Herbert Ypma, globetrotting tastemaker behind the lavish HIP Hotel guides, tells Sarah Turner how the best hotels often spring from lifelong passions
Few people know more about what makes a stylish hotel than Herbert Ypma. More than a million of his HIP Hotel books have been sold around the world since 1999 – lavishly photographed guides, with themes such as cities, spas, beaches and budget, that manage to seem both practical and aspirational.
To ensure the rest of us can keep up with the latest, coolest hotels, Ypma spends half the year travelling in a relentlessly energetic way (he’s a former professional windsurfer and still a keen sportsman) with a 35mm camera, tripod, notebook and two small bags. “I think I must look very unimpressive when I turn up with just a couple of bags,” he says.
The son of a Dutch geologist and speaker of five languages, he divides the rest of his time between homes in London and Paris. Our meeting place, L’Hôtel in Paris, is a louche, evocative boutique hotel on the Left Bank that Ypma credits with being cool and iconoclastic long before the HIP Hotel phenomenon.
“When I first came here in the early 1980s,” Ypma mentions, “one room was all green velvet with white-painted antiques and there was a red “Empire” room. The penthouse was like an English gentleman had gone nuts with psychedelic chintz.” A rejig by the current golden boy of hotel design, Jacques Garcia, has meant a couple of rooms have become a bit bland in Ypma’s opinion, but it’s still a cool hotel in a cool neighbourhood – part hotel, part theatre.
As such, L’Hôtel is a typical HIP Hotel – “HIP” standing for Highly Individual Property. With his books, Ypma has been able to convince hoteliers they can thrive by offering their guests something different to corporate, identikit hotels – and he has no doubts it’s a growing trend.
“These days, you don’t have to make a decision about what car you buy,” he says. “Instead, you can join a club and decide to drive a Maserati one weekend. The next, you take out a Ferrari and, when you fancy something different, you can choose a BMW – it’s the same with hotels. In New York, the hotel that appeals could be modern and spacious, but, in Paris, you might opt for something cosy and dark. Taste in hotels isn’t simple any more.”
Once a calling all of its own, the past decade has seen other professionals try their hand at running hotels. Architects, like the owners of down-to-earth and budget-minded Le Sénéchal, on the Ile de Ré in France, tend to be rated quite highly by Ypma because they usually maximise positive elements. “Most people want a big open room with space and light,” he states.
Ian Schrager – the former Studio 54 boss, who is credited with reinventing the hotel room in the 1980s – gets a more cautious thumbs-up. “When they bought Morgans in New York, Schrager and Steve Rubell were smart enough to hire Andrée Putman as the designer and street cred entered the hotel equation, not style; some beautiful old hotels have always had style. But a nightclub owner can come with lots of baggage by making it hard for you to stay there – that’s such a perverse logic to me.”
Often best of all, to Ypma’s mind, are the impassioned obsessives who create the sort of hotels no one else would – for instance, Canoe Bay in Wisconsin. “The owner is so into all that natural forest beauty, but with a Frank Lloyd Wright edge.” Or the Cedar Creek Treehouse in Washington state, where Ypma scaled 15 metres up a giant cedar dressed in black linen so he could include it in HIP Hotel USA. “The owner said he’d never seen someone rappelling up the tree in a Prada suit before.”
His next book, HIP Hotel Kids, will be published in 2008 to satisfy what Ypma sees as a market for older, high-achieving parents. Ypma himself has two young children – with his long-term partner Danielle, an investment banker – but his take on child-friendly hotels might surprise some in the hospitality industry. Hotels with kids clubs, for instance, don’t make the cut – “Who wants to closet their kids away?” – nor do particularly child-centred ones: “Hotels with 300 kids are no fun for anyone, least of all kids. There’s just too much noise, too much of everything. The formula for what makes a hotel work for children is complicated and varied.
“When you first look at the Setai in Miami, you think it doesn’t have any of the ingredients you need to make a good hotel for kids – it’s all grown-up, there’s lots of stuff kids can break – but it works because, firstly, there aren’t many children around. But there are some – and three swimming pools of different temperatures, so children will go for the warmest one and start playing with each other. Above all, it works for children because the Setai is a place for adults: adults are happy there and children are happy when parents are happy.”
For now, Ypma has to pick up his young son and take him to judo. “In Paris, I’m like a suburban mum,” he says, before disappearing into the afternoon.
The HIP Hotels series is published by Thames & Hudson. For more information visit www.thamesandhudson.com
Hotels that are HIP
1. Murano
Paris, France
2. Cheong Fatt Tze
Penang, Malaysia
3. The Soho Hotel
London, UK
4. Adrère Amellal
Siwa Oasis, Egypt
5. Hôtel du Petit Moulin
Paris, France
6. The Metropolitan
Bangkok, Thailand
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