Beyond Luxury
A Texas company has shocked London by taking over one of the world’s most expensive hotels—only a block from Buckingham Palace.
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When the Lanesborough’s owners announced in March 1990 that Rosewood had won the contract, other competitors were outraged. One losing European company went so far as to contact the owners and say it had heard the little Texas operation was planning to get out of the hotel business in a few years. “They tried to portray us as a naive, inexperienced company with just two hotels who didn’t know Europe,” sniffed Mankarios. “We remained dignified and refused to answer such insults.”
The owners stayed loyal to Rosewood, but by now Londoners were intrigued—especially when they heard that the cost of refitting the old hospital into a small 95-room hotel would be a whopping $200 million. But to allay any fears that Rosewood would turn the Lanesborough into a purely American hotel with tent cards on the tables and American waiters introducing themselves with such lines as “Hi, y’all, my name is Steve,” Rosewood executives persuaded the usually reticent Caroline Hunt to conduct a few interviews with the British press. A devoted Anglophile—her Dallas store, Lady Primrose, holds a collection of magnificent British antiques that she finds on her frequent forays through the English countryside—Hunt won over the press with her understated personality. The Financial Times in London described her as the type of woman who would be “happiest making apples pies and being the cosiest of den mothers”—perhaps the first time ever that a member of the legendary swashbuckling Hunt family had been labeled as cozy.
Meanwhile, Mankarios was hard at work behind the scenes. He fought with James Brackensick over the shampoo bottles in the showers. Mankarios wanted to use antique-style glass bottles because they were classier; Brackensick was worried that they would break. (Mankarios won.) Mankarios hired one of the more famous chefs in England to create a never-before-seen modern menu—“British cuisine for the nineties,” he called it. He hired a famous name in the English hotel business, 38-year-old Geoffrey Gelardi, to be the Lanesborough’s managing director. Mankarios wanted primarily British personnel working at the hotel; he then infuriated London’s other luxury hotels by conducting hiring raids on their best talent. If he happened to be having lunch at a competitor’s hotel and he liked the way an employee smiled or waited on him, he would offer that person a job.
Mankarios spent four months in London supervising the training of the staff, teaching them that it was okay to lose some of that notorious English stoic attitude and be friendly to the guests. Every morning, he said, he wanted the staff to study and memorize the hotel’s guest list. The butlers, who typically are trained to avoid looking guests in the eye and to speak only when spoken to, were told to loosen up. “I want dignity, not stuffiness,” he kept repeating.
The interior design contract for the hotel had been separately awarded to a London design company, which was creating a nineteenth-century Regency look. That meant lots of striped couches and overstuffed chairs, dark mahogany paneling, handwoven carpets, lions’ heads with water pouring out of their mouths, and paintings of long-dead, unattractive people. When Mankarios said he wanted bigger, king-size beds in the rooms because the international customers would expect them, the design firm nearly guffawed. The English are quite satisfied with small double beds in their hotel rooms. “The designers were very British,” said Mankarios, “and to every one of our suggestions, they would say,‘Oh, you must be joking.’ The great anxiety was not only that we were Americans but that we were Texans who all lived like the people on the television show.”
To counteract the Brits’ perception that Dallas was the home of the tacky rich, Mankarios flew a group of the designers and architects to Dallas, where he put them up at the Mansion and Hotel Crescent Court and took them to a performance of the Dallas symphony at the Meyerson. Eventually Mankarios got his bigger beds.
A lost art returns to London, trumpeted the headline of the full-page newspaper advertisements that announced the opening of the Lanesborough. And indeed, walking through a series of Roman arched hallways, past a roaring fire in the fireplace, past the head concierge in flowing whiskers and gold-rimmed bifocals, past other employees in gray morning suits, one did feel as if one had entered a great aristocratic home.
But the London newspaper critics—perhaps a bit appalled that such a posh hotel could open in the middle of one of Britain’s worst recessions and certainly put off that such a hotel was being controlled by Texans—had their knives out. A writer for the Independent complained, “There is something so excessive about the Lanesborough that it seems almost bound to foment hyperbole. It strives for grandeur and certainly achieves grandiosity.” The Guardian’s critic snapped that the guest rooms were built with “every conceivable luxury and in the worst possible taste.” The Evening Standard claimed that the concept of electronic monitoring devices was probably the way rich Dallas people monitored guests in their own homes. The Daily Telegraph’s reviewer, apparently taken aback by the colorful wallcoverings and upholstery patterns in the hotel (which are still very tame compared with American decors), wrote, “The Texas influence is evident in the flamboyance of the decor: pink, red, and green predominate, and even the branches used in the main flower arrangement have been sprayed gold.”
