set to open in 2020.

In the meantime, we have been operating two other properties on behalf of the same company, the Meydan Group. They have the Meydan Hotel which has big horse racing track and all of the bedrooms overlook the track. It’s a very successful property and we have seen tremendous increase in the bottom line since we took over, together with another hotel which they own in the desert called Bab Al Shams. So, apart from investing in our own properties I think now we have a brand that is visible enough and that is providing good enough standards to also offer it to third party owners and hopefully expand our brand in many more hotels without necessarily putting in capital.

The restaurant at Corinthia London, headed by Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge

LUX: What’s the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn?
Alfred Pisani: I think the lesson I learnt was a confirmation of the conviction I already had to do everything properly and that by doing everything properly, you stood a much bigger chance of success, as opposed to taking shortcuts. We kept to this principal and we would never get involved with political parties in countries. What I realise today, which I didn’t realise at the time, is that I think we were right  in the way we negotiated and I don’t think I would change it if I had to do it all over again. My advice to those who are still starting is keep on the straight.

LUX: Do you see a difference in what younger and older travellers expect from luxury?
Alfred Pisani: Yes, there has been a change of expectations from the customers in terms of the hardware, for example, bathrooms. However, the basic ingredients that they look for haven’t changed. Are you welcomed with a smile that is genuine and not plastic? Do you truly, collectively, radiate an energy of positiveness, which makes the customer feel good even though he cannot put his finger on it? Those elements haven’t really changed that much. I don’t know whether in a number of years to come whether we will be interacting with one another in a deeper way by the development of our intellect, the telepathy, the ability to feel and sense each other in a stronger way with the support of electronics… That’s the future.

LUX: And what about the future of Corinthia Hotels?
Alfred Pisani: Growth. I am sure that the principles that we have worked with will be maintained and the new phrase that was created recently in our last general managers’ meeting in Brussels: “uplifting lives”. That phrases encompasses how we want to continue helping our colleagues to grow and become better people.

Discover Corinthia hotels: corinthia.com

The captivating expanse of the Moroccan desert

In his latest column for LUX, Geoffrey Kent, founder of leading luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, discusses the growing interest in luxury adventure travel, recalling his own thirst for exploration and the importance of a personalised experience.

Geoffrey Kent on his motorcycle adventures

A rise in luxury adventure travel can be explained in many different ways – whether it be a desire to escape the norm, a wish to discover uncharted territories or a need to rediscover a sense of self. Whatever the reason, adventure means something different to everyone and there are some amazing opportunities out there to be experienced.

My early years in Kenya were spent exploring the Aberdares barefoot, much to my mother’s chagrin. When I was 16, I rode a Daimler Puch 250cc motorcycle from Nairobi to Cape Town and I joined the British Army in 1959 (only after I’d climbed Kilimanjaro, of course). My desire for adventure has always been the driving force in my life.

During my solo bike ride from Nairobi to Cape Town, I stayed in a five-star hotel for the first time. I then realised that any adventure is made more palatable if by night, fresh sheets, a spring mattress, security and luxury are offered.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

In recent years, more and more travel companies have taken this idea on board and their offerings will inspire anyone who looks for both luxury and adventure in their travels. There has been a sea change in what luxury adventure means. It is becoming a far more personal and involved decision. But how can we make this more different, exclusive and unique?

I recently took a group of adventurous clients into the heart of the Arctic Circle to experience the mesmerising phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis. From a wilderness lodge, each night we watched the skies for the Northern Lights. By day, we met local Sami nomads with their reindeer herds and their mystical Shamans.

A wild reindeer grazing in Norway

For those looking to experience a complete unknown in lesser-visited places, I recommend a trip to the Indian state of Nagaland on the Myanmar border. Here, eagle-hunters and Mongol herders will introduce you to their traditional way of life, creating an understanding of their culture and customs which goes beyond any text-book description.

Read more by Geoffrey Kent: The hottest luxury travel destinations for 2018

Although it is clear that adventure travel is not reliant on adrenalin anymore, for some people adding these elements in can create a whole new level of experience. Taking control of your own desert 4×4, having received expert guidance from a former logistics officer of the Paris-Dakar Rally, could reveal Morocco to you from a completely different perspective.

All options for luxury adventure travel are open to us now. We have the expertise and knowledge to build amazing adventures in exactly the way people want to live them. A backpack and a map may promise adventure for a student but for a time-poor customer, combining the unknown or the unexpected with knowledge and seamless logistics makes the experience accessible.

One of the world’s most mesmerising natural phenomena: The Northern Lights

Adventure travel is a step into the unknown. Add luxury and you are making it a transformative experience with personalised service. But it is also so much more – experiences you never dreamed of, sights you never expected to see, like the beauty of a silent sunrise in Iceland or the inexplicable phenomenon of the Northern Lights.

Life is richer and deeper with these experiences. Holidays should always enrich our lives – however we personally choose to make that happen.

Bangkok-based designer, Bill Bensley is renowned for his original approach to luxury

Bill Bensley is the go-to designer for one-of-a-kind luxury hotels. The Bangkok-based architect has masterminded over 200 properties in 30-plus countries, including the world’s first edible golf course at Belle Mont Farm, St. Kitts, the art-deco inspired boutique The Siam and The Four Seasons Tented Camp Golden Triangle buried in the depths of the Thai jungle. Digital Editor Millie Walton speaks to Bensley about escapism, sustainability and fly fishing for trout on the Mongolian border.

LUX: All of your hotels are remarkably unique. What’s your process when creating a concept?
Bill Bensley: Well thank you. Very kind of you to say so. While I don’t have a set process for generating good ideas I do listen very carefully to what an environmentally sensitive piece of wilderness tells me. An ear to the ground, or an understanding of how a natural environment works is key. When building in a new region, I also listen to and understand with great interest the idiosyncrasies of the culture presented. I never force my style anywhere.

