My «Fetish» Hoteliers Lyon Porter & Liz Lambert

MY “FETISH” HOTELIERS

Lyon Porter & Liz Lambert, Born in the U.S.A.

By:Pablo Burgués / Photo: Maria Andreu

Summer is here, my friends, and with it a new instalment about the hoteliers who make the nipples erect of one Mr Diego Calvo (CEO/Cofounder de Concept Hotel Group).

Diego, your chosen hoteliers this year are Lyon Porter and Liz Lambert. Besides being more American than a fat cop eating barbecue doughnuts, what else do these two have in common? “An innate ability to create hotels that break the mould. Spaces that go beyond places where people sleep. They are capable of an entire neighbourhood and act as cultural and social lightning rods. What’s more, both Porter and Lambert are interior design freaks (like me), love everything to do with guitars and are indomitable animals, both on a personal and business level.”

How can a hotelier be a rebel? “In many ways, one of them is to create hotel groups rather than chains. Porter and Lambert both had huge success with their first hotels, so the easy thing for them would have been to copy and paste the same hotel, over and over again, in different parts of the world. However, they decided to keep taking risks and create a concept for each new project, gambling everything on each adventure.

A hotel in the middle of the desert with teepees and caravans instead of rooms (El Cósmico), a Wild Westinspired luxury B&B inspired in the heart of Brooklyn (Urban Cowboy)... They be crazy, no? “Heck yeah! You have to take the bull by the horns and don’t waste your time trying to explain it to those who can’t or won’t understand. Everyone called us crazy when we decided to open hotels that went against the grain of the typical Ibiza hotel. Instead of Buddhas and mandalas, we opted for fresh and summery places based on Miami’s retro aesthetics. And as you can see, with seven hotels and hundreds of cultural events later, we are still setting trends.”

Talking about music, their hotels are a fucking magnet for rock stars such as Mick Jagger, Pearl Jam, Beck, Radiohead and Beyoncé. The coolest cats on the planet hang out in their establishments. “If you open a restaurant and you have the world’s best chefs coming there to eat every day, that means that you’re doing great. The same thing happens if you set up hotels inspired by art, music, design and cinema, you get to welcome your favourite artists and make them feel at home. It’s an amazing sensation and we get to experience it each.”

Is there any homage to Lyon Porter and Liz Lambert in your hotels? “Not directly, but there are many references. At Romeo’s, for example, there is a certain air of Porter’s The Dive Motel, and in our new hotel, Grand Paradiso, the rooms have a button that turns a disco ball on. There are also nods to Lambert’s Phoenix Hotel in Dorado.”

And the bandana around your neck is in honour of them? “Hahahaha! They both indeed wear bandanas like me, but this is more of a homage to Rock ‘n’ Roll than to them in particular.”