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Eve Press
The Financial Times |
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| They like a bit of wit and that sense of having a best friend who’s been there, tried it out and is giving you a few personal hints | |
| Cult reading amongst the well-travelled, affluent and urban young | |
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Keeping up with the Smiths The hotel reviewers Mr & Mrs Smith are finally unmasked By Lucia van der Post. Photographs by Laurence Cendrowicz. In October 2003 a new hotel guide appeared on the scene. It was published privately by the authors because no big-name publisher would touch it. It had no publicity campaign behind it and the authors were entirely unknown – yet by Christmas of that year they’d sold some 20,000 copies. Today Mr & Mrs Smith: Hotel Collection UK and Ireland has sold more than 100,000 copies. Mr & Mrs Smith: European Cities was published in 2004 and is selling fast, whilst European Coastlines Collection has just gone online. Coming up next is European Coast and Country (enchanting gateways in Europe), whilst in the pipeline are Mr & Mrs Smith: East Coast and West Coast. They’re become cult reading amongst a certain group of well-travelled, affluent (mainly) urban young who find that the Smiths’ tastes mesh perfectly with their own. To start with, Mr & Mrs Smith have no truck with formality for the sake of appearances, with meaningless pomp and with posey staff or fussy design and decoration. What they want is quality where it matters – in beautiful locations, in large, comfortable beds with beautiful linen, great showers, quiet, tactful service and the sort of food that is fresh, fun and good. And, when it comes to guides, they want one that tells them what they really want to know. They don’t want a report from a “clipboard Charlie” who ticks all the boxes about TV sets, en-suite bathrooms and the number of gourmet courses but misses out on the things that really matter, like the warmth of the welcome, the views, the quality of the linen. So what do they want to know? They love insider tips such as which is the best bedroom to ask for, and they want to know which is the best pub or place to eat nearby, plus whether you need to pack your glad rags, whether the shower works properly, what in the immediate area is “worth getting out of bed for” (one of Mr & Mrs Smith’s more endearing traits is that they like a bit of a lie-in). While the guides have this knack of telling the discerning, adventuresome traveler exactly what he wants to know, all the usual practical details are of course there as well. On top of that, they like a bit of wit and that sense of having a best friend who’s been there, tried it out and is giving you a few personal hints. Mr & Mrs Smith did for guides what Babington House did for country house hotels – they broke the mould. But just who are Mr & Mrs Smith? And what is it their guides offer that their better-known predecessors – The Good Hotel Guide, the Michelins, the Fodors, the Blue Guides and the like – fail to deliver? Mr & Mrs Smith have broken cover at last I can reveal that they are none other than James Lohan and his long-time partner soon-to-be wife – Tamara Heber-Percy. Lohan is clearly one of those born entrepreneurs, too restless to get on with life’s exciting challenges to hand about collecting academic honours. While most of his peer group were still worrying about student grants, he was running a mobile disco called Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It. He discovered his way with a catchy phrase when he was working in PR after a year’s foundation course at art college. Keeping up with all he’s done isn’t easy. It seems to have been one long whirl of the sort of gigs that everybody’s mother certainly would have been dead against but which most 20-somethings would trade their stuffy jobs tomorrow to be involved with: discos, underground cultish nightclubs, themed monthly party venues, DJ-ing, setting up his own bar (The White House, the first members-only club south of the river in London). Not the sort of steady onwards-and-upwards path that ambitious parents plot for their sons at birth. In the midst of all this he met Heber-Percy, an Oxford graduate who’d been involved in marketing before joining her mother in running one of the country’s grandest introduction agencies. The Country Register. When Heber-Percy met Lohan they soon became an item and it wasn’t long before they wanted, like many a young couple before them, to get away for romantic weekends in the country. But could they find a guide that told them all the tings they really wanted to know before they set off down the motorway on a long journey? They could not. It was at a particularly grim hotel in the Lake District where they were having yet another thoroughly miserable time – Corby trouser press, magnolia kettle big enough for just two cups of tea, miniature UHT cartons and ginger biscuits, bed with a dip in the middle – that they decided to give up on all known hotel guides and do it themselves. The first review – of the offending hotel in the Lake District – circulated only amongst friends but some were so taken by the notion of honest, proper reviews that they ended up becoming investors in the business. Other (Giles Coren and Stella McCartney, among them) have gone on to do review for the books. They