The Shinta Mani Angkor hotel in Cambodia’s temple city, Siem Reap

LUX: Do you have a favourite hotel that you’ve designed?
Bill Bensley: Hands down it is the Shinta Mani Angkor in Siem Reap as we have used the hotel as a vehicle to help thousands of less fortunate Cambodians from housing to free dentistry, to water wells and water purification, to schooling of hospitality, starting small businesses and distributing little known agricultural crops for villagers to grow and reproduce…. and besides that it is a damn good value for money with wonderful staff that cannot do enough to make your stay comfortable and memorable. Last year it hit #1 in the world on Trip Advisor!

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

JW Marriott Emerald Bay

LUX: We recently stayed at your newest hotel, JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay. It was like being in another world. Is escapism something you try to achieve with your designs?
Bill Bensley: Escapism, in the purely positive sense, is a great goal. I also think that in the building of a new hotel it is important to teach guests something new. Something they never knew. Something to take home other than sunburn.

LUX: The JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay has been a huge Instagram success (especially the shell pool!). Did you consider the influence of social media when designing the hotel?
Bill Bensley: My brain does not work that well yet! But I do think that if a multi-storied guest tower is part of the picture, as with Lamarck University, then I strive to make that landscape graphic visually.

LUX: What excites you the most about your work?
Bill Bensley: The fact that folks pay me to play. I have never worked a day in my life. I am excited about the publics response to my out of the box, crazy / sane approach to designing new hotel properties.

Bill Bensley’s latest luxury resort, the JW Marriott Emerald Bay on Phu Quoc island off the coast of Vietnam

LUX: How do you think the luxury hospitality industry has evolved in recent years?
Bill Bensley: It is more and more sophisticated, and specialised. Soon we will be designing hotels that appeal to specifically to the jovial lesbians, 23-29 years of age, with rescued three legged dogs that love indoor snow boarding. Hot trend!

Read next: Inside the workshop of the world’s most luxurious artisanal glassware company

LUX: You’ve designed hotels in many interesting and remote locations around the world. How do you celebrate local culture whilst creating something new and unique?
Bill Bensley: To do so one requires a deep understanding of that culture. I am an avid reader. I love to visit places of worship which is usually the paramount of culture in most societies.

Shinta Mani Wild luxury camp in Cambodia

LUX: Is sustainability important to you?
Bill Bensley: Sustainability is paramount. I hate green-washers. Before my life as a resort architect and an interior designer I was trained as a landscape architect. About 6 years ago I purchased the logging rights to 1400 acres of Cambodian forest, with no intention of becoming a lumberjack. By way of Shinta Mani Wild Bensley Collection, a 15 tent very high end, low impact high yield product, we have created a wilderness sanctuary that will remain wild for at least the length of my 99 year lease. At 1800 USD per night per couple my wilderness experience promises more adventure than most can handle, unlimited spa services, foraging, and a deep understanding of the wilderness that is Cambodia.Our National Geographic Lodge experience is about regenerating a small part of our disappearing fragile natural environment.

Inside one of the tents at the Shinta Mani Wild camp, Cambodia

LUX: What are you working on now?
Bill Bensley: Bags of projects. The new Shinta Mani Bensley Collection hotels in Siem Reap and the Cardamom National Park in Cambodia are keeping me hopping right now, but that aside we are soon to open the Rosewood in Luang Prabang, the Capella in Keliki near Ubud, Bali, the Ritz Carlton in both Hainan, China and Phu Quoc, Vietnam, and a fabulous MGallery hotel in Sapa, North Vietnam and a St Regis on the gorgeous Cham Island just off of Hoi An in Vietnam, another Four Seasons (I have designed 12) in the Chinese Himalayas, and a Banyan Tree in Goa, India, a zillion GBP residence in Mayfair, new Oberoi hotels in the Maldives, Kathmandu and Bhardia (West Nepal), an Indigo in Jakarta, shall I go on? I can….for days.

LUX: Where do you go to escape?
Bill Bensley: I just returned today to my home of 30 years: Bangkok. My Thai partner and travel a great deal. We have visited 92 countries and counting. Just visited Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Slovenia, Morocco. Warsaw, surprisingly was the highlight of the trip. Every year we escape for 2-3 weeks to the Mongolian Russian border to fly fish for trout and taimen. This past summer was great…. 48 in one day. Biggest trout? 44”.

bensley.com

Luxury Cotswolds hotel Buckland Manor is part of the Andrew Brownsword hotel collection

In an era of parallel entrepreneurs, who start several businesses at once, Andrew Brownsword is a serial entrepreneur, in two very different businesses. He is currently chairman and owner of Andrew Brownsword Hotels, which owns a group of luxury country house hotels (renowned for their cuisine) and chic city hotels, in the UK. But until 1994, he was known as the man behind the famous ‘Forever Friends’ greeting cards that took the market in the UK and across Europe by storm, reinventing the staid greeting card industry. He sold the company to Hallmark that year for a reported £195m, and bought The Bath Priory, a stately hotel just outside Britain’s most celebrated Roman city. Now he is chairman of the eponymous company that owns and runs a total of 13 hotels around the UK, including country jewels such as Gidleigh Park, with its two Michelin-starred restaurant; and boutique city hotels under the Abode brand. In a rare interview, he speaks to LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai about the luxury hotel market, and why Britain is best.

Andrew Brownsword

LUX: Cuisine seems to be an important element of your hotels, although it never seems to be formal. Is it growing in importance?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes. We do believe in the (Michelin) star system, and Michelin is a good guide for people. Gidleigh Park is a two Michelin star hotel, for example. Bath Priory has always been a one Michelin star hotel, and it is a place for local celebration.

