Seated in the Presidential Suite of London’s Café Royal, Stephen Alden is in reflective mood. He has just returned from Paris, where The Set, the hotel group he joined in March 2016 in the new role of CEO, is “re-imagining” the art deco hotel Lutetia on the left bank, due to reopen in autumn 2017.
Alden wants to put the hotels of The Set at the forefront of a new wave of modern, grand hotels and is passionate about this opportunity in every aspect of the hotel, from design and team culture to the creation of a truly authentic guest experience.
“I’ve been guided from my earliest days by this thing of creating places where people want to be,” he says. “How do you look at a building, how do you look at a hotel lobby, how do you interact with people so that you are creating spaces, environments, rooms, that people are going to want to return to? I feel in a certain way, it’s the hotelier in me. I am very driven by creating this mood around the table at the design stage so that we’re dealing with all the elements at the same time and not in isolation.” Restoration fascinates him; he and his wife are engaged in a personal project to restore a farmhouse in the Luberon in central Provence in the south of France and in this, as in all things, he doesn’t want to change the character but make things better.
The hotelier in him was formed when, as a child in Malta, he would visit his uncle who ran the casino, who worked nights but went to hotel school during the day. The young Alden read the notes he sometimes left around. “I began to read about housekeeping and wine cellars and I became interested. I had not realized you could actually have a career doing these things, and my parents encouraged me. I went first to a local hotel school and then studied hospitality management at Glion-sur-Montreux (Switzerland) and have never looked back.”
Alden’s first hotel job was in the Dolder Grand in Zurich, before joining ITT Sheraton at its U.K. HQ. His first GM role was at the Prince de Galles in Paris. He is now on his 11th city and third continent, having been part of the Starwood takeover team that acquired Ciga. He led the St. Regis Hotels and Resorts and Luxury Collection brands for Starwood before returning to the U.K., where he spent the past nine years as CEO of Maybourne Hotel Group. The role at The Set appealed to something in him that hankered for a more entrepreneurial opportunity.
Next rewards
His relationship with the owners of The Set Hotels, the Tel Aviv-quoted Alrov Group, and Chairman Georgi Akirov, is very good. They see themselves as a hybrid management company bringing together discipline and expertise, with ambitions to grow. His former Maybourne colleague Thomas Kochs joined The Set six weeks before he did, as the Café Royal’s managing director.
Alongside the Café Royal and the Lutetia in Paris, the Set also has the Conservatorium in Amsterdam. They are currently looking for a head of development. Italy interests them and they are also considering a coastal, Riviera setting. They don’t rule out new-builds or management contracts, providing that there is a strategic fit.
Alden considers his competition to be Peninsula, Oetker, Bulgari and smaller groups that are market leaders in their countries. “We are interested in hotels that have an angle,” he says. “The property that is just off the beaten track, not the obvious choice but the exciting one.”
Leading a team, and creating a spirit of camaraderie, is another aspect of the role that Alden finds particularly rewarding – a term he uses a lot. Alden challenges his teams to put themselves in the place of the people they expect to visit the hotel. “Will the business people of St James’s want to come to the Café Royal, will the Lutetia be not only a respected hotel but a loved hotel, where guests feel they could come back once or twice a week?”
He explains the difference. “A respected hotel is one where you walk down the street, look back at it and say how magnificent it is, and continue walking. A loved hotel is one where you feel like you want to walk through the doors and say good morning to somebody, have a coffee, read the paper and go back to have lunch because you love it; because of how it enhances the neighborhood and is a champion for the city in a certain way.”
Alden and Kochs have gathered their own team but say that only goes to one level. Once the senior team, including Benjamin Hofer, director of F&B, and Hendrick Hubner, front of house manager, got together, they all reached out to their own people to supplement the talent already in the hotel.
In Alden’s view, “In certain areas we have the best people in London today and the reason we can attract them is because people want to be a part of something where they can make their mark. They haven’t inherited somebody else’s ideas, they’re not just custodians, they can interact with people who also aspire to make a difference.
“In the hotel, once everyone realized the extent of their ambition, it motivated those who perhaps weren’t as excited every day because of the challenges they faced,” he continues. “They rose to the occasion as well, so suddenly we had the new people we had attracted from other world-class establishments and the existing team who said, this is really fun, we’re developing and learning and we want to be part of that. That’s a winning formula..”
So, is the Café Royal a loved hotel? Alden acknowledges there is still work to be done.
“It has tremendous potential, it’s a magnificent building, world-class in terms of structure, architecture, and the investment in the equipment and furniture has been second to none. I think there are some nuances from the operational side and from the concept side, which weren’t completely right at the outset but its something Thomas and I, as experienced hoteliers, are able to understand.”
His mantra is always to create a better version of what was done before. “I want always to be able to say confidently that today is better than it was yesterday.”