This lovely illustrated book is an homage from the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Group to their best hotels, called “The Luxury Collection”. At the time of publishing, in 2013, one could take it as an expensive coffee-table travel catalogue to decide upon one’s next holiday or simply as a beautiful guide to daydream about hotels. Most of the hotels were quite far away from a normal earner’s budget. Those were the hotels for a very special occasion, to be remembered forever.
The book is a reminder of Starwood Hotels & Resorts prime time, because today “The Luxury Collection” has been sold, together with all of what once was Starwood Hotels & Resorts. New owner is (since 2016) The Marriot Group, becoming so the largest hotel group in the world.
“The Luxury Collection” stayed on as a concept. Some hotels fell off the list, some were onboarded. Whilst the book shows short portraits of around 80 hotels, today “The Luxury Collection” of the Marriot Group boasts around 120 hotels. Without having fully researched it, it seems that more luxury wellness hotels became part of “The Luxury Collection”, whilst of course also hotels with a rich history were added. Most of the hotels today are in Europe, followed by Asia and North America.
“The Luxury Collection” during their Starwood Hotels & Resorts time was a mixture of mainly historic places and a few new ones. Hotels like the Excelsior in Naples or the Danieli in Venice were internationally known as THE hotel one went to in the city, if one really wanted to stay in style.
Whilst the Hotel Excelsior in Naples sometimes feels a little bit dated, its charm is unbroken. The way how guests are treated, the grandeur of former times and the beauty of the view from the roof terrace is more than any of its more modern 5-star neighbours can offer. Same goes for the Hotel Danieli, captured forever on celluloid by the film “The Tourist” with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie as a hotel with the ultimate view and an amount of luxury that is difficult to forget.
The connection to history, e.g. through pictures on the walls of famous people, heads of state, royalty, and Hollywood celebrities who all visited the respective hotel is very tangible in many of “The Luxury Collection” hotels in the book.
The Excelsior in Naples, the Danieli in Venice, the Hotel Elephant in Dresden and quite a few others are today no more part of the Marriot’s “The Luxury Collection”. Naturally the reasons for that are not advertised, and I also cannot guess them, as the hotels seem perfectly fine on their own.
Looking at the Starwood Collection from 2013, also especially on the pictures on the front and back cover of the book, we see tremendously beautiful nature and the best views possible in a certain location. We also see an understated style – somehow people in sloppy shorts and flipflops would not even fit in the nature around The Haciendas in Mexico or The Laguna in Indonesia. The pictures and stories in the book strengthen that feeling, but even the few photos on the covers show the demand for respect for the hotel’s surroundings.
Probably the truly stylish hotels are those where one can relax carefree whilst still being attentive to ones’ appearance and behaviour. Letting your hair down does not mean to behave inconsiderate to others. Great hotels somehow transport a certain set of rules to their guests, maybe through the personnel giving a good example in curtesy and manners. The kind of rules one followed in the good old times, but those good old times, as we all know, never existed apart from theory.
The Luxury Collection hotels are not the ones that give 100% privacy to their guests, like the resorts on Mustique or on islands so far away from each other that no one can disturb his or her neighbour.
This probably is part of their charm, the “see and be seen”, everybody giving the best version of him- or herself. One could become philosophic about it and the thought invites to mull it around a bit longer, maybe with an aperitif in hand, on a terrace, whilst the sun sets.
All rights to the book belong to:
The Luxury Collection (of Starwood Hotels & Resorts): Hotel Stories, 2013, with Francisca Matteoli, published by Assouline Publishing, 601 West 26th Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA, printed in China, ISBN: 9781614281320