LUX: You are developing city centre hotels alongside the country hotels; why?
Andrew Brownsword: We’re acquisitive but we are essentially looking for the right locations. In the city centres, as in the country. Where we are, Chester, Manchester, Canterbury, Exeter, Glasgow, London, they’re all important to us, but you could add Cambridge and Oxford to that, also Birmingham. Purely by chance, most of our hotels are on Roman roads, or were around in Roman times, or they’re in Roman cities, so you could say most of the country was invaded by Romans but it’s remarkable that you can take a Roman journey through England and probably stay in 11 of our 13 hotels.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

LUX: You don’t go for great lavish launch parties and big media trips, do you?
Andrew Brownsword: That’s just me I suppose. I think it’s a reflection of my personality as much as anything. We are self-funding and we don’t have big American companies or big Chinese companies behind us, so we do it quietly. But you’re right. We have a media presence obviously and we gain a reputation slowly by stealth.

LUX: This is obviously your second career – is that correct to say?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes, I’m a publisher really. A greetings card publisher, specifically.

LUX: You still feel that that’s what you do?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes, it’s on my passport.

LUX: What was the secret behind building up your greetings card company, from zero, as thoroughly as you did over the years?
Andrew Brownsword: I think it was just, well obviously hard work, we started from scratch. I think we were very innovative and creative. OPQ – originality, personality and quality – all we did was create different things. The market when I joined it was mostly imported from America. So we had American humour and American humour is very sanitised. We Brits, as you know, tend to use innuendo and take the mickey and use drink and drugs and sex and rock ‘n’ roll as things on which we base our humour. So I produced cards like that and eventually we produced very soft teddy bear cards, which also, well that was the big one. Forever Friends, is what I’m known for. We started creating imaginary worlds through these things and it struck me that anybody else would have produced it as a child’s range, but my feeling was that it could be very successful as an adult range. Which it was, worldwide.

Read next: The ‘New Epic’ of Bologna’s Wu Ming Collective 

LUX: It sounds like you’re saying the creativity of the cards was as important as anything else, what was on them?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes. Words were important but they were very different words to a word or humour that had been used before. It was very much the English way of doing things.

Interiors at The Slaughters Manor House in Gloucestershire

LUX: And after selling the cards business, you could have just done nothing or had one hotel..
Andrew Brownsword: Oh right, yes we sold well, it was a very successful business, it was an international business. I enjoyed the travelling. I did that for another four and a half years at Hallmark. And yes, we bought this hotel within months of selling the business, just on a whim because we suddenly had some money. And so, we bought the hotel, and that is how it started really. But we didn’t really think of having a chain of hotels, that wasn’t the intention. And still, the thing is to get quality, to get original sites, not necessarily to dampen the quality of what we do, the personality of what we do. We like to think our hotels each have a different personality. It’s quite an eclectic group of properties, and it’s interesting like that to me. Usually they feature our art and a lot of our interior ideas, and they don’t necessarily follow a formula. And at Gidleigh Park, we extended and refurbished the whole hotel shortly after purchasing the property, adding elements including stunning bathrooms and spa suites, to retain the property’s character but include some contemporary elements.

LUX: Is there an abiding philosophy? Obviously the hotels are individual, but is there something that customers will experience at all of them that is the same?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes, good service. Excellent service, I hope. And the quality, as I say, of the bed and the bathroom. Bathrooms are very important to us.

LUX: Hospitality is a tough industry.
Andrew Brownsword: It is a tough industry but we’ve been in it 25 years, so there’s a lot of new people on the block. It’s tough like this, where it’s not a formulaic thing. Premier Inn is not tough anymore, you can just open those all the time. But I don’t want to be in that business. The greeting card business was different, it was exciting. We all have exciting businesses, you publish magazines, that’s exciting. And that’s your career. My publishing is my career. What would you next step into if you didn’t do that? It’s a difficult question. So this suits us because we’re laying down a foundation. We’re not just hoteliers, we’re fairly large-scale farmers as well. I’ve been buying land for some years. Mainly arable land. So we mainly go growing crops. Potatoes, carrots and parsnips for the big supermarkets.

LUX: Is that a separate business that you own?
Andrew Brownsword: Very separate. It’s mainly owned, like all these businesses, in trusts for family future. I’m building a future for the family, hopefully, and setting it in such a way as most people like me do, that it will continue for a long, long time.

LUX: Your country hotels are luxury, and your city hotels are more four star level.
Andrew Brownsword: Yes. While Exeter and Canterbury are still primarily leisure, and actually Manchester and Chester are as well really, I think we suit the leisure market [in the cities] very well. We try to be a bit different, have a sense of location and personality. A bit creative.

Gidleigh Park has a renowned two Michelin-starred restaurant

LUX: Gidleigh Park [with two Michelin stars] is renowned for its food. Since you took over [and installed new chef Michael Wignall] the cuisine has become lighter. Is that a trend with fine dining?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes. I think food is becoming simpler, more digestible and more interesting, in so many ways. Gidleigh Park now has a much lighter touch.

Read next: The world’s most exclusive polo tournament in Gstaad

LUX: As a greeting-card publisher turned hotelier, was there ever any impetus to run a hotel when you were young?
Andrew Brownsword: Yes, my original life plan was to manage a hotel. I had a job in a hotel as a waiter, when I was 15,16,17, at a hotel in Folkestone but on my first year at Brighton polytechnic I came back and immediately got chicken pox, so they didn’t want me in the hotel, quite rightly, so I lay on my back for about 2/3 weeks and the chicken pox went and I hadn’t got a job. And my mother sent me down to the labour exchange, as it was called in those days, to get a job because my mother was very much a driving force. And I had a very ambitious mother, for me. So she sent me down to the labour exchange and I got a job driving a van for a packaging manufacturer. He he did produce a few greetings card on the edge of the packaging sheets. He printed these things on the edge.

My idea was simply not to be a printer because I hadn’t any money, so I couldn’t buy the machinery. But actually to hire someone like him to print them. Those days, in the Seventies, if you were a greeting card publisher, you were also a printer. That’s where all the cost was.

