How did you get involved in the hospitality industry?
I wanted to be an architect but I couldn’t get myself to pass a science exam so I was a bit stuck. All I wanted to do was draw hotels. I then thought of being an hotelier. My aunt almost lived in Claridge's Hotel in London and I found it quite glamorous to visit her. My family was very against it though and tried to dissuade me, but my grandmother who lived in a wing of our house, said she would pay for me to go to hotel school in Scotland, which I did. I have to confess (although I’m kind of proud of it now in a way) I left after a year because I thought the calibre of teaching was awful. It was the right thing to do. I’ve just never been a very corporate person; I always wanted to paddle my own canoe.
What came next?
Well I trained in London and I worked for some of the five-star hotels there but I was determined one day to have my own hotel. I joined Save the Children when I was 22 and I ran their projects in Bangladesh, Morocco, Brazil and Nicaragua for five years. When I went back I opened my first hotel in the country in Woodstock in Oxfordshire; a little hotel called The Feathers. I bought that when I was in my late 20s. That really got me started in the path of independence. From The Feathers I did a little hotel in London called the Draycott, and then I sold them and went to live in America for a few years. I came back to do One Aldwych in 1998.
Was One Aldwych the dream hotel you had been planning all of your life?
No. I took a two-year sabbatical and I was living in the Hamptons in America when I suddenly realised I was more interested in contemporary hotels than traditional ones. I realised there was a shift in my emphasis and I couldn’t be bothered to go back and do another traditional hotel. I wanted to create an original. I had the vision for One Aldwych to be a modern classic – nothing to do with being trendy or high fashion, just more sleek and slightly more relevant to the time; a contemporary hotel.
Modern classic – is that the driving force behind CampbellGray Hotels?
It is. We never design two hotels the same, every one is on original. We want to be really right for the times. The whole concept of luxury and what is luxury has shifted so much. What stood for luxury in a five-star hotel years ago is so different now. People expect different things and I believe that a sense of restraint is quite appealing. The dripping deluxe of many of the opulent hotels becomes quite dated and almost unacceptable I think in these times.
Is there still a market for that kind of hotel?
Definitely – it’s just not a market I would choose to personally engage in. But of course, there are always people who will want to drive Rolls-Royce cars and have everything dripping deluxe.Is it fair to say you believe in an informal side to luxury?I don’t think anyone wants that at all any more. I think the whole concept of hotels doing fine dining is totally over. I think the whole idea of a hotel is that it should be inclusive – we have always been very particular about creating snob-free zones where everyone is treated the same; guests and staff. That is a key lynchpin in the CampbellGray Hotels brand. I am quite allergic to snobbism and hotels can be quite snobbish. We take no truck with that.
Generation X is accounting for an increasingly large portion of the luxury market; are those the market forces you are responding to?
Le Gray in Beirut is the perfect example of what we are creating. It’s kind of ‘One Aldwych: The Next Generation’. It’s amazing; we have guests across the board, from the young and jet-setting to the well-established. They get it. We are not in for a youth market; we are not in for an old fashioned market. If I were to do the DNA of our guests, I would say they are intelligent; they are innovative and they want something new. They don’t want trendy and they don’t want high fashion. They want values and I think they realise that what we are doing at CampbellGray has that. This is what I am most proud of.
What are the values of the CampbellGray Hotels brand?
We are an intelligent brand. We try to be environmentally considerate but we are not saying we are eco hotels. We are not; we are just trying to do as much right as we can, whether it is where we source our food, how we treat people, our philanthropic arm etc. I just feel we are a wee bit special that way. I am a very non-competitive person. I’m terrible to play tennis with because I really don’t care who wins – I enjoy the partaking. We’re not competing with anyone, we just want to do it right.
How much of your own taste goes into each of the properties?
A lot. I work with a wonderful woman called Mary Fox Linton who is now in her eighties and we have done all the collaborations together. I have a huge input. My office is half a design studio really. We have created a new office in Beirut which is very much based on design. I am very much involved, whether it is with the graphics, the imagery, the lining of the box we put the PureGray chocolate in – everything goes through my office. It’s not a one man show, I have a very good team, but I am very engaged. It’s a little bit autographic.
Does that mean these four properties are the epitome of what you consider to be great luxury hotels?
Definitely and particularly Le Gray and Carlisle Bay. Carlisle Bay for me is the quintessential lay and flop resort in the Caribbean, where we have tried to simplify and emphasise totally on relaxation and chilling out. For me it is the dream place to go when you are stressed out. We have mastered and are mastering the art of resort chill-out. One size doesn’t fit all for us – every one is it own little masterpiece in terms of where it is and who it’s for.
We heard you were doing something in the Falklands?
Yes I am still determined to do that but the problem with the Falklands is the accessibility. I have been several times and I just love it. It’s not an easy trip but it is a fantastic escape; it would be offering something extraordinary. But we have some slightly more eyebrow raising places than that up our sleeve.
How can the arrival of a product like yours help the development of a destination?
At Le Gray, the British are now the fourth largest nationality and that is purely based on the phenomenal publicity we have generated in the UK. This is the renaissance of a fabulous city – Beirut is back in style with a vengeance. I think it is probably one of the hottest destinations in the world. At the weekend we are packed with people coming from Paris and London for the weekend; people that have never been to Beirut before. I think Le Gray has a very big stake in the overall promotion of Beirut.