What are hotels actually for?

What are hotels actually for? “Sleeping!” replies Laurent Delporte. It seems like the obvious answer. And yet “It’s something we seem to have forgotten along the way”, continues the luxury hospitality expert, who has visited hundreds of hotels in his time and is rather wary of “concepts” being used in the quest for a new lease of life. “”Lifestyle” may be a new word, but historically hotels have always been differentiated by their offering. Being positioned near to a railway station or an airport is a style, an experience in itself.” So, what about co-working? “It’s just the latest buzzword. I’ve been holding meetings in hotels and working there in fantastic conditions for the past 20 years.”
“The only positive thing about what we’re currently experiencing is that there are far more questions than answers,” says Cyril Aouizerate, founder of MOB Hotel, with a smile. Just like so many other hospitality players, he had started finding answers to those questions well before the pandemic hit. For Laurent Delporte, the first question to answer is somewhat existential: “what do I want to do in my hotel?”. 

What? 
The consultant, who is now hired to dream up “new experiences”, believes that hoteliers should stop trying to “keep everyone happy” and instead focus on concepts that help them stand out from the crowd. From a bucolic opportunity to unwind at the Château de Villiers-Le-Mahieu, just a stone’s throw from Paris, to an upbeat mountain stay at the appropriately named Folie Douce (“Fabulous Folly”) in Chamonix, Les Hôtels (Très) Particuliers have developed a clear positioning, giving guests exactly what they’re looking for: a treat.  “We have carved out a pretty strong niche because we had clear convictions regarding certain weak signals,” explains Matthieu Evrard, the hospitality group’s CEO. “Hospitality is generally all about the room and the overnight stay, so we decided to switch things up by making the experience all about the communal areas and what goes on during the day.” From live music to yoga sessions, guests know precisely why they choose to stay at an LHTP address. 
The second crucial ingredient, a must in Laurent Delporte’s eyes, is the human experience. And according to him, the hierarchical organisation of hotels no longer reflects reality: “We must learn to put our trust in the on-site teams and their ability to respond to guests’ needs to guarantee a warm and friendly stay. The whole experience must revolve around emotion.” Denis Courtiade, front of house manager at the restaurant “Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée” and founding President of the association “Ô service - des talents de demain”, has new scenarios in mind, picturing “guests being accompanied throughout their stay by a nominated member of staff, rather like a butler. Rather than guests going to the restaurant or the bar, it’s up to the barman to go to the guest’s room. Or up to the sommelier to emerge from his wine cellar and invite guests to enjoy a sip of wine whilst standing at the reception desk. Or up to the chef to come out of his kitchen to meet and greet guests whilst presenting them with a taster or two. And when meals are eaten in the bedroom, we no longer talk about room service, but about the in-room restaurant service...”

Where? 
For a good many years, one key ingredient underpinned the most stunning establishments’ success: location, location, location. “But the view alone is no longer enough to create an experience”, Laurent Delporte is quick to point out. Something Cyril Aouizerate, co-founder of the Mama Shelter hotel chain, had already realised as early as 2008 when choosing to open his hotels in non-central, working-class neighbourhoods. Today, he is slowly but surely pursuing his “artisan hotelier” convictions by developing the MOB Hotel movement. Each experience is built around the hotel’s connection with its environment. It was the case for his inaugural hotels in Lyons and the Parisian suburb of Saint-Ouen, and is still the case today. “When I take on a project, be it in Washington or Bordeaux, my first job is to chat with sociologists and university professors to understand what makes the city tick. I need to know what makes it different from other places in order to determine where I’m heading and consequently where my travellers will be heading.” Forget the cookie-cutter chains that are seen the world over. Each new project starts off as a blank canvas, with Cyril Aouizerate then designing a hotel that fits the city’s geographical and social identity like a glove. There are features such as communal kitchen gardens that are free for the hotel’s neighbours to use, inspiring them to extend a particularly warm welcome in exchange: “We’ve got over 300 guests who have ended up being invited around for aperitifs or dinner!” And when people don’t have gardens, “being local also means charging rates that are accessible to locals,” he admits. “Diversity is driven by price.”