So I started, and I don’t think entrepreneurs are born entrepreneurs, I think they are created out of naivety. We start with these wonderful ambitions and dreams and then we have to find the first hurdle comes and then the second hurdle is bigger. For ten years I was probably insolvent. I owed the bank more money than I had, but I always succeeded, never went bankrupt or anything. But for a few thousand pounds I was probably insolvent for ten years, until I found the artists and the creativity in me, and the creativity came from seeing a market place full of American greeting cards. And realising that we were funnier than these greeting cards. You and I could crack a funnier joke than most of these cards. The Americans take life seriously and they take themselves seriously and they can’t laugh at themselves really. I thought that was the case for Germans as well but actually we did very well in Germany in terms of British humour, until I found out that the German translations of our humour were very, very on the edge. Risqué is the word.

LUX: Is there a common factor in success in your two careers?
Andrew Brownsword: I think so. It’s trying to do things in a different way and trying to be original and putting some of your personality into the businesses you run, and certainly the quality matters. And you have to enjoy it. You’ve got to be having fun.

brownswordhotels.com

Priya Paul, one of India’s most prominent entrepreneurs, is chairperson of the design conscious, luxury five-star boutique hotel group ‘The Park Hotels’. She is heir to the Apeejay Surrendra Group, owners of Typhoo Tea, and her determination, spirit for hospitality and flair for design awarded her India’s fourth highest civilian honour, the Padma Shri in 2012 (for her services to Trade & Industry by the President of India). The President of the French Republic granted her Insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite (National Order of Merit) an Order of State.  Kitty Harris talks to Priya about the Indian luxury market, leadership and innovating whilst staying true to heritage.

Priya Paul

LUX: Apeejay Surrendra Group has been running for over 100 years. How has the business evolved since it began?
Priya Paul: The family business started over one hundred years ago with my grandfather and my father’s brothers and the business was originally in steel – in steel trading, small manufacturing and then into steel production. It then moved into shipping. We do dry bulk cargo ships and shipping, and we still have that business.

Later we added businesses such as hospitality, tea, real estate, finance, logistics and a whole lot of other businesses. Right now, it is my brother, my sister and myself who run the business and the main sort of businesses are shipping tea. We are the largest producers of tea in the country and we own Typhoo UK. We also have a hospitality business, real estate, logistics and other financial investments.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

LUX: What is the greatest challenge facing a group with so many different branches of investment?
Priya Paul: Indian businesses have been more diversified and have responded to many of the needs that the country has had in terms of investing. Traditionally, a lot of Indian business houses have largely been diversified. Firstly, to respond to the different needs and industries that arose when India was in its early decades of birth. I think having a diversified list of assets has been quite good for us over the long term; sometimes one thing is a drag and in other times, another one is. Particularly in a large family it has been quite good, because everyone has their own space.

LUX: It’s a family run business, is this ever difficult?
Priya Paul: Our family business was much larger, until we split up in 1989. Since then it has been my brother, my sister and myself. My mother and one of my uncles were also involved the nineties, so at one point there were five of us in the business. As I said, the business is large enough for everyone to have their own space. Yet, we make a lot of decisions together, certainly in the larger investments or re-investing. Decisions are made by us siblings now, together, and I think as we’ve grown up pretty much in the same age we see a lot of the same things and our world view is very similar. It has been quite rewarding for us.

LUX: You began your career under your father, the late Surrendra Paul, what was the greatest lesson you learnt from him?
Priya Paul: I worked with my dad for about a year and a half before he died. I think my father was very disciplined and I could see that in his work and in what he did. I can’t say I’m as disciplined, but it is something I try to emulate. He was especially disciplined and so I learnt from that. He would say, “work hard and play hard, and enjoy life too”. So that is how I live my life.

LUX: You’re the Chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels – what is the key to its success?
Priya Paul: We are celebrating fifty years this year. It has always been a very young and vibrant company that reflected a contemporary aesthetic, even when it first opened in 1967. I would say my role has been to actually reposition and build it for a new generation of travelers and customers – both Indian and international. The success has really been to reinvigorate the brand, provide it with meaning and to position it as something that is far from ordinary. That’s my tagline: ‘anything but ordinary’.

LUX: The Park Hotels have new properties under construction, Chettinad (old palace conversion), Mumbai and Jim Corbett National Park – how do you decide on location and maintain the five-star level across so many properties?
Priya Paul: We have two brands now. We have one called The Park, which is a fifty-year-old, luxury, five-star brand with full service that’s routed in the design. When I go to look at a property, I want something from the interiors that I can create a unique identity with. Personally, it is very important for the space to be creative, interesting and not like any normal hotel you might see. The site and location are dependent on the type of city, as the city must be able to take that kind of hotel. We have now also launched a brand called Zone by the Park, which I call a design and price conscious hotel. Similar in essence to that of The Park, as they are still fun, lively and vibrant and remain a reflection of the local space. However, they are in smaller spaces in smaller cities and the hotel size typically ranges from 65 rooms to 300 rooms at most. The idea here is to create a vibrant, big-city atmosphere within a small city. Since that is what the smaller, growing, cities in India want and need. There is a whole aspirational class of customers that want a nice bar and restaurant with international food, as well as the local specialties. They want spaces where they can entertain and have their weddings.

LUX: How do the contemporary luxury boutique hotels (The Park Group Hotels) set themselves apart from the rest?
Priya Paul: I think it’s a combination of many things. We orchestrate the whole design and aesthetic of how the hotel looks; however, it is also how the hotel behaves. This is in terms of how the spaces interact and how the customer feels when they relax and are at ease in a place. There is still outstanding service, but our staff have been trained to deal with customers on a more equal basis and to be more relaxed and casual with them. It seems very simple now, but when we discussed it twenty years ago there was big kind of difference between how staff in a hotel would be treated by customers. There was a class difference and I think that has changed because hotels now attract younger service staff. I feel we have taken care to hire creative people with individuality, who are able to deliver that service in a different way. When we started talking about that around twenty years ago, that was quite a unique approach and that is the feel when you go into The Park. It is relaxed and casual and people are friendly. You have everything you might need and want, in an environment that is fun, creative and interesting.

