Laurent Vernhes, co-founder and CEO of TabletHotels.com, has lived in seven countries on three continents since leaving his native France when his professional life began. Still a consummate world traveler, he has an acute sense of what great travel, and great hotel, experiences are all about. That's the point of Tablet Hotels, and that's what you'll learn some things about in this blog. We proudly introduce Laurent Vernhes: The Global Nomad. Read Laurent Vernhes' bio.
Boutique Hotel Craze Begets Sameness, But All Is Not Lost
Is the design boutique hotel over?
We may not know how to pronounce the name of this decade ("Zeros?" the "Zero-Zeros?") but we know what its interior design style looks like. It borrows a bit from the '70s and the '60s, and from some contemporary originals from the '90s like Philippe Starck — and suddenly it's everywhere, with one hotel after another renovating in a contemporary '00s style.
Eight years ago, when TabletHotels.com was starting, we were always happy to see a new contemporary-style hotel — boutique or not — because they were pioneers. Last year alone, we noted more than two hundred worldwide, many of them in the same vaguely '70s-inspired brown-and-gray palette (which itself replaced the white cubes of the '90s).
Suddenly, from Phuket to Monterey, from Copenhagen to Dubai, there are boutique hotels which look pretty much the same. This visual sameness was one of the things that put us off chain hotels in the first place. But not many of these new hotels are related to one another. They simply seem to have all adopted the '00s "international style" — "international" meaning not sophisticated or cosmopolitan but nationless, global.
The originals, like Starck, Christian Liaigre, Antonio Citterio and Jacques Garcia have become stars in their own right, and if they seem to be opening a lot of hotels right now, it's only because they're collecting the well-deserved rewards for their earlier innovations. It's a great time for the people we like to call "global nomads" — more and more new hotel developments are emphasizing design, which is good for travelers who are bored of the status quo. But when locations become overcrowded with hotels of this style, it creates the same problem that these hotels were originally designed to solve: a shortage of personality, change, uniqueness.
The prevalence of this international style has made our job in selecting the best new hotels far more difficult. Even the biggest chains are getting in on the act. The Clarion, in Stockholm, is the biggest hotel in town, and it's anything but boutique — but its contemporary interiors rival some of the independents:
Source: Tablet Hotels
Even Motel 6, admittedly my favorite American budget motel, has a redesign in the works:
Source: Tablet Hotels
When we started TabletHotels.com we deliberately avoided embracing a particular size, or style of hotels — hotels under a hundred rooms, or contemporary minimalist hotels — because criteria like these are no better guarantee of a unique hotel experience than any star rating system is.
There are some phenomenal design boutique hotels, to be sure. One of my personal favorites (from the '90s) is Hotel Therme in Vals, Switzerland. The architect, Peter Zumthor — whose wife manages the property — is an internationally recognized master. This particular creation has influenced countless architects and hoteliers. Yet, more than ten years after its opening, it remains fresh and powerful — a tsunami of imitators hasn't dulled its impact.
But still the words "boutique" and "design" were quickly abused. "Boutique" had become tainted by hotels that focus on the environment at the expense of the service, and some guests tolerated poor service as long as the design was outstanding. And "design" became shorthand for modern design, which is obviously restrictive, and no indication of the quality of the design. It came to mean form above function, and became synonymous with impractical hotels — I remember a hotel in Milan where it took me ten minutes to figure out how to turn off the lights before going to sleep.
At the moment there's plenty of interesting work being done outside of the international style. The hunger for change, which gave birth to the design boutique in the first place, is still there. Some hoteliers, like Firmdale Hotels in London, even manage to successfully establish a warmer, more organic and daring style, within which each new property has its own distinct personality.
It seems the world is ready to move on from the '00s' international style. There are hoteliers out there digging into the depths of their passion to create original properties, places with the integrity and the heart that people can connect to. Maybe in a few years this new vibrancy and eclecticism will harden into a style for the 2010s — but to me, right now, it looks like an organic development, an explosion of diversity.
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'Hot' Destination Is In The Experience Of The Beholder
Certain professionals are asked the same questions over and over again.
The sommelier: "What is your favorite wine?"
The editor: "What is your favorite book?"
The plastic surgeon: "What do you think of my breasts?"
I also have a standard set of questions that I am repeatedly asked.
1. "What hotels have you selected in [enter destination name here];" and 2. "What's the hot new destination?"
The hotel question is fair and I'm flattered people even ask. The destination question, however, is a bit more complex. I'm never quite sure how to respond. Leave aside for a moment the arrogance involved in describing someone's hometown or country as "new" or even "newly hot." Even if you accept the premises, it's a tricky question, even harder than naming my favorite hotel. I would no sooner be able to give a proper answer than I would be able to name my favorite wine, the most beautiful woman I've seen, or which of my children I prefer.
Lately I've developed a trick to dodge the question while still appearing thoughtful and answering sincerely: I simply name the last hotel or destination where I had a particularly good time. If you asked me today I'd say Copenhagen, as I'm just back from a trip where I ate in some incredible restaurants and stayed at some surprisingly sophisticated new hotels, including Nimb, which is just a few weeks old and will surely go on to become one of the best in Europe. I have been on a lucky streak lately and, for what it's worth, I am going to the Douro Valley in Portugal next.
