The Four Season Kyoto, opened this past October.
Years ago, I managed to get my name on a roster of seat-fillers for theatres debuting shows in London's West End. At noon, I'd get an e-mail offering a free preview, and by 7:30, I'd be sipping chardonnay out of a plastic cup in the stalls, waiting for curtain-up. Nine times out of 10, the show was flawless, the performers killing themselves to nail it for the house. In the rare event someone missed their cue or forgot a line, we considered it added value. We could dine out for weeks on Dominic West tripping over Stoppard, or Brian Dennehy flubbing Arthur Miller.
Translate that to a restaurant opening and the risks creep northward. Not even Nobu can promise to serve your black cod promptly and properly on opening night, when the staff is overwhelmed and the plumbing is getting the first test of its life. And it's hard to have fun when you're hungry. That's why even restaurant critics give new openings time to find their groove.
Is experiencing a new luxury hotel any different? Most four- and five-stars you read about in travel sections such as this one enter into a "soft launch" trial period, when insiders and media types trickle in at deep discounts while management discreetly lose their heads over no-show chefs and blocked toilets. Thereafter, "opening offers" often play out for months. Just how luxurious will your experience be, though, when the contractor is still on-site in a hard hat?
Very, Suzannah White is willing to wager. As director of international business development at Beaumont & Brown, a supplier of deluxe bed linen for the Four Seasons, among other luxury hotels, she has relationships with the world's top five-stars and boutiques. And as a discerning leisure traveller, she has high expectations of them.
This fall, she launched Bethefirst.com, which brokers rooms in hundreds of top-tier hotels selling off suites as they prepare to open. Of some 3,500 five-star hotels launching worldwide this year, she's snagged more than 500 for the site, so you can get an ocean-view villa in the Anam Villas in Nha Trang, Vietnam, for $247 a night, a 40-per-cent discount. Or a cabin at the Huus Hotel Gstaad for $340.
Bethefirst.com strives for "aspirational" 30- to 45-year-olds who'd endure a three-star but aim higher – and get a kick out of Instagramming their rainwater shower before even the critics have got their feet wet.
White says her first soft-launch experience was "the best holiday I ever had."
It was four years ago, early in the life of Gran Hotel Guadalpin Banus, near Marbella, Spain. "They quoted us €350 – nice, but a little steep. Then we found out that was the price for a week," she says. "The first thing that happened is we got upgraded – the hotel was half empty. We were given vouchers for free meals. They offered us champagne with breakfast."
In her next visit to Spain, she "soft-launched" at Madrid's Hotel Urban, with its soaring steel atrium, original sculpture and designer seating.
"I want the specs in my hotel to be better than at home," White says. "I don't want to get in and realize it desperately needs an upgrade because it's been around for ages."
After three years hunting down hoteliers at conferences such as World Travel Market in London, White says they're now coming to her – she recently added the Four Seasons Kyoto, open this past October, to her books. She says she does what she can to vet them, rejecting, for instance, hotels amid major construction, of the sort you find in emerging markets such as Abu Dhabi. "Even if you're not paying a fortune for the hotel, it still costs a lot to get there, and you don't want your holiday ruined by noise."
She challenges naysayers who dread clueless rookie staff and precarious air conditioning. "People can have the same issues with hotels that have been open for years. When my bathroom leaked [during a soft launch], I was immediately upgraded to a suite. And that can happen anywhere, any time."
It just may not be worth the hassle for some people, and not nearly as much fun as a pratfall from Jude Law as Macbeth.
So let's take it up a notch and say you're in that 30-to-45 demographic. You have a similar penchant for exclusivity and bragging rights, but deeper pockets and desire for more of a sure thing. Black Tomato, another British-born company, will actually build a pop-up hotel for you and your party alone, then dismantle it when you're ready to go home.
Its new Blink service offers a menu of secluded locations (Icelandic fjord, Moroccan dune) and designs (plush yurt, windowed pod, A-frame hut), from which you can choose for a bespoke, off-the-grid, riffraff-avoidant holiday. For the privilege – not to mention the requisite bearskin rugs, fine dining, resident mixologists and door-to-door transport – you'll pay upwards of $15,000 a person.
By the time your PayPal payment clears, poof – the camp will have been "disappeared." Blink and you'll miss it, is the idea. You just have to hope they get it right the first time.