“My best ideas come in the night. I am so lucky I can remember my dreams,” says Frédéric Vidal, managing director of the 85-key Las Ventanas al Paraiso, A Rosewood Resort, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
“But to keep abreast of any competition you can never be complacent, and travel helps keep me just ahead of the curve. I do such essential industry events as Virtuoso Travel Week, which this year runs August 12-17, as always at Bellagio in Las Vegas. And, like every year, it is a chance to see, among the over-5,000 delegates, some of my most important travel adviser partners,” he said.
Vidal reckons he is on the road at least 90 days a year. He does International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) in Cannes every December, and picks and chooses other industry events, and he travels solo to meet supplier-partners — this includes an average of six trips to New York annually.
“I need ideas, but they must be relevant. I cannot anticipate changing trends too far ahead. I am always observing and listening — what are people doing right now rather than when I last saw them? Travelers today want what they want when they want it, which is why our bedroom minibars have smoked salmon and ice cream — and outside, we actually make ice cream right by our pools.”
Average stay, year-round, is seven nights, and at least 51% of guests are repeats. About 70% of all business is from the U.S. — one guest, who comes three to four times a year, always brings his Yorkies, who scamper immediately down to their regular villa, to be fed, watered and walked by their favorite butler.
“One thing that is absolutely essential in maintaining guest satisfaction is service, and I am fastidious about that. Butlers need to read and understand a 50-page manual before working one month elsewhere in the resort followed by two weeks in a kitchen. They next have to service a senior manager staying in-house for three nights, and finally they are paired with a senior butler,” said Vidal.
He does not want Las Ventanas to be trendy or fashionable (“new money, with gold bikinis and jeweled flipflops, may prefer somewhere else,” he admitted) — he cites Karl Lagerfeld, designer-for-life at Chanel, who is quoted as saying that “trendy is the last stage before tacky.”
Vidal does want Las Ventanas be the ultimate refuge, and here his own design talents are continually used — “I have the rare advantage of working in tandem with the hotel’s owner, Ty Warner.”
It was they who together planned, and designed, a second, family-friendly pool, and in its lazy-water tunnel, hot tubs by which dinner tables can be set. The pair also re-designed the resort’s premium villa, the Ty Warner Mansion: As well as its main 250-foot infinity pool fronting onto its beach, the Mansion has a second rooftop lap pool, glass-bottomed so you can see up into it from one of the bathrooms. The two similarly added an additional Las Ventanas restaurant, Arbol, mostly outside but with a giant shell-shaped shield as if over a rock concert stage (“we were just about to order classic porcelain but Ty Warner, who was in Spain, called me at 5 a.m. Los Cabos time enthusing about unique mix-and-match white ceramics at dinner last night. I managed to find the manufacturer’s name and, while I gave quantities over the phone, he bought what we needed,” Vidal recalled).
Vidal’s own night-time thoughts have come up with many small points. In daylight, when walking the property, he always has someone with him to whisper a guest’s name, if needed. Protocol is in his blood. Back home in France, his grandfather was a general. “My grandmother used to entertain a lot. I helped her get ready for parties and I loved the pomp of such events. She wanted all her guests to feel at home, and some of them had splendid homes, just like my guests today,” explained Vidal – using the word splendid rather than the dreaded “fashionable.”