Read next: The bohemian allure of Chiang Mai  

LUX: Is it important to hold on to heritage and tradition or to keep current?
Priya Paul: I think it’s a combination of two things. I am a firm believer that you need to know your culture and heritage and to preserve part of it, whilst allowing yourself to move forward. So, it’s a tricky balance. That being said, one of the hotels that we are currently restoring is in a palace. I firmly believe in heritage conservation and I believe this also applies to food. Twenty-five years ago we were not even exploring what our Indian food heritage was. But within twenty years, people have caught up and realised we are losing our grains, our vegetables, our techniques and our recipes. It is very important that we preserve those, but also that we move forward with them. Our food does not have to look the same for five hundred centuries. It has to evolve. For example, we host The Parks New Festival, which is a performing arts festival that now runs in six cities for a month – we started off in just one city! We do this because it’s actually for new performances not the old stuff, we want creatives to push and move forward. So how do you push comedy or music or dance? There’s that and I also think maybe it’s from my personal interest; you have to know your tradition, but we must still know how to move forward, explore and experiment.

LUX: How has the hospitably climate changed in India and how did you respond to these changes?
Priya Paul: We’ve always had a few very good luxury hotels because a lot of the palaces were converted. What’s happened in the last twenty five years, is many of the Indian brands invested in some great
properties and developed new circuits and new properties in lots of locations. A lot of the international brands have come in with their high-end brands, whether it’s Grand Hyatt and The Four Seasons. I think it has changed a lot. We have about eight million international tourists traveling into India but we have over 400 million Indian travelers traveling. So, the strength of the Indian market has never been better. At all levels of the 400 million people you need hotels and accommodation. And as people earn more money they want to move on to the next best thing. So, there is a lot of demand for luxury products within India, whether it is cars,hotel rooms, luxury dining or experiences. That has fueled a demand to supply and create those products. At all segments of the market I’ve seen growth; we are growing at seven something percent.

The Park Calangute Goa

LUX: What’s the ultimate luxury in hospitality?
Priya Paul: You know I think I’m more of an explorer, I like exploring new places and cities or neighborhoods. For me, the luxury is in the exploration, in getting to know the area. I used to plan everything a lot more and now I just go to a place and I just discover. I think that’s also quite exciting, to just explore and you never know what you are going to find. Also, I always look for a hotel that is interesting, design wise. I typically don’t choose a chain hotel to stay in, unless there are brands doing new things. I don’t mind doing things once or twice, just to see what’s on. I look for a clean aesthetic, contemporary rooms; similar to what I do now with hotels. On the other hand, I also sometimes like grand, luxurious hotels and those old-fashioned hotels can sometimes be quite charming and interesting too. It depends on the destination.

LUX: You are a trustee of Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA) and board member of the National Council of Science Museums. You’re passionate about art and design, an art collector too – where did your love of the arts begin and how do you incorporate it into what you do?
Priya Paul: I think my love of the arts started off because I lived in Calcutta with my parents. Calcutta at that stage, and even now, is considered a very artistic city. The people are artistic and into the arts whether its music, dance, theatre or fine art. At a young age I did oil painting and my parents would take us to all the exhibitions in town. And at that time, in the seventies, there weren’t many art exhibitions in India but there were some in Calcutta. We would go to exhibitions, to see art and new artists. At that time, my parents collected art for the hotels, as well as personally, and so we were exposed to it at a young age and it just stayed with me.

Read next: The hottest new hotel opening on the Vietnamese coastline 

LUX: You’ve received numerous accolades and acknowledgements that include the FHRAI (Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India) who inducted you into their hall of fame in 2010. You were awarded “Excellence in Design Innovation 2011” by Condé Nast Traveller India. Which one was the most special to you?
Priya Paul: Numerous and I think a lot of them are from the industry. In the early years, it was very important to get those recognitions from the industry because I was not from the industry. I was doing something quite disruptive, I was making people look at hotels in a different way. It was great to be recognised then as doing something different and being successful but I think the most proud moment was the one I got from the government of India in 2012. The Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour, which was completely unexpected. I am probably one of the youngest people to get it in the industry and that was a very lovely recognition.

LUX: What does it take to be a good leader?
Priya Paul: Leadership requires different things at different times. I think I have a good “people instinct” and I enjoy working with people. But I’m also not afraid to make decisions and I think you have to be courageous as a leader, to make decisions whether they are bad or good. And you have to perform and stick by your decisions.

The Park Hyderabad

LUX: You’re a powerful female figure, with Forbes recognising you as top 100 most powerful business women in India – have you ever faced challenges in business from your gender?
Priya Paul: I’m lucky, in that I work in my own family business. When you work in your own family business you get the benefit of people accepting you because you are in that ownership and leadership role. Having said that, I started working at a very young age and I was also working at a time when there were very few young people working in business at a leadership level. Very often I felt people looked at me and thought you’re too young to be making that decision or to be in a decision-making role. I got more of a youth bias than a discrimination bias. But I was the owner and when in that position, you obviously have to handle yourself correctly whether you’re young or a woman. To me it doesn’t make a difference whether you’re a man or a woman, as long as they perform. But there are many people who have issues with it. I didn’t directly face that gender bias because of the industry I’m in. Even when I joined as a marketing manager, and General Manger of one hotel, when my father was around there were quite a few women in leadership roles in hospitality, because hospitality was much more equal. Women would always be heads of Sales and Marketing or Housekeeping, with a few General Managers and a few chefs. So there were even people twenty-five years ago in those leadership roles. There were some powerful women, even in hospitality.

