The ultimate luxury experience

What is real luxury in the hotel business?

Many hoteliers I speak to say that these days, luxury is all about resort properties.

 

I am inclined to agree. And there may never have been a better time to spend your money at resorts. Once upon a time, high end resorts seemed eye wateringly expensive. Now they are about the same price as city hotels because rates at city hotels all over the world have shot up.

 

   So my advice to travellers is: don’t unnecessarily spend lots of money on trophy properties in big cities. Save up for a resort. You will get real value for money.

 

   Most people who stay in city hotels spend few of their waking hours in the hotel and often breakfast is the only meal they will eat in-house. Even if they don’t have a schedule packed with business meetings, they will get so bored sitting in the hotel room that they will probably go out shopping, meet friends, eat at restaurants outside the hotel etc.

 

   It’s the opposite with resorts. The secret of a successful luxury resort is that even if you spend all of your time in the hotel, you should never get bored. And if you just sit in your room all day, it should still feel like a luxury experience.

 

   No destination embodies this principle as well as the Maldives. Because each hotel is on a small coral island of its own, something like 99% of all guests do not leave the resort. At best they will take a dolphin cruise, or go to a nearby uninhabited island for a picnic. (There are 1100 islands in the Maldives of which only 200 or so are inhabited.)

 

   Every island in the Maldives is beautiful and every hotel has its own lagoon with water so clear that you can see the pebbles at the bottom of the sea. Most hotels offer a combination of beach bungalows and water villas (from which you can enter the lagoon directly). So even if you stay in a mid range resort, you still have the beauty of the islands and the lagoon to enjoy.

 

   But this also means that each resort has roughly the same natural advantages. How does any hotel rise above the others? Isn’t there a danger of seeming too much like the competition?

 

   It is a genuine problem, and there is a certain sameness to many Maldivian resorts. But the best resorts are those that manage to rise above it. I have stayed at about a dozen of the top resorts in the Maldives and two of them stand out.

 

   Nine years ago I went to Soneva Fushi and Cheval Blanc on the same trip and wrote a column here comparing the experiences.

 

   I have since been back to Fushi many times but I hadn’t gone back to Cheval Blanc till last week. My view remains the same as it was nearly a decade ago. If you want a sustainable retreat with a sense of the Maldives then Fushi, the original luxury resort, is for you.

 

   But if you want pampering, sophisticated luxury and designer-level experiences combined with outstanding hospitality, then there is nothing to beat Cheval Blanc.

 

"Most people visiting a Cheval property will want the full designer experience and the hotel will not disappoint them."

   When I first went, Cheval had just opened and was the talk of the global hoteliering community. The Cheval group is owned by LVMH. The story went that LVMH owner Bernard Arnault wanted to give the customers who bought LVMH’s designer products (Dior, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Dom Perignon champagne, Bulgari and of course Château Cheval Blanc wine) the sort of experience that was on the same level as the world’s greatest designer brands.

 

   The Maldives Cheval was only the group’s second hotel and even now there are only six Cheval Blanc resorts in the world. Each one aims to be the best in its region and in cities where there is a Michelin Guide, the Cheval restaurants usually get three stars.

 

   When I first went to Cheval I was stunned by the beauty of the design. The villas (just 46 in total), designed by Jean Michel Gathy are spectacular – the best villas I have ever stayed in. It is the hardest thing in the world to create an atmosphere of understated luxury that does not detract from the natural beauty of the island. But Gathy managed it and the villas have stood the test of time. This time I thought mine was so beautiful that I was reluctant to leave it which I guess is the ultimate endorsement of a resort experience. And fortunately it had a dining area in the garden so in-villa dining was not a problem.

 

   Most people visiting a Cheval property will want the full designer experience and the hotel will not disappoint them. The spa is run by Guerlain, the boutique has designer brands and rare vintages of Cheval Blanc wine are available in the wine bar. The welcome champagne in the rooms is Ruinart (also owned by LVMH) and there is a caviar selection with more than a dozen varieties on the room service menu.

 

   All this is spectacular enough and not only is the food also very good but there is lots of it. Cheval has five restaurants for 46 villas. There is no Michelin guide to the Maldives but if there was, 1947 the formal French restaurant, would probably get a Michelin star.

 

   What also surprised me was the variety of cuisines on offer. In my short stay I ate everything from an excellent American street-style hotdog to a pizza topped with snails (absolutely terrific though I imagine the Frenchification of the dish might raise a few eyebrows in Napoli!) to very good nigiri sushi to carpaccio of local reef fish to Angus tartare to a Smash Cheeseburger.

 

   The general manager, Laurent Chancel had been the Chef on my first visit and insisted I tried the Indian food this time. He was very proud of his butter chicken which was delicious, but I liked all six of the Indian dishes I tried including a first rate yellow dal. It was actually better than the Indian food at some Indian-owned hotels in the Maldives.

 

   Cheval Blanc has nine staff members for every Villa (10 if you include casual staff) so service is the hotel’s priority. But numbers are not enough: you need staff with a sense of genuine hospitality. What struck me about Cheval was that the staff all seemed so happy. I asked Chancel about it and he said that the secret was to treat all employees with respect. “If you respect them,” he said, “they will look after the guests with pride.” I asked around and decided he was probably right. The team spoke of him with regard and affection and told me he even played football with the servers and the housekeepers and treated the staff with exceptional consideration.

 

   What I liked most about the Cheval style of luxury was the attention to detail. Our villa had expensive scented candles all around the rooms and each candle had a little matchbox next to it. At many hotels you struggle to find matches. There were two different kinds of beach slippers for each guest and two different kinds of beach bags.

 

   The hotel’s room service butter, served as a matter of course, tasted so delicious that I asked what it was. It turned out to be Bordier, probably the best (and among the most expensive) butter in the world. The oysters were from the artisanal company Gillardeau (predictably expensive), and nearly everything in the room reeked of discreet luxury.

 

   Chancel’s principle is that if it wants to offer the ultimate luxury experience, the hotel mustn’t worry about costs. If a guest feels pampered, he or she will come back often enough to keep your business booming. It is a principle that has paid off: Cheval had 98% occupancy the night I arrived.

 

   When I first went to Cheval Blanc, it was considered the most expensive resort in the Maldives. It is still in the top bracket but there are now at least four other properties in roughly the same price range. None of them is anywhere as good so bizarrely, Cheval now seems like good value.

 

   And it makes you feel - as every great resort should -that you are in a dream, where you’re surrounded by the best in the world and pampered 24 hours a day.