When you look at Swire Properties’ investment portfolio of Hong Kong luxury hotels, such as the Conrad, JW Marriott and the Shangri-La, it comes as no surprise that it would be inevitable that they start to look at owning their own brands too. Now, as we all know, owning and managing a hotel concern are two very different disciplines and property expertise does not necessarily (actually quite often it doesn’t) equate to good management. It seems that a combination of both is as good a formula as any and when to be one or the other works as well.

 

Brian Williams is Managing Director of Swire hotels. Prior to this he was 17 years with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and a short stint at running a small hotel group and has been with Swire for the past four years.

 

I don’t necessarily think that it was a natural evolution. I believe that opportunistic developments happen that can work if you have the right people in the right place at the right time. At the time I joined the company, there were a number of potential projects in mixed-use developments and it was suggested that we try doing it on our own. There are also projects, such as our development in Guangzhou, where we have the Mandarin Oriental operating it for us. It was wholly appropriate that that should happen at that time rather than us doing it. Other market conditions can dictate that we use the brands that we have and take a very open view of what’s right for each individual project at the time.

 

In the UK they have been stand alone up to now. Here in Asia, projects tend to be presented to us as part of mixed-use developments. For instance with the Opposite House in Beijing, the group acquired the village which was a retail development that had a hotel site under development. We took it when it was about 20% started. The Upper House came about with the contemporisation programme of Pacifi c Place after which is now 20 years old. The suggestion was made that we also look at putting in a small-scale hotel. For us it was an interesting angle to concentrate on doing a predominantly bedroom-led product with one great restaurant. Which is what we have achieved here at The Upper House with designer Andre Fu.

 

We had some early day discussions with Andre and were impressed with the fact that he wasn’t formulaic. I would like to think that we consider ourselves to be quite forward thinking. With Opposite House, Kengo Kuma had never done a hotel before. So we really are getting original work. Original work is harder for everybody else. It’s hard work for the designer and harder work for us and we all have to work very hard together. We also used Neri & Hu for some of the F&B outlets. EAST was designed by William Lim of CL3. They have done really good work just full really interesting design and so appropriate for the area and the product. We are quite exited with some of the people we’ve worked with and we don’t rule out working with them again. We’ve chosen a number of different designers so we can get that individual look.

 

No, each is individual. The opposite house is undeniably Asian. You cannot think you were anywhere else. I would hope that people would look at the Upper house and see a modern Hong Kong in a modern China. The trouble with trying to do fit into a category is like the UK we have a listed Regency period property in Cheltenham, but if we described as having an English look people will immediately think of Tudor or flock wallpaper instead of the sophisticated property it is. I don’t think that in order to be resonant with your locality you need to be some pastiche of the nineteenth century; there is a modern interpretation of our culture. In Cheltenham we have a creative design where you’re able to go from a bedroom that has all the Regency detail and architecture to something that is amazingly modern and contemporary. We are still using Cotswold stone, it’s just that in the extensions the colour and the stone are the same but interpretation of local architecture is thoroughly modern. 

 

Tony Smyth

Executive Editor

Hospitality Architecture+Design magazine/HA+D online