Is there such a thing as a distinctly French style of hospitality?
It was around the 19th century that the first Palaces appeared. In Paris, Hotel Meurice ranks among the oldest (it was established in 1835). In the 19th century, it was the only hotel available for welcoming wealthy travelers in Paris until the opening of the Ritz in 1898. It was these first hotels that defined the level of excellence. They took inspirations from castles and fine bourgeois estates in a careful attempt to define the service roles they wanted to offer their first clients. While some professions have disappeared, others have been modernized. During this period, the hotelier’s expertise was developed on the job, passed down from generation to generation, and further reinterpreted upon the arrival of subsequent generations—and this remains true even today. It is this alchemy that ensures the client the experience of an excellent service.
French luxury in the hotel industry brings together at once tradition and the ability to constantly reinvent ways for welcoming one’s guest. Welcoming one’s guests provides a source for the exchange of sensual and intellectual pleasures that, in France, bring out the best in standards, beauty, refinement, bygone and new rituals, and sophistication, not to mention lightheartedness, excellence, and courtesy.
French luxury hotels also bring together the best providers of products for their clients. For instance, a luxury hotel has to be able to offer the highest quality bedding by working with the best brands, such as Dumas, a company that has crafted luxury pillows and duvets for over 100 years. This expertise also becomes passed down from generation to generation, and it is this transmission of expertise that characterizes all the providers of our finest hotels, whether it be in the setting of the room or the restaurant.
The Plaza Athénée, for instance, continues this tradition of hospitality all while reinventing it. In terms of decoration, if you look at the work that has taken place in the bar and the restaurant under Alain Ducasse, architects Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku have understood how to preserve the spirit of these historic places all while bringing to them a touch of modernity. As far as service is concerned, the team continues to respect traditions while remaining open to innovating tableware, such as doing away with napkins. Yet excellence continues to reign! In these kinds of establishments, there are always a handful of collaborators who claim more than thirty years of experience within the establishment. They represent the memory of the establishment, and they are the ones who can recall the hotel’s most memorable stories and finest moments. Within their respective departments, they even pass down things they learned from those who came before them.
The art of welcoming guest …
Welcoming friends, family, clients, partners, all of these form occasions for an exchange of sensual and intellectual pleasures that, in France, bring out the best in standards, beauty, refinement, rituals, and sophistication, not to mention lightheartedness, excellence, and courtesy.
This page is aimed at sharing the various codes, customs, signs, symbols, and distinctly French principles that abound in the hotel industry. We have come to inherit an expertise and a way of living that we continue to adapt while blurring lines between tradition and modernity in the pursuit of bringing pleasure to our guests in the setting of an event, be it for a party of 2 or a party of 500!
What remains important above all is the ability to bring pleasure, surprise one’s guest, and provide him with the very best by drawing on a wealth of small and careful attentions. Nothing can be left to chance if you want to assure that your event is at once lively, ‘efficient,’ and meaningful and thus worthy of a lasting memory.
Beyond our borders, this French art of welcoming is something that is celebrated, sought after, and even envied. Is it our culture, our heritage, our gastronomy, our climate…? The truth is, it’s a bit of everything at once.
This French art of welcoming is a tradition we owe to Louis XIV. It was his hope to bring an element of prestige to France, so each event was carefully organized according to a very formal etiquette. Thanks to this ceremony, French-style service became integrated into a system in which the art of living truly emerged as a major art form. Tableware gradually developed into an art, and the beauty of the gestures in service developed in complexity. The quest for excellence, which accompanied the evolution of tableware, allowed for the evolution of common household objects such as pottery, table covers, and glasses, to name a few. The so-called “modern” cuisine of the time appeared around the same time as the first champagnes, and each of these were elaborated with a sense of ceremony and decorum that cemented the supremacy of French taste in Europe for several centuries thereafter.
Thus was born the French art of welcoming.