both decided to take the whole of January 2003 off and devote themselves full-time to the project. The concept was simple – to find 52 enchanting spots for a romantic weekend, one for every weekend of the year. They know that people’s tastes and moods vary – one weekend, as Lohan puts it, “you might feel in the mood for a champagne blowout at Babington House and the whole grand hotel bit, but at other times you want a cozy pub”. They weren’t looking at family-centred hotels or walking hotels or foodie ones. They were looking with only one thing in mind: would the hotel, pub or guest house give sophisticated, reasonably affluent young couples with romance on their mind a great time? They set off in Lohan’s old Porshe and went down to Brighton, down the coast to Cornwall, up to Wales, through the Lake District up to Ullapool, over to Ireland and then down the east coast of England. They researched over 1,000 hotels, and saw and stayed in some 150, but only 41 made it into the very first Mr & Mrs Smith (“We don’t do hotels we don’t like”). Part of the key to the guides’ success is that Lohan and Heber-Percy have eclectic tastes, perfectly embodied in the books. They don’t just go for the cool, minimal, designery hotel. “In our view,” they say, “some of them are overdesigned and are all about gadgets and gizmos that take half an hour to decipher.” “I like,” says Lohan, “to see blue and red signs on my shower taps and somewhere to put down my bag. Too many hotels don’t think carefully enough about the customer’s journey.” Nor do hotels that go in for overattentive service make it. “I hate those restaurants where they put the wine on a table far away from you and can’t fill up your own glasses when you want to and they keep interrupting your meal with ‘Is sir happy with sir’s lamb?’ sort of chat.” Their tastes run to family – or owner-run hotels – “They care, they’re passionate about what they do” – and one of the great services the UK and Ireland guide offers is that it brings to the attention of the traveling public hotels and pubs that don’t have big PR budgets and that you might never have heard of but where you could have a lovely experience. There’s The Bell at Skenfrith in Monmouthshire (a lovely pub on the boarders of Wales and Herefordshire), The Drunken Duck Inn in Cumbria (a great traditional pub), The Onion Store in Hampshire (a secluded hotel down leafy lanes) and The Star Inn in Yorkshire (another great pub with the most fantastic-sounding breakfast). Also in there, though, are some of the ones you’ve heard about for very good reasons – they’re quite simply special: Barnsley House, Hotel Treasanton, Whately Manor, Babington House et al. Having done all the work, Lohan and Heber-Percy then couldn’t find a publisher who was interested – or a distributor – and everybody sensible said they were mad. So there was nothing for it but to do what all those who have a dream and are determined to bring it to life end up doing – they set up a publishing company of their own. They made one rule – never to use anybody who’d been involved in publishing before: “They come with too many preconceptions of what will and won’t work,” says Lohan. The first guide – Mr & Mrs Smith: Hotel Collection UK and Ireland – was, as we have seen, an immediate cult success. It was sold in cool shops such as The Conran Shop and Heal’s, as well as bookshops such as Waterstone’s, all of which helped propel it into “cult” status. These days Mr & Mrs Smith are more than just a guide – they’re a brand. When you buy a copy of one of the books, you get more than just a book – you also receive a membership card which gives you access to a whole range of special offers and discounts at the very hotels mentioned in the guide. There are also discounts and upgrades on car hire and a host of other offers. Members have access to an online website through which they can book any of the Mr & Mrs Smith hotels. And there are two brilliant CDs – Something for the Weekend 1 and 2 – music compilations of some of Mr & Mrs Smith’s favourite hip bands. The brand is all about coupledom so it’s going to be interesting to watch it change and develop. When Lohan and Heber-Percy marry – which they’ll do this summer – the emphasis will obviously change. Should they have children, it may well encourage a Mr & Mrs Smith Go On Honeymoon seems an obvious next move. For the moment, a Mr & Mrs Smith & Friends is on the horizon – places for groups of couples to share on summer or winter holidays. What happens if Lohan takes up golf and Heber-Percy begins to get bored? What happens as they grow old and rediscover each other? All these are fruitful areas for the brand to explore and develop. All these are going to keep their growing band of fans wanting more. We just have to hope that there is never any need for a Mr & Mrs Smith Get Divorced. Somehow, I don’t think there will be. Mr & Mrs Smith Hotel Collection: UK & Ireland (£19.95) and Mr & Mrs Smith: European Cities (£24.95) are available now. Mr & Mrs Smith: European Coast & Country (£19.95) will be published in October. All these have just launched in the US where they are published in partnership with Rizzoli publishing. The Mr & Mrs Smith collection online – at www.mrandmrssmith.com – are European Coastlines, Boutique Bed & Breakfast and Marrakech. Coming shortly are New York and Cape Town. |
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