London's Most Iconic Indian Restaurant Just Opened a Hotel

In today’s Happenings—London's most iconic Indian restaurant makes its hotel debut, a look at how a slew of New York City's stays are throwing collaborations that'll make your head spin, and HAP editor Luke Abrahams’ exclusive, candid chat with one of the hospitality industry’s most respected tastemakers. Bon voyage! 🔽

If you have ever visited the UK, you'll know that Indian food joint Dishoom is an institution. With outposts up and down the country, everything from their chai to their chicken ruby curry has been putting faces on their menu since they first opened up shop back in 2010. The group's latest opening is the Permit Room in trendy Notting Hill, and in addition to the customary Bombay aesthetic ballroom dining space, the resto also includes a teeny hotel—and yes, bacon naans can be delivered to rooms for breakfast. The entire top floor, featuring en-suite bathrooms and vinyl playlists, is available for £700 per night. Book here! - LA

OMG. No booze for rowdy Americans or Brits here, please. Porto, Portugal, is cracking down on the sale of alcohol for public consumption at night in response to its own ‘botellon’ culture, a phenomenon often associated with Spanish drinking culture. Think lots of booze, groupies and samba-style music. It's cute for the pics and the memories, but the residents don't seem to think so. Under the guise of public pressure, the city is now banning sales of alcohol from supermarkets, convenience stores, wine cellars and souvenir shops from 9pm to 8pm in Porto’s ‘Containment Zone.’ All the restaurants and bars are exempt, but for rowdy students and those who find "nothing beats a Jet2 holiday," y'all have to ditch the cheap stuff for the fine stuff. Find out more about the ban here. - LA

Our weekly column from hospitality-obsessed city native Megan Shelton unveils the gotta-be-there spots across the Big Apple that are anything BUT basic.

For more NYC + travel content, follow Megan, who doubles as HAP's NYC Know-It-All and Contributing Travel Editor, on Instagram, TikTok, and her Substack, Turndown Service.

I had to give the hoteliers a break, so in the name of all things swap-outs, we are introducing a brand-new slot: Meet the Tastemaker. Founder and CEO of mega travel PR group Perowne International, Jules Perowne, headlines our first slot with an honest and unfiltered take on the travel world through her lens. If she were an emoji, it would be 💅🏻.

Luke: Hospitality is very much part of the PR manifesto. Tell us about your style and how you are different from the rest?

Jules: I go with my gut instinct about a place, a brand, or a trend. In fact, I’m rather anti-trend. If it’s being written about, the trend is usually on the way down, in my opinion. I don’t look left and right at what the comp set is doing, as the only thing it does is distract. And above all, our client list is like a sacred entity – representing the best hotels in the world is what matters most, because the trust that people have in us is sacrosanct. We can never lose that by working with a product or brand that isn’t the highest quality or the best at what it does in its market. I would never take on a client that I would not pay to go to – that’s my north star.

Luke: You are one of travel's ultimate tastemakers. When you are scouting for a new address for the Perowne portfolio, what are you looking for?

Jules: Well, that’s very kind, but I don’t think I’m a tastemaker, I’m someone who just LOVES what I do. And I know what I love. For me, this is about a story. I’m not talking a fluffy PR story – I’m talking real depth, here. History, culture, and community are places that have been a definitive moment in the story of a destination. And of course, great people. We can’t do anything without that because people make a place. There are many excellent hotels available. Many that have spent fortunes on making them so. But they are only a few truly great hotels and the difference is always the people.

Luke: Travel is becoming increasingly samey and commercial. What are you doing to shake things up and keep it interesting?

