MSUCCESFULLY
PROFILE
FREDO TAFFIN
Fredo Taffin sails to the beat of his own ship . In just several years , the French-born architect and hotelier created Le Pirate Beach Club , a group of branded Indonesian resorts with a dedicated millennial following . But the journey was a roundabout one .
Taffin ’ s path started , not in hotelier school , but on the sun soaked deck of a yacht . Back in 1976 , he was 19 and had just finished studying architecture . Rather than jumping into a desk job , he became a sailor , captaining a handful of yachts and ultimately designing and constructing those same yachts .
It was when he settled in Bali in 1985 that his life started to shift towards hospitality . He first tried his hand at designing villas for Bali expats , ultimately opening his own beach club hotel on the Indonesian island of Nusa Lembongan .
“ I was probably a little bit ahead of the times ,” Taffin says . “ I struggled at the beginning to make the resort and cruises successful because I had to do all the hard marketing work of launching a destination and a package in an immature destination .”
That immature destination would ripen over the next decade , and in 2013 , by the time Taffin opened the first Le Pirate on the neighboring island of Nusa Ceningan , Bali had become more of a
‘ PIRATING ’ MILLENNIALS
MSUCCESFULLY
By CHLOE RILEY , ASSOCIATE EDITOR
SAILOR TURNED ARCHITECT TURNED HOTELIER FREDO TAFFIN TALKS ABOUT HIS JOURNEY TO MILLENNIAL-ORIENTED RESORT BRAND , LE PIRATE .
52 hotelsmag . com April 2017