The Pizza Principle.(International Edition; SPECIAL REPORT: TRAVEL)(luxury travel)(Column)

Byline: Nick Foulkes

The mark of true luxury is not the grand gesture but the simple things done well.

The past 10 years or so have come to see an overbranded grandiosity characterize the smart hotel. During this time we have come to misunderstand luxury travel as an agglomeration of celebrity name checks: the design, the decor, the restaurant, the spa. This mania for branding everything from lunch to light fittings threatens to turn hotels into nothing more than complex webs of interconnected and self-reinforcing names that do little to enhance the quality of one's stay.

When this hyper-hotel experience began around the turn of the century with the rejuvenation of such revered inns as Claridge's in London, it was intriguing and fresh. But success brings imitation, and what was a clever idea soon became a business model: lease out your restaurant to a celebrity chef, call in a well-known designer, give the bar a makeover and engage a trendy "mixologist." In the words of one friend who is a veteran of the hotel industry, it all went very Las Vegas. I began to shudder when I found myself contending with another sub-Starck, dumbed-down Ducasse-like experience, or the horrific riot of decor and jarring dining options that, rather like poor plastic surgery, risk disfiguring a much loved grand hotel.

I suppose that I am every hotelier's nightmare guest, in that I am fussy, snobbish, conservative and yet also believe myself to be an iconoclast. Oh yes, and I am careful--downright tight-fisted--with money; just watch me quibble over those extras. However there is a method in my meanness: I think the test of a really grand hotel is how it does the simple things, not the fancy ones.

For want of a better name, I call it the pizza principle. If faced with the choice of a swanky, multiple-course dinner or a pizza, I will usually take the pizza, as long as it is a good one. In addition to liking pizza, I prefer my luxury travel to be understated, rather than pompous.

Of course it need not be a pizza. It could be a plate of spaghetti. One of the most enjoyable things about the lavish all-night parties I have attended in Europe during the summer is not the gala dinner, but rather the spaghettata: the plate of pasta supplied at 3 o'clock in the morning by a thoughtful host hoping to fortify his or her guests until dawn.