Jules: We only work with the people doing the right thing with the right motives. Our industry has been hijacked by property developers and faceless private equity groups who care about profits over everything else. Mostly, they want to flip something or sell residences. That’s not how the great hotels began. In many ways, this makes me deeply uncommercial because we say no to over 95% of the business that approaches us. I am brutally honest (which is very much a positive and a negative!), but overall, I can’t pretend that I can represent another ‘new luxury hotel’ offering a sense of place and ‘meaningful experiences’. It’s all just marketing BS. So I hope that we cut through the crap and hence why we are trusted by hoteliers, journalists, agents and operators. Personality is key. And personality means you don’t have to be everyone’s darling – you don’t have to be a family hotel and a couple’s hotel and and and… Sometimes you can just be what you are. And that’s very ok with me.

Luke: You have been to a lot of hotels over the years. For better or for worse, how would you say the industry has evolved, and what do you think it needs to do next?

Jules: Yes! Last year, I flew 88 flights. Madness. But I LOVE it all. I’m obsessed. I am part historian and part explorer, and so visiting hotels that aren’t clients is also a joy. To see what they are doing and to understand what makes them tick is fascinating. Unfortunately, hotel design seems to move in trends. If someone does one thing, they all do it. Fashion collaborations with beach clubs, floral displays outside entrances, and funky uniforms. COME ON, people, let’s be individual. I want more hoteliers to be unafraid to do something different. I think many urban hotels should consider ditching their restaurants. Look at what Casa JK is doing in Rome. It's groundbreaking because people want to live in their own Rome and get out of the hotel and explore it. So many of these huge suites are just for ego – make them usable! And champion, champion, champion local people, places, and products. I want to come to a hotel and try the local wine, the local dish, and meet the farmer. I don’t want to have Whispering Angel in a beautiful hotel in Italy.

Luke: Tell us your favourite boutique hotel in the world. Why do you love it and why should people go there?

Jules: VERY, very difficult. Like choosing your favourite child. Luckily, I only have ONE of those! So here it goes... Passalacqua – because there’s nowhere more special. End of. The attention to detail, the care, the love, the setting. No one has done that before, which is why people are blown away by it. And it transformed the opinion of a destination, which has only been an incredible thing for Lake Como. Because it was always a certain type of hotel, and Passalacqua ripped up the rule book. I adore JK Place in Paris. Because it’s the Paris I dream of living in. I love the Rive Gauche. The bistros, the shopping, and feeling like I’m living like a very chic local. Borgo Santandrea on the Amalfi Coast – because I’ve never seen a hotel with such ambition and conviction. Two brothers from Ischia wanted to do something different on the Amalfi Coast, and they did. You cannot believe the location; in the madness of this coastline. There is this place, built into the cliff with a private beach, with views that you have never seen before. It’s quiet and peaceful and deeply, deeply chic. I adore the design at Grand Hotel Son Net by Lorenzo Castillo because it's maximal and bold, layered and often mad. And it’s a delight. Eden Rock St Barths for the best hoteliering on the planet. And a joie de vivre like nowhere else. No one does hospitality like this hotel. And The Newt in Somerset for my happy place in England. A garden refuge where I go with my son to be English and eccentric, and oh so happy, talking to plants. But the final view I would like to see in my life is the view from Singita Sasakwa in Tanzania...

Luke: Travelers are getting more and more demanding. What do you think is the next big thing in travel?

Jules: Avoiding people who are too demanding!! Honestly, the hotel world will become very divergent – the hotels that offer everything all the time to those people that need everything NOW, NOW, NOW. And those hotels that say, no, you actually can’t have an avocado today as it’s not in season, but you can have this lovely pear and walnut salad instead. Less is more now. And the people who really travel know that and want that.

Luke: Regression is the new progression in my book. Why do you think nostalgia and slow luxe is so important for travellers right now and how do you think hotels can better cater to this beyond wellness fads?