LUX: Why was it important for you to be a Chairperson for the South Asia Women’s Fund?
Priya Paul: I was invited by Ford Foundation to be one of the founding directors of the South-East Asia Women’s Fund and I have always been a proponent of women’s empowerment and women’s leadership. Partly having had leadership roles in my School and College and having gone to a very pure feminist college in the US. It’s always been a part of my consciousness and so it’s my way of giving back and providing that leadership to the organisation. I was a director for many years, and I was elected to be chair a few years ago. It’s very interesting as I’m not from the field of women’s rights or activism but I think the organisation needed me to give it more direction, which I think has been quite successful. The organisation is doing good work.

LUX: If you hadn’t of gone into the family business, what would you have done?
Priya Paul: Well I’m asked that question a lot, and I have a standard answer for that. For many years I’ve said I would have been a chef. Cooking and food; it’s also a passion of mine. And luckily, I have wonderful chefs and I get to live vicariously through them. But that’s what I would’ve done, I would have run my own restaurant.

Rami Mekdachi has worked as a perfumer for over twenty years, collaborating with some of the world’s best known brands, such as L’Oréal, Colette, Lacoste and Chloé. And now, he’s created his own high-concept brand, Lola James Harper, bringing together his passion for music, film, design and fragrance with his friends and family. Millie Walton speaks to the Frenchman about curing perfectionism, capturing memories and bringing creativity to the hospitality industry.

Rami Mekdachi

LUX: When did you decide to master perfumery?
Rami Mekdachi: I never decided really. Encounters and opportunities make things happen in our lives. In 1996 I met Catherine Raiser, Head of CCB/L’Oréal. We decided to work together and I joined as a Perfume Developer. That same year, I met Pierre Bourdon and Benoist Lapouza, two amazing perfumers, and now two friends. That’s when I realised how grand the perfume world is. How playing with scents, images, poetry, myth and design can be powerful and generous. How wide and touching it can be…

LUX: Do you have a favourite scent?
RM: I have so many!

LUX: Have you ever struggled to capture a certain smell?
RM: Anything I do, I do it for the term. I do not struggle, I just take my time. I have 100 projects going on at the same time. I am way too much of a perfectionist and when I was 20 years old, I spent too much time on little things, struggling to get what I wanted and trying to get it as fast as possible. Now I have found the cure: 100 projects at a time, no time to lose, when it comes, it comes, when it does not come I change the project. My days are super diverse, every two hours I change fields and projects. That is my cure to perfectionism.

Read next: Marsden Hartley’s Maine at The Met Breuer 

LUX: You’ve had a very successful career as a perfumer, what led you to create Lola James Harper?
RM: For twenty five years, I have been playing music with great singers around the world and I would take pictures for music and travel magazines. Music and photography were in my blood even before perfume. My work as a perfumer was inspired by those experiences. I was lucky enough to have the chance to work with great people and big brands: Colette, Ines de le Fressange, Costes, Lacoste, Chloé, Roger Vivier, Dinh Van. Lola James Harper was a way to gather all the people I love and the three fields I enjoy: music, photography and perfumery.

LUX: Is there a central concept that ties all of your products together?
RM: Good and touching memories of places and people we love, generous and elevating mind sets.

LUX: The names of your candles suggest that their scent evokes a particular memory for their creator. Is it important that the customer realises the story behind the scent or is it more for the purpose of your inspiration?
RM: The point of it all is to share a life and moments that could be touching and evocative for everyone, to transport and make everyone dream. We are all dreaming machines. With Lola James Harper pictures, movies, music and fragrances I want to give to everyone the opportunity to feel free to dream and to do it.

Lola James Harper scented candle

LUX: How does your experience in perfumery inform your other creative pursuits? Music and film, for example?
RM: In music, film and perfumery, I have to compose ingredients together to create a new evocative world. In music I mix sounds, in perfume I mix fragrance notes, in film I mix pictures, motion pictures and sounds. Music helped me to get into the perfume field much faster in 1996, then working with amazing perfumers helped me to enhance my comprehension of a sound mix. Trying to imagine what a fragrance note evokes to people, what colour, what mind set, just opened my consciousness to what immaterial things provoke in our apprehension of the world and gave me so many clues about how to edit pictures, sounds and colours in a film. Life is a huge place to learn and now I know that when I am looking for any answer it always lies somewhere else.

Read next: Fraser sets the standard for ethical and adventurous yachting 

LUX: What’s the most difficult part of your job?
Rami Mekdachi: The logistic and legal part of it! Legislation shifts so often in the perfume world that we have to change our fragrance composition and stickers every year.

LUX: Where do you go to escape?
RM: The basket-ball court with my son. Movie theatres with my daughter. Walking the town, any town, with my wife, son and daughter. Road tripping the world, renting a car with my family and cruising for days. And when I want to be alone, I like to go to any good coffee shop with good music and tasteful coffee where I know no one.

Lola James Harper Shop in Le Bon Marché department store, Paris

LUX: What lies ahead for Lola James Harper?
RM: Lola James Harper is a magical project. It gathers my family and all my friends and my encounters for over two decades. It brings together my three fields, music, photo and perfumery. I love to see people passing by our places and just feeling happy looking at our pictures, listening to our music and testing our fragrance memories. I am really proud to have achieved all that in one successful project.

Now we are working on opening full Lola James Harper destinations, hotels! Hotels with basketball courts, music studios, TV basements, vinyl shops, coffee shops, full of travel and music pictures, full of good fragrances and our way of life. This should happen in 2018. And just for now, we are finalising our first movie, 85 minutes about the last two decades, globe-trotting the world, discovering music, pictures, friendship and family.

lolajamesharper.com

Salvatore Ferragamo has been an Italian luxury legend ever since its footwear was adopted by Hollywood sirens in the 1920s. Recently, Ferruccio Ferragamo, son of the eponymous founder and currently president of the company, and his own son Salvatore, have ventured into the world of fine wine and hospitality (following in the footsteps of Ferruccio’s younger brother Massimo, who owns the Castiglion del Bosco wine estate and luxury hotel). As part of our Luxury Leaders series, Salvatore Ferragamo speaks to LUX about restoring the medieval Tuscan village of Il Borro, ponders luxury’s demand for authenticity, and reveals his favourite Italian dish.

