When is a hotel not just a hotel?
A charming man in Paris, in one of the city’s storied grand hotels, inspires me to dwell on this. Upon checking into the Peninsula Hotels’ first European property – an exquisitely restored Second Empire building near the Arc de Triomphe – I tell Martin, the man at the front desk, that this is my fourth Peninsula, part of my quest to stay at its 10 locations around the world.
He asks about my favourite, and I say without hesitation Hong Kong. “Ahh,” he smiles knowingly. “It is more than a hotel.”
“Maybe this will be too, inshallah,” I say.
“Inshallah,” he repeats, assuredly.
Undoubtedly, a hotel’s history is part of its allure. Hong Kong’s Peninsula is part of the city’s fabric; it is what the Plaza is to New York, the Savoy is to London, the Taj is to Mumbai. Even the fictional Grand Budapest Hotel, the star of Wes Anderson’s Oscar-winning film, was enough to fire up travellers’ recent interest in the Hungarian capital.
What is now the Peninsula Paris opened in 1908 as the Hotel Majestic, counting among its visitors Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso and George Gershwin, who wrote part of An American in Paris there. It served as a temporary hospital in the First World War and, less nobly as the Nazi military headquarters in the Second. After the war, the French government converted it to the Unesco headquarters and then an international conference centre; in 1973, the Paris Peace Accords, designed to end the war in Vietnam, were signed in the wood-panelled salon that is now Le Bar Kléber.
But all of this is history, non? Not according to Richard Martinet, the architect who oversaw the four-year restoration. "You can make people dream with the past," he tells me over breakfast in the lobby restaurant, a white-and-gold, chandeliered dining room of the Belle Epoque, and yet he recognises that a hotel cannot rest on its history alone. "A luxury hotel is not a museum: it is a place for life."
That’s where the Peninsula brand comes in, with all of its old-school qualities that endeared me to it as a place with personality no matter what the city: its afternoon tea with live music in the lobby, its pageboys in their white uniforms with pillbox hats, its fleet of Peninsula-green cars including vintage Rolls-Royces. It combines classic style with modern technology designed in its own research and development centre. Through tablets or wall panels in your room, you can control everything from music to the awnings on the balcony, choosing from 11 display languages, including Arabic.
Technology is a dangerous area, where so many things can go wrong. How many times have you had to turn back to the lobby because your card has been demagnetised or needed a user’s manual to turn off your lights before bed? For the most part, the Peninsula gets this right. Reaching for my bedside tablet in the dark one morning, my groping hand activates the light on the panel, making it easy to find.
The more a hotel anticipates your needs, the less you have to think about them, which shouldn’t be a luxury, but all too often is. I don’t think I’m alone or unreasonable in expecting a working espresso machine in my room or free Wi-Fi not just in my room, but in the hotel car. The Peninsula ticks these boxes for me, which is another reason I’m so faithful.
A great hotel makes all of this work. An exceptional hotel surprises you with needs you didn’t know you had. The Peninsula is known for its valet boxes, where you open up a door in the wall and place your shoes for an overnight shine. It provides free VOIP international calls and movies on demand, nail dryers in its dressing rooms and “spa” baths, where a button dims the lights and pipes relaxing music into the bathroom. Even the most standard room comes with these above-standard benefits.
Delightful touches are not just the preserve of luxury hotels; my business-class flight via Qatar Airways to Paris offers meals by celebrity chefs such as Vineet Bhatia and desserts by Ladurée, while my Giorgio Armani toiletry bag contains its latest fragrance, Sì. The A380 feels more like a luxury passenger train, with roomy washrooms and a lounge area where passengers mingle over plates of appetisers and a cupcake stand on the bar.
With rooms that start at €1,130 (Dh4,716) and run up to €25,875 for its most spectacular suite, the Peninsula is a contender for France’s top five-star “palace hotel” designation. Beyond that, there is still one hard-to-measure distinction, one that the hotel’s general manager, Nicolas Béliard, refers to as “emotional value”. Acknowledging that the clients of luxury hotels can stay in many a beautiful building, particularly in Paris, he believes it’s genuine service that puts people at ease. To this end, he interviewed all 600 of the staff. “For us, it’s about our guests enjoying themselves,” he says, admitting it takes some time to develop, for the staff to understand the building and its guests. “If you have fun, it’s contagious,” he says. “You feel it.”
I feel it at the counter, when Martin greets me like an old friend, and at the concierge desk, when I ask Christophe for a postcard. “It’s not a disaster if you can’t find one,” I tell him. “But it would be my disaster,” he says, placing his hand over his heart.
I feel it when, after a problem with the technology in my room is fixed, a man in a suit stops me in the lobby and addresses me as “Ms Gannon”, telling me he wants to ensure all is well.
“How do you know who I am?” I ask, surprised.
“I remember you from when you checked in,” he explains.
All of this is what makes a hotel more than just a hotel. It gives us what we want out of life: to be enchanted, to be cared for, to be remembered.
