from The Financial Times, 12 Nov 08
Jeff Mills meets the charismatic creator of hotels and finds a private aircraft-lover,

I did not need to ask the receptionist whether Peter de Savary was in the building. Having arrived to meet him, as arranged, at The London Outpost, the quirky little club-style hotel near Sloane Square he chooses as one of his bases when in the UK, I could hear him bellowing into the telephone long before I got to see him.

The recipient of his staccato instructions seemed to be one of his senior colleagues on the Caribbean Island of Grenada, the latest holiday paradise to gain the virtually undivided attention of Mr de Savary.

The charismatic 63-year-old is no stranger to holiday paradises, of course, and he has been involved in such developments for many a year. He sprang to prominence when he set about developing Skibo Castle in Scotland into an upmarket club hotel. His next big project was Bovey Castle in the UK’s West Country, which Mr de Savary and his team spent about three years creating out of what was a less-than-inspiring manor house hotel.

Having disposed of this property to a large UK property fund, which, according to de Savary, includes a number of experienced hoteliers, he has now set his sights on an even more exciting and exotic project and one which, because of its location, now sees him spending even more time on board long-haul jets.

"Grenada has it all, fabulous sandy beaches on one side of the island, volcanic black sandy ones on the other, a mountainous tropical rainforest in the interior, with all sorts of different species of plants and trees and it’s well outside the hurricane belt," he tells me.
"The island is largely untouched by mass tourism, the people are among the friendliest you could hope to meet," says Mr de Savary. "At the moment I’m spending about three weeks out of every four in Grenada," he says. "In all I’m probably taking about 15 flights a months, not by any means all in the Caribbean. In a typical month I may do, say, four or five trips within Western Europe, two or three returns across the Atlantic and five or six flights within the Caribbean region."

In fact he and his senior executives are travelling around the Caribbean so much that Mr de Savary keeps a private 13 seat turbo-prop lane, known as "Nutmeg One", together with two pilots and a stewardess on standby in Grenada ready to take off at a moment’s notice.

Private planes play a big part in his travel plans elsewhere in the world, too. "I tend to use private jets whenever I’m travelling anywhere reasonably short-haul in Europe, the United States or the Caribbean," he says. "The alternative, which is the hassle of passing through airports the normal way is just too stressful. I like to be able to just turn up at the private terminal and 10 minutes later be in the air."

And what about when Mr de Savary travels long-haul and there is no private jet available, I wonder. Which class of travel does he chose and which airlines provide a suitable alternative to private planes? "I’ve never flown economy in my life," says Mr de Savary, and even if there is a decent business class available he would clearly prefer to travel in first class.

"If I’m travelling across the Atlantic from the UK I tend to choose British Airways or Virgin Atlantic," he says."But I find Air France is an excellent option if I’m travelling from my house in France. They also allow me to take my pet dog into the cabin with me. He travels in a special carrying case I bought for him at Harrods."

And what about hotels? Being an expert in the luxury end of the hotel business, how does he go about choosing one to stay in?
"There are lots of things which annoy me about hotels but there are plenty which really are very good indeed," says Mr de Savary.
"I love staying at The Ritz in Paris. It’s really good, so good that I wrote to Mohammed Al Fayed to tell him so. I have stayed there a number of times and I haven’t had a bad room yet, they really look after me."

Generally though, what Mr de Savary wants from a hotel during a business trip is a decent bed where he can get a good night’s sleep and prompt room service. "I’m not a big fan of hotel restaurants. Instead I want really good room service, preferably able to deliver my food within 30 minutes. As a cigar smoker – "I probably get through eight to 12 a day" – he would also like hotels to provide somewhere where guests can go for a smoke without running foul of the anti-smoking legislation now found in many countries.

Another thing that annoys him, and he is certainly not alone in this, is the practice of some hotels of not allowing you check in until, say, 3pm. "If I arrive in Europe after a transatlantic flight, I may well be touching down at 7.30am, I need somewhere to go and have a shower and change before my meeting, I can’t wait until mid-afternoon before I can get into my hotel room."

No doubt this is just one of the areas he will expect his managers to address when his new pet project in Grenada opens for business.
The £300m Port Louis development includes a five-star hotel, not to mention a deep-water marina, yacht club and 280 residential properties, all overlooking the island’s capital St George.