Salvatore with his father Ferruccio Ferragamo

LUX: What kind of experience does Il Borro offer guests and what makes it unique compared to other luxury estates?
Salvatore Ferragamo: Il Borro is truly unique because at the heart of the estate lies a medieval hamlet, dating back 1000 years which has been transformed into luxurious suites and villas through careful and respectful restoration. Authenticity is the cornerstone of all past and present activities at Il Borro. This place is one of a kind because of its tradition, at Il Borro, history, art, Tuscan culture and nature offer exclusive experiences and atmosphere that are impossible to find anywhere else.

I refer, for instance, to our Wine & Art Gallery, an artistic description of the history of wine through my father’s collection of prints and artworks from the 15th century to the present day which include works by Mantegna, Goya, Rembrandt, as well as modern artists like Warhol and Picasso. The gallery introduces guests to our cellars, which have been enlarged to enable a higher production of wine, yet still represent a respectful extension of the area beneath the 19th century villa.

At Il Borro we take care of our soil with an old-standing organic method and all our products are both pesticide and preservative free. We harvest the grapes, go horse-riding on the estate, pick olives and cultivate vegetables in a spectacular one-hectare garden. Il Borro is a lively place, where we work the land to reap the fruits that our customers can taste in the Tuscan recipes prepared by our chef, Andrea Campani.

And of course there is a relaxation area, with eco-friendly pools and a spa free of machines, where guests can enjoy a range of treatments carried out by our professional team.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”9″ gal_title=”ferragamo”]

Read next: Motoring Maverick Joe Macari’s investing in classic cars

LUX: What inspired the project of Il Borro Ferragamo wine estate?
Salvatore Ferragamo: It was the history of this place – all we had to do was bring the traditions of this land back to life. Our vineyards are spread over about 50 hectares and we make 4 red wines in total; Il Borro, Polissena, Pian Di Nova and Alessandro dal Borro, our white wine Lamelle is 100% Chardonnay. We also make an exquisite Vin Santo and the jewel in the crown of our wine cellar, Bolle di Borro, a sparkling Sangiovese Rosé made in the classic method.

LUX: How do you compete against more established names and estates in the world of winemaking?
Salvatore Ferragamo: We do this through authenticity and excellence. We could produce three times as much wine, but instead we prefer to offer a product of the highest quality. We don’t exploit our land, we take care of it. Our wines are the result of oenological research, aimed at making premium wines through challenging combinations and effectively looking after the grapes of our territory. On top of all this, we have a unique place: the medieval hamlet where our guests can enjoy an unforgettable experience in an authentic atmosphere, with all the comforts.

Salvatore Ferragmo pictured in the Il Borro wine cellars

LUX: How has the rise of digital marketing and social media affected the way you approach business?
Salvatore Ferragamo: Digital marketing and social media are the tools of today and they represent a great opportunity for us. Every day we strive to make improvements, using creativity and lots of energy. They offer us the opportunity to communicate in real time and with emotional impact all of Il Borro’s values: hospitality, winemaking, food, health, nature, history, and traditions.

Read next: Frieze founder Matthew Slotover on the future of culture

LUX: Have you always been passionate about wine?
Salvatore Ferragamo: I can’t think of a time when there wasn’t a bottle of wine on my family’s table. Wine is part of Tuscan culinary traditions and being a food lover I cannot imagine dinner, and sometimes even lunch, without a bottle of good wine. Taking care of Il Borro’s winery just came naturally. The best moment of my day is when I start work with a walk through the vineyards.

LUX: Wine and hospitality are relatively new territories for the Ferragamo family. What are some of the challenges you’ve had to face along the way?
Salvatore Ferragamo: Yes, that’s true. But some elements are not new to my family: the Made in Italy mission, craftsmanship, and the Tuscan lifestyle. Il Borro encapsulates all of these elements. The real challenge at Il Borro is respecting the estate, the land and its gifts, through innovations on which we invest considerably, to preserve the authenticity and, at the same time, offer high quality hospitality.

Chef Andrea Campani is renowned for his grilled dishes prepared in a large artisanal oven

LUX: Is your name a passport or a burden?
Salvatore Ferragamo: My name is an honour…except when somebody thinks that I’m “the shoemaker of dreams”, that was my grandfather!

Having said that, I am fortunate to have examples of very successful entrepreneurs within my family, and I can honestly say that it’s a great source of energy and a positive challenge.

Read next: Luxury is making the impossible, possible, says CEO of Heesen Yachts, Arthur Brouwer

LUX: The Relais & Châteaux group, of which Il Borro is a member, is renowned for the best culinary hotels across the globe. What do you think makes food exceptional and what’s your favourite Italian dish?
Salvatore Ferragamo: This is a difficult question, since food, like wine, is a sort of magic. The creativity of a wine-maker or a chef together with high quality ingredients that, in the end, make the difference.

My favourite Italian dish… another difficult question. Probably Tagliatelle with Wild Boar Ragù in winter and Risotto with Tomatoes and Burrata Cheese in summer followed by a barbecue of our Chianina beef.

LUX: How do the other aspects of the Ferragamo family business influence the running of the Estate? Do you see it as a collaborative project?
Salvatore Ferragamo: We prefer to keep the two family businesses separate, however, I would say it is the strong core of business and entrepreneurship which has been inherited from Salvatore Ferragamo (my grandfather) to my father and my father to me, and of course the Ferragamo name, which links the two together.

LUX: Does Tuscany hold any particular relevance for the Ferragamo family?
Salvatore Ferragamo: Tuscany is my land even though my grandfather was from Naples and my mother is English. This is where I grew up, where my family established the brand, and also where a large part of the new Ferragamo generation lives. Tuscany represents Ferragamo’s creative inspiration at all levels, and we are very proud to be recognised as one of the leading Tuscan/Italian brands in the world.

