The Soul Of A Hotel
I love hotels.
I love hotels because they’re living, breathing enterprises. A hotel holds the promise every day of adventure and romance, intrigue, mystery, betrayal, affairs of the heart, dangerous liaisons. Where else can you find that but in fiction or in film?
Today, I want to speak to you about the challenge of creating a hotel that has both life and adventure, and also is a place with a soul. I think we’ve all been to a hotel that didn’t have a soul. It may have been a hellish experience, or it may have been that, perhaps, it just didn’t live up to the expectations you had for this wonderful getaway, and you were disappointed. I’ve been a part of building a hotel that didn’t have a soul. It’s no longer part of our collection, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort, but things happened in the process, during the design during the development we made compromises, and at the end, the hotel just didn’t capture the imagination and the magic of the setting, and I was bitterly disappointed.
Taking that to heart, I’ve become a student of hotels. I vowed that would never happen again, if at all possible. I’ve grown up around hotels, and we’ve built a number of hotels from the ground up — by that I mean from the very first idea of what a hotel might become through design, through construction, through opening and operation.
Today, I’d like to share those ideas with you about how to create a hotel with a soul. A soul is defined as something intangible, not physical. It also suggests a connection to a greater spirit. So if a hotel has a soul, it would have to have a life beyond its physical walls.
Let’s call that Soulfulness.
We’ve identified four elements of soulfulness:
1. A Great design,
2. A Sense of place,
3. A Connection or being a Part of the Community in which the hotel is located,
4. The hotel inspires great affection or love through and for the people working there.
1) What do we mean by great design?
Great design can be big, it can be small. It can be luxury, not luxury. It could be modern, it could be not modern. In the best of possible worlds, the hotel fits in with the surroundings. It lives in concert with a natural landscape or the cityscape; it feels like it belongs there.
A hotel that feels like it belongs in its surroundings also typically would feel that has qualities that are almost human-like. It can be charming, it can be intimate, can be charismatic. Those things are the things that make it feel a part of the destination, like it belongs there.
When we did our first hotel from the ground up, we were in Los Cabos, Mexico, and I stood on this piece of ground overlooking the ocean. You could see the fish swimming down and the tropical fish swimming below and the reef. The seabirds were circling overhead. My first thought was, “Please, can’t mess this up.” How to enhance the natural setting here to make this hotel feel like it belongs here?
They say that the door handle is like the handshake of a building.
We naturally gravitate to those hotels that have a human scale, that feel like they embrace you, that sometimes you feel at home, but other times not at home. Because you can leave your worries and your checklist behind you. Ideally, think about the possibilities. Think about changes you may want to make in your life. Think about how you might become a better person. All that’s inspired by the warmth, the beauty, the character of the hotel in its surroundings. In an ideal setting, a hotel also is efficient.
The designer Philippe Starck said,
“A great hotel combines intelligence, culture, efficiency, comfort, and always a touch of poetry.”
Hemingway famously stated,
“The requirement for a great hotel is a bar somewhere on the premises.”
2) What do we mean by sense of place?
That the hotel becomes somehow identified with the culture, the region or the city.
Take for example,
• The Ritz in Paris.
• The Oriental in Bangkok.
• Lord’s Plaza in India.
• The Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.
• Dubai Palm Hotel in Dubai.
These are hotels that in their grandeur command your attention and have defined luxury at the highest level in those destinations, in those cities. Or it may be a tree house lodge in Costa Rica that brings you closer to one of the richest and most diverse ecosystems on the planet.
Today, one of the most talked about trends in travel is immersion into the destination, into the culture, into the environment. The role of the hotel has really been transformed into that of a guide to the destination. In the best instances, the hotel staff curates and creates unique experiences that bring the guests closer to the destination and closer to themselves.
I have an example from our property in Costa Rica. There we have a number of adventures and activities, including flying in an ultralight over the mountains and the ocean, taking a horseback ride up to an organic coffee cooperative in the mountains, hiking in a nature preserve along a pristine stream, or picking produce from an organic farm. When I rode in this ultralight, we’re skimming over the tops of the waves on the ocean and coming back up to the hacienda up in the mountains, the pilot of the plane, Don Alberto, the owner of the hotel, pointed out these little tufts of clouds in the distance, and you’re in an open-air cockpit, and he says, “Mark, reach out and touch those clouds.”
3) What do we mean by a hotel becoming a part of the community?
Today, building hotels can be about building community, in much the same way that hotels in the past were traditionally places for gathering, for work and for play.
Today — that paradox of digital connectivity -we’re becoming more and more disconnected. Hotels offer a space to connect us all. In some cases, the most innovative and urban hotels have begun to define their neighbourhoods.
Take, for example, the ACE hotels in New York and Portland. They’ve woven into the social fabric and the local community. In the best instances, they bring people together through art, through music, and through content.
We had an opportunity in Aspen, Colorado, to renovate the hotel Jerome several years ago. The hotel was originally built in 1889, and it needed a renovation. We were fortunate enough to be tasked with doing that. In the process of doing that, we took this hotel, which was built in the height of Aspen’s silver boom, it opened in 1889 and had become an important part of the business and social life of the community. We went back to every period of the hotel’s history. We took artifacts and photographs and flags and objects, even a whiskey flask from Hunter S. Thompson, who was the sheriff in Aspen in its wilder days, and combined all those things in sort of a modern, contemporary environment that we loved because it brought back the character. What was most exciting was that we were in a position where the town embraced our revival of this landmark and said, “Thank you for bringing back periods of the hotel’s history and important periods of the town’s history as well.”
The hotel Jerome was a wonderful experience, and what the most important element of creating a hotel with soul will always be is having a staff that creates those stories that bring you closer to the destination and create the moments that connect all of us. Ultimately, the inspired acts of the staff are the things that bring us closer together, and they’re most responsible for creating soulfulness. If hospitality is defined as the act of being generous, friendly, and bringing in guests and strangers, then what better paradigm for us as hoteliers to be known as warm, generous and hospitable?
The important ways that we bring together these elements of soulfulness are as follows:
First, we create a culture of possibility for the staff, for the people who work there.
Second, listen to the designers, the creators who can inspire, create these transformative places that bring artistry and poetry into the design of the hotel. Use natural resources and use local resources, local artisans. Work harder to create sustainability for the property.
But above all, create this culture of possibility for the staff, for the people who work for you, and allow them to create the stories that brings us closer together. Hire for passion and commitment, embrace and allow and encourage your people to tell those stories that bring the guests closer to themselves and closer to the destination. The Desired result is that the lives of those people who are the guests and those that are the people working there and of course the community are enriched.
I’ll leave you with this final thought.
Why shouldn’t all places of business strive to be soulful?