What about celebrities? Do they make a destination "hot"? For a while, Paris Hilton -- I just couldn't escape talking about her in this context -- was being seen an awful lot in Hvar, Croatia, which is, to be fair, a charming harbor that will one day rival Portofino or St. Tropez as the favorite parking spot for yachts of the rich and famous. But she has not done much for Hvar. On the other hand, no matter how well known and beautiful a destination already is, the right celebrity can breathe new life into it. Just consider the effect George Clooney has had on Lake Como.
Political change, as in Croatia or Libya, can open a beautiful country to outsiders. A lot more Americans will start visiting Cuba soon, and anyone would love Burma for its rich cultural heritage and its people, as sweet and charming as any on Earth. Investment opportunities don't hurt either. People with money love Brazil not just for the lifestyle but also for the chance to do business in a fast-growing economy. It seems like everyone wants to be a Brazillionaire.
A good soccer team can serve as priceless advertising for a nation's brand. Think of South Korea or Turkey after the 2002 World Cup. So can music and pop culture. People are catching on now to Iceland's natural beauty, but many of them would never have even visited Reykjavik on layover were it not for Björk and Sigur Rós.
In the end, the real question is whether you should even care what the hot destination is. I live in New York because I love being surrounded by people. But when I want to get away it's the people I want to get away from. This is probably why the Hamptons never really worked for me. So a hot destination is pretty much the antithesis of what I need in a break, unless it's somewhere like Bhutan, where the demand is high but the supply of visas is tightly controlled.
Even better than a "hot" destination is a place that's a well-kept secret. I was lucky enough to lie on the most perfect beach in Boracay, in the Philippines, before they built an airport five miles away. You probably know of a few spots you don't want to get too hot. List them here, if you dare!
All right, I'll go first: Tikal in Guatemala and Pantelleria, an island between Sicily and Italy.
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Guidebooks R.I.P.!
The daring people at CBS 2 HD have invited me to submit blog entries for their Web site. This is my first entry, and it may be my last! I hope that you enjoy reading it and I would love read your comments as well as suggestions for future blogs. Thanks for checking in and stay tuned for more!
Having been a frequent traveler for two decades now, I've had a long relationship with guidebooks. So what I'm about to say may have something to do with that relationship starting a bit too early in my life. Guidebooks and I have simply grown apart.
It all started with my first big backpacking adventure, to Mexico and Guatemala. I had been living in Vancouver, and while I loved my life there I was desperate for some sunshine and heat. I read every guidebook I could get my hands on and my mind was filled with images and anticipation -- so much so that I couldn't help but feel let down by the contrast between my mental images and the reality itself. The real Mexico made me nostalgic for my imagined version.
In those days I had a particular soft spot for the Lonely Planet guides. Back when I had more stamps in my passport than dollars in my pocket, I absolutely depended on their capsule histories, their shamelessly compressed accounts of centuries' worth of local events, on a scale where it's easier to see the similarities between cultures than the differences. Let's face it, it's a lot easier to smile at a strange place full of strange people if you feel like you can relate to them.
But beyond the history lessons mostly I just learned that the backpackers' haunts are geographically clustered, and that you should see them for yourself before picking one. All I needed was a few street names noted from a quick scan through the airport bookstore. Even the weight of those books was starting to put me off, hundreds of pages filled with hundreds of places I'd never get around to seeing. In those pre-digital times my pack weighed far too much already (too many cassette tapes!) and I had very little desire to add anything more. I certainly wasn't about to leave Duran Duran behind! A custom guidebook, tailored to my trip, filled with just the places I wanted to see, would have been a welcome relief.
Even now I can confess to a certain fondness for Michelin's red restaurant guides, and their very factual green travel guides. Michelin's slightly old-fashioned sense of integrity is a big inspiration for what we do with TabletHotels.com. But what can go wrong with these guides is a product with the accelerated pace of life in today's world — and not just online.
On the way to Stockholm this summer I became obsessed with the idea of extending a culinary high that started in Copenhagen. I checked out what the Michelin guide had to say about Stockholm, only to find that one of their top recommendations had closed. Of course restaurants close all the time, and it's certainly not Michelin's fault when one folds soon after making a guide appearance. But it does underline the difficulties traditional publishers face in trying to keep pace with changes in the real world.
There is no doubt in my mind that the future of the guidebook is in the mobile internet. Guides are just filters of information, and in a world of guide overload, we need filters for our filters. Some day soon your iPhone will have a guidebook function — it has books in there already. A quick visit to Wikipedia gives you more background than any guidebook ever could, but will still leave you at a loss for recommendations. Google's maps are fine for raw unfiltered data, and sites like Citysearch or Yelp, with their conflicts between editorial and advertising, just aren't trustworthy enough, i my personal opinion.
The keys to great guides are integrity, reliability of sources (both locals and travelers), and compelling functionality, the kind that makes you wonder how you got on with life before it existed. We have been working on our own online Tablet Guides for nearly two years now, and are closing in on a beta version. Hopefully Tablet Guides will be obvious and familiar to you in the first two minutes (and publishers may even line up to bid on the rights for a print version!), and then I can finally move on from my obsessive love-hate relationship with the guidebook industry.
And when the guidebook industry has been absorbed by the Internet, I'll still have my favorite guides — the Tintin stories. Those images are still imprinted on my mind, at a depth I don't think the Internet can ever reach. When I finally get to Greenland (the last of the Tintin destinations I haven't yet compared with reality) my benchmark won't be Lonely Planet, but L'Étoile Mystérieuse.
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