Read next: Driving through the Italian countryside with Jude Law

LUX: How has the world of luxury hospitality evolved in recent years?
Salvatore Ferragamo: I think there is a growing demand for authenticity. Travellers seem to be less interested in serial/signature hotel concepts, and the magnificent but cold buildings without history, without a soul. Travellers want to live and feel the experience alongside luxury and this offers a truly unique opportunity.

Activities at Il Borro include horse riding, cooking classes, trekking, golf, tennis and mountain biking

LUX: What’s next for Il Borro?
Salvatore Ferragamo: We have so many exciting projects in the pipeline, most notably: the launch of a 100% organic wine; the opening of Il Borro Tuscan Bistro in Dubai, the first restaurant in our franchising project, with the aim of eventually taking Il Borro’s Tuscan cuisine and wines around the world; the implementation of the biological production of our honey; and we also plan to provide Il Borro with an olive oil mill to produce our own biological extra virgin oil.

LUX: How do you manage to balance work and pleasure?
Salvatore Ferragamo: I believe I’m lucky, because I love my job. I could never have spent my days behind a desk. Since I love going horse-riding and playing golf, everything is within reach here at Il Borro and I can easily make the most of the little free time I have, doing what I love!

ilborro.it

In the five years since it opened, The Alpina Gstaad has become an iconic European hotel, featuring award-winning restaurants and spa, spectacular indoor and outdoor pools, a gallery-worthy art collection, and an ambience of relaxed chic that epitomises modern luxury at its best. Here, Eric Favre, its Managing Director, talks about how it’s done as part of our ongoing Luxury Leaders series.

Eric Favre

LUX: The Alpina Gstaad opened into a market, Gstaad, with plenty of choice at the luxury end. Why did it succeed?
Eric Favre: Since it opened in 2012, our property has offered an entirely different experience than Gstaad has seen in the past 100 years. Our owners, architects and consultants had a clear vision of today’s discerning guests, who seek a chic but casual, authentic but refined hideaway in the mountains. So yes, the hardware is still important and we are fortunate to be offering outstanding facilities, but it’s really about meeting the exacting needs of our guests which is at the crux of our success. More and more, hotel and spa clients are looking to connect with a 360 degree lifestyle brand, which offers a compelling combination of art, fashion, wellness and personality. We make it our mission at The Alpina Gstaad to deliver this in a truly exceptional way.

LUX: What were the greatest challenges?
Eric Favre: Finding the right people that are able to transport your philosophy has always been a challenge. Your biggest assets are the people behind your brand and who are willing to go the extra-mile for the satisfaction of your guests. We are fortunate enough to have built a team which goes above and beyond in achieving that task. Another challenge we were facing at the beginning was to build up a loyal clientele given the competition in the area. Today we are thrilled to welcome a strong percentage of returning guests year after year.

The Alpina has the best outdoor pool zone in the Alps

Read next: Luxury means excellence, know-how and innovation, says watchmaker Francois Paul Journe

LUX: What are your clients like?
Eric Favre: Our guests are looking for a sophisticated hideaway to unwind from their busy schedules and responsibilities. It is a wide and international audience that we attract, from high profile celebrities to active couples and families seeking some quality time. What they appreciate is the casual but classy environment at The Alpina Gstaad – not needing to oblige to any dress code, for example. They appreciate the discretion and natural beauty that Gstaad is so famous for.

LUX: Why is Gstaad thriving when many Alpine destinations struggle at the top end?
Eric Favre: I believe that it’s a mix of Gstaad’s world-class events, alpine authenticity, breath-taking landscapes and lively social scene, not only during peak seasons. We keep reinventing ourselves without compromising on the local traditions. The world has always met in Gstaad and I am confident that this will remain a hot-spot for many generations to come.

Read next: Jude Law on life and love

LUX: Are you “new luxury” and what does that mean?
Eric Favre: We go beyond what you would expect from a luxury hotel. Yes there is a Michelin starred restaurant and an award-winning Spa, however we are not celebrating the opulence in it. The idea of luxury is much more simpler than it was 20 years ago and today it evolves around re-connecting with yourself, your loved ones and a piece of heaven that we believe is Gstaad.

LUX: What are the most important elements of your offering?
Eric Favre: High-end accommodation, interesting gastronomical experiences, a holistic wellness area and a personalised service from our 170 employees. Moreover, it is also the high level of discretion and Alpine authenticity in a stylish and contemporary setting.

LUX: Is The Alpina Gstaad old money or new money?
Eric Favre: I’d say we are well-invested money.

Read next: Chopard’s co-president, Caroline Scheufele’s vision of the future

LUX: How is running a very exclusive hotel different from the rest of the hospitality industry?
Eric Favre: It is highly labour intensive and there is no room for error.  It is also important to tread carefully the fine line between being exclusive and inclusive – while we wish to offer the utmost in discretion and privacy, it’s important for all of our guests to feel welcome.

One of the hotel’s spacious junior suites

LUX: How important is PR and how do you generate it at the high level?
Eric Favre: We consider PR to be very important, but it needs to be well managed with a strategic approach. We are very selective with the opportunities we pursue and the media we work with, to ensure the results generated are the most effective. It’s important for us to have exposure in the right lifestyle magazines, newspapers and supplements, as well as niche websites, in order to reach our target demographic. Part of this comes from working with the right journalists who have a clear understanding of our offering, and of our audience.

Read next: LUX checks into the Maserati Suite at Hotel de Paris

LUX: Is The Alpina Gstaad a brand, to roll out?
Eric Favre: The beauty of our hotel is that we are completely independent from any international hotel chain.

LUX:If you were a guest in your own hotel, what would you enjoy most about it?
Eric Favre: The ability to be myself in a beautiful environment, which feels like its a million miles from anywhere in the mountains, yet is just minutes from all that Gstaad has to offer.

thealpinagstaad.ch