Jules: Because our lives are MAD and scary, and we can’t keep up. We are blasted with information all day. This piece of bad news, this piece of good news. This person is doing that, this person is doing this. Waking up at 2 am to news alerts. Information overload!! It’s exhausting. And a place that offers you a moment to slow down, read a book, think, sit, and relax is a place you need. I find that at Gleneagles – I go there because I feel like I’m in another world. I dress down, then I dress up. I twirl into supper at the Strathearn, I walk the hills. But it’s what I need. And I remember what truly matters – laughing with my mother and holding hands with my husband. Seeing my son jump for joy as he meets a pony in the stables. So wellness fads will continue, of course, but actually it’s about walking into a room with no ghastly hotel marketing video on, but a vintage record player playing something relaxed and calm. It’s about a lavender bath oil by the bath with a little note after a busy day, it’s about someone noticing something you like and delivering it with generosity and thoughtfulness. And it’s about a community. I love to go to a hotel and meet interesting people. And a great hotel is a connector of like-minded people.

Luke: What has been your biggest challenge to date and how did you overcome it?

Jules: Obviously my biggest challenge in my business was the pandemic. It hit like a rollercoaster, but the best thing I did was that I trusted my instinct. We offered clients immediate money off before lockdowns began, and we showed that we were in this together. Other than that, it’s always about inspiring and keeping talent. I love what I do so much that I find it difficult if others don’t. I’m tough because I care about quality and that doesn’t make me an easy person to work with – but it’s because we have to deliver excellence, always. So I’m always looking for ways we can be better and nurture our team – and I hope the investment we have made as a business in our senior team shows people that we mean it. Because I want this company to thrive in the future, whatever the challenges are. And that’s all about the people that are in it.

Luke: You travel a lot. What are your best tips for keeping in sync with it all and following a healthy routine?

Jules: Rules! First of all, when I’m travelling and entertaining, with the exception of wine, I never eat sugar. If someone leaves something in my room or offers dessert, it’s an immediate no. Sugar zaps the life out of me and makes me puffy. No matter where I am, I get up early and have a walk first thing. I love it when I land in NYC and stay at The Lowell, I am up, walking Central Park, and back down Park Avenue to the hotel before a day of work. I’m also now obsessed with Technogym, which luckily is everywhere. Having hated exercise all my life, I recently had a bit of a health wake-up call, and I bought a reclining Technogym bike. I adore my time on it every morning at 6 am. I’m afraid I’m now one of those a**holes I always hated who chooses a hotel if they have a gym!

Luke: Name one travel trend you want to die a horrible death. Why?

Jules: Designer Beach Clubs. Hopefully, this needs no explanation. But essentially where marketing budgets should go to die. A pure act of desperation.

Luke: Tell me your wildest travel story and why does it stick out most?

Jules: Ha, there are many. Ok, I’ve launched the world’s most luxurious train in India, where they FORGOT the furniture for the inaugural route. We managed to get beds from a local store, and they were not grounded to the floor, so every time we turned a corner, the beds flew across the room. I helped launch a private island in the Bahamas where the owner of the neighbouring island regularly tried to shoot us over the water. I’ve fled Cuba after being abducted by a cousin of Castro from an enclave outside Havana. We crawled through a window and fled the compound only to be told by the manager of the hotel in Havana that we had upset the Minister of the Interior, who was at the party. We fled Cuba for Mexico the next day, wearing wigs. I’ve lost a journalist for three days in Antigua who shacked up with the Bongo drummer at Shirley Heights, and I’ve lost another in Bali as she fell in love with her butler and went cock-fighting with him in his local village where she drank Balinese fertility juice with a dead monkey in it. I’ve fallen asleep in the curtains in the hallway of one of the world’s most luxurious hotels as my room key didn’t work, only to be woken up by the CEO. All this and more is why I travel. And one day it will all be in a book!

Another coffee table book for your collection. Woo! But this one is worth it. Passalacqua, once named the world's best hotel, has just released their very own Assouline number brought to life by a wealth of writing talent and French-Italian photographer Daria Reina. It's a thing of beauty. Bravo, Valentina and Paolo! Buy it here.

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