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.