“It’s impossible to do everything everywhere, but location is key”, confirms Jean-Philippe Nuel, the architect responsible for designing numerous hotels, ranging from the Sofitel Villa Borghese in Rome to Marseilles’ Hôtel Dieu. Size is never an issue, with him equally happy to put his name to a guest house in the heart of a village in Saint-Emilion as to a 120-room Parisian hotel for a major global group. “The idea is that hotels should become veritable hives of activity that interact with the surrounding ecosystem, the neighbourhood or the city, depending on their size. In Lyons, the bar at the InterContinental is on the same scale as the city. It’s truly spectacular, and has become a go-to address for locals. In Paris, everyone’s squeezed into their office spaces. If I had a hotel in my neighbourhood where I could hold meetings in pleasant surroundings, I’d be there every day!” 
The architectural agency Caprini&Pellerin has been hired to design a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia after winning a competition to renovate the Palm Beach hotel, a firm fixture on the French Riviera’s social scene. As Jerry Pellerin explains, for this particular project, the starting point was the context, as is indeed the case for every project he and his associate take on. “I went to have a chat with the other co-owners of my property in Cannes, and they all had a tale to tell about an experience they’d had at the Palm Beach. We did a lot of historical research and worked for two whole months before actually putting pen to paper”, the architect explains. “Today, when you’re a guest at a hotel, you want so much more than a beautiful setting. You want to be drawn into a story, one that is linked to the local surroundings and local traditions. You want to live and breathe local culture, local customs,” he adds.  

How? 
“Green”. Tomorrow’s hotels have to be “green”.  At MOB, ecology forms an integral part of both the hotels’ philosophy and the guest experience. “We are the only hotel in Europe to have been awarded organic certification for our food”, comments Cyril  Aouizerate. “It took 6 long hard years of work, and was an extremely complicated process in terms of managing the supply chain.” Today, the hotel can pride itself on having an organic canteen accessible to all, where a meal costs as little as 7 euros. 
The unapologetic hedonism of Les Hôtels (Très) Particuliers does not free the firm from the shackles of this ineluctable demand. “Ecology is an underlying trend” comments Evrard. “We may not have an 800-page CSR policy, but we are driven by strong convictions: we upcycle, reuse, pay attention to waste and to travel, and we get a lot of our equipment second hand.” As far as Jerry Pellerin is concerned, luxury must be exemplary: “hotels have an important role to play in educating their wealthy guests and opening their eyes to more environmentally friendly, more ecological consumer habits.”

This new-found sobriety does not solely question the way in which establishments are run, but raises wider questions regarding the hospitality industry’s growth. “We are going to continue doing projects at our own speed, like tortoises,” confirms Cyril Aouizerate. “Anything too big and too cumbersome results in a lack of agility. Like having 1980s software, which is something I wouldn’t advise. It’s far better to grow slowly but surely, and to have an understated vision of your development rather than a hysterical vision that puts the real economy at odds with the financial economy.”

“This pandemic is the catalyst for changes that were already on the cards, and the changes are totally sustainable”, comments Jean-Philippe Nuel. More video conferencing, fewer business trips, short holidays closer to home to minimise our carbon footprint... “We may well witness a real paradigm shift, based on the idea that hotels will have to switch their focus from overnight stays to other functions they already offer. Reinvention will become the order of the day, targeting a more local clientele.”
Laurent Delport is more extreme: “The whole business model needs to be updated. A hotel is a community of people who generally share the same values. Tomorrow, without becoming a supermarket, the hotel could sell them wine, furniture, food...”, not to mention its lifestyle solutions, such as conciergerie services, in which the sector boasts extensive expertise. 
“For many, many months, I thought it was important for management to keep a cool head and avoid making hasty or radical decisions in order to save jobs,” explains Courtiade. “But it’s fair to say that as more and more time has passed, the more I have become convinced that in actual fact the time has come to totally rethink all our human and functional organisations. It’s the only way forward.”  

By Marie Montuir

Par Marie Montuir

laurentdelporte.com
mobhotel.com
les hôtels (très) particuliers
oservice.fr
jeanphilippenuel.com
caprinipellerin.com

For more, take a look at the “Luxury Hospitality and Heritage” talk.