The reviews of the restaurant were no better. The Times of London’s reviewer even took the Lanesborough to task for having what he called a “staggeringly long” breakfast menu (actually, it’s shorter than the one at Denny’s). And, of course, the notorious London tabloids got in on the act. On the night of one of the opening parties, at which Caroline Hunt was entertaining former prime minister Margaret Thatcher downstairs, a couple of writers from the scandalous News of the World newspaper rented a room upstairs and took photographs of prostitutes they said had been provided by the hotel staff. (The hotel vehemently denies providing them.)
To add to the insult, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was forced to cancel a visit to another opening party for the Lanesborough in February because of the hotel’s Texas connection. Buckingham Palace ordered her to stay away from the Lanesborough because she didn’t need any further publicity about her association with Texans—namely Steve Wyatt, who was allegedly helping to bring about the end of her marriage. Palace Dallas Ban on Fergie, proclaimed the London Daily Mail.
Rosewood executives, who had received minimal negative coverage in America in the past decade, were obviously dismayed. Though it was doubtful that any of this news was affecting the American traveler (who the Lanesborough expects will make up about 60 percent of its business), what bothered Rosewood was the impact the publicity would have on London society. If the restaurant and bar didn’t become the haunt of the wealthy in the way that the Mansion drew Dallas’ monied crowd, the hotel would never be a great success. It was imperative that the Lanesborough lure away part of the crowd that normally goes to that most upper crust of London’s distinguished hotels, Claridge’s, which happens to be the very place where the British royalty holds some of its own parties.
And so, in mid-March, I watched the Lanesborough host its black-tie dinner for the London elite. The guest list was drawn up by Lady Elizabeth Anson, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s, and the place was crawling with people who had such titles before their names as lord, sir, lady, countess, and viscount. Television host David Frost came with his wife, Lady Carina. Prince Michael of Kent (another cousin of the queen’s) arrived, as did Princess Margaret (the queen’s sister). The princess was very nice to everyone and seemed especially interested in meeting the few Texans there. When I was introduced to her, she gave me a long, thoughtful look.
“Skip?” she asked. “You said your name is Skip?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I replied, my heart pounding. Did she know me? Had she recognized my byline? Would she ask me to dance? Would I be the next Steve Wyatt?
“The word ‘skip’ is actually a name?” Princess Margaret asked. I had the distinct impression that she was trying not to giggle.
Later, I saw her with a man who looked just like Larry Hagman. I stepped closer. Good Lord! It was Larry Hagman. He was wearing a tuxedo with a sort of beaded necktie that looked like the kind of Indian belt you used to buy at Stuckey’s when you were a kid. He was talking to everyone in his best Texas accent.
“That’s it,” I thought, “the party’s over.” Right here in the midst of these people is J. R. Ewing, the one man who has come to symbolize everything bad about Texas.
But Hagman, oddly, seemed to be the hit of the party. Everyone did double-takes when they saw him. I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Do you think you could introduce Mr. Hagman to me?” one bespectacled man humbly asked me. “We once briefly took acting classes together when we were very young.” The man, it turned out, was the titled son of a prominent earl, no doubt richer than chocolate, the kind of guy who goes out on his 10,000-acre estate for a little fox hunting in the morning and then sips tea with Prince Charles. I realized that no matter how much the English might criticize Texans, they will always be fascinated by us.
As if being in a “Texas” hotel made everything less strict, the proper British partygoers let their hair down on this night. After dinner they swept into the hotel’s Conservatory, an ornate, glass-ceilinged restaurant that is anchored by a pair of two-ton, ten-foot-tall classical urns. Champagne was everywhere. Everyone danced until late in the evening, and then a small group hung around the piano and sang Cole Porter tunes until four in the morning. “What a smashing party,” one of the ladies said. “We’d never be allowed to have this much fun at Claridge’s.”
That kind of statement is like music to the ears of Rosewood executives. The Lanesborough might not become London’s most beloved hotel overnight, but Londoners—well, those who’ve got the fat checkbooks—won’t be able to ignore it. I’ll never forget the words of one young man, an employee of Christie’s, as he stood watching the party. I had just come off the dance floor after my incredibly embarrassing attempt to perform a waltz turned into something that resembled a fraternity-boy shimmy dance. “I’ve always wanted to come try this place out,” he said. “I suspected you Texas chaps knew how to have a good time.”
For a moment, I thought he might slap me on the back. But then, his reserve appropriately took over, and he raised his glass in a silent cheer.
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