Personalities
Changing the
Set
Stephen Alden ’ S new Ambition , And rewArd , iS Setting the Scene juSt right for modern luxury gueStS .
Contributed by PiPPa isbell
Seated in the Presidential Suite of London ’ s Café Royal , Stephen Alden is in reflective mood . He has just returned from Paris , where The Set , the hotel group he joined in March 2016 in the new role of CEO , is “ re-imagining ” the art deco hotel Lutetia on the left bank , due to reopen in autumn 2017 .
Alden wants to put the hotels of The Set at the forefront of a new wave of modern , grand hotels and is passionate about this opportunity in every aspect of the hotel , from design and team culture to the creation of a truly authentic guest experience .
“ I ’ ve been guided from my earliest days by this thing of creating places where people want to be ,” he says . “ How do you look at a building , how do you look at a hotel lobby , how do you interact with people so that you are creating spaces , environments , rooms , that people are going to want to return to ? I feel in a certain way , it ’ s the hotelier in me . I am very driven by creating this mood around the table at the design stage so that we ’ re dealing with all the elements at the same time and not in isolation .” Restoration fascinates him ; he and his wife are engaged in a personal project to restore a farmhouse in the Luberon in central Provence in the south of France and in this , as in all things , he doesn ’ t want to change the character but make things better .
The hotelier in him was formed when , as a child in Malta , he would visit his uncle who ran the casino , who worked nights but went to hotel school during the day . The young Alden read the notes he sometimes left around . “ I began to read about housekeeping and wine cellars and I became interested . I had not realized you could actually have a career doing these things , and my parents encouraged me . I went first to a local hotel school and then studied hospitality management at Glion-sur-Montreux ( Switzerland ) and have never looked back .”
Alden ’ s first hotel job was in the Dolder Grand in Zurich , before joining ITT Sheraton at its U . K . HQ . His first GM role was at
18 hotelsmag . com December 2016