Gourmet Traveller: June 2009

Lunch with Leo

Tastemakers

Boutique hotel experts, James Lohan and Tamara Heber-Percy travel pseudonymously.
Leo Schofield meets Mr and Mrs Smith.

Every hotel clerk in the world is familiar with the alias. A young couple checks in for the weekend. Even if they’re wearing wedding bans it’s clear they’re not married. “The name, sir?” asks the receptionist and in the Anglophone world at least, nine times out of ten, the answer will be: “Mr and Mrs Smith.”

That’s how it was when James Lohan and his then girlfriend Tamara Heber-Percy set out of the first of many “what we British call dirty weekends,” a practice that led to the establishment of a modish new boutique hotel and travel service called Mr and Mrs Smith. Well known and burgeoning in Britain, the service is now established in Australia.

That initial weekend away was not as romantic as either had envisaged. The double bed had a grave-like depression in the middle, the pillows felt as though they had been stuffed with cottage cheese. A trouser press, a dinky two-cup aluminum kettle and ginger biscuits in sealed packs of two were just some of the little touches that made the place seem more like a retirement home than a romantic retreat.

There must, they thought, be some way for young couples like us to identify romantic getaways. Not all posh places but an easy mix of the grand and the unpretentious.

Lohan and Heber-Percy met on a dance floor in Ibiza 12 years ago. They spent the next nine years posing as Mr and Mrs Smith 52 weekends of the year, then married but retained the name. Lohan had knocked around the party scene for years, run a mobile discotheque, organized events, started a hip restaurant and members’ club and then turned his entrepreneurial eye to the hotel business.

Heber-Percy is a well-know name, and the family is laden with titles of one sort or another. “I felt as though I was marrying into royalty,” observes Lohan. Widely travelled and multilingual, she worked in marketing and IT and now looks after the technical and booking side of the business. She’s a vegetarian, ergo, she has an interest in clients’ special needs.

They claim to have developed a sixth sense: just as a food reviewer can get a pretty good idea of a restaurant by looking at the menu, so the couple reckon they can size up a hotel or pub from the get go. “Usually I can tell from the lobby what the place will be like,” claims Heber-Percy. “From the driveway,” chimes in her husband. “We once went to a place that was touted as exclusive and when we saw the sign “Coaches This Way” we drove right out again, went to the local Pizza Express, sat down, ordered a pizza, got out the Palm Pilot and found a nearby pub that turned out to be terrific.”

They don’t apply the usual assessment measures. “We’re not like Michelin inspectors, sitting alone at dinner, checking the toiletries in the bathroom or the thread count on the sheets, ticking a whole lot of boxes. It’s the feel of the place that counts.”

It took six long years before people started to take notice, but hard work and persistence paid off and the website www.mrandmrssmith.com is now one of the most visited boutique hotel sites in Europe, with more than 250,000 visitors each month.

But the company is not just internet-based. A hard copy of their recommendations comes with membership, a kind of hip, young version of the famous Relais & Chateau guide. One senses they don’t have much time for the traditional guidebooks – “all those stars and rosettes and crossed knives and forks stuff” – which they clearly see as out of step with the tastes of young moderns. As inspectors they use what they call “tastemaker couples”, people who are equally at home at Raymond Blanc’s upscale Les Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire or a funky B & B in the boondocks.

“We offer three levels of membership,” says Heber-Percy. “Blacksmith, which is basic, SilverSmith, which is a cut above and a premium service called GoldSmith. The last offers what Heber-Percy describes as full travel coverage. “We’ll arrange babysitters, water your plants while you’re away, make theatre and restaurant bookings. We are expert in one thing and that’s travel. We don’t book people into destinations we don’t know about.”

As the company has grown bigger, the pair have felt increasing pressure to find inspectors they can trust and who understand what’s good value. And that’s the challenge they face as they expand. They freely admit to not knowing a great deal about Australia and New Zealand, so on this first visit to these parts they’re on the snoop for local would-be Mr and Mrs Smiths, a handful of tastemakers from the worlds of music, fashion, food, wine, architecture and publishing, they’ve already recruited Christine Manfield, Neil Perry and Sigrid Thornton.

Any plans for a gay offshoot, a Mr and Mr Smith? “Actually we’ve thought about it,” they reply in unison. But cautiously.