Dorchester’s Bet Against the Flattening of Luxury

There is a barbershop in St James’s called Truefitt & Hill where I go for a shave whenever I’m in London. The appointments are still kept on paper in a leather book. Portraits hang on the walls of its royal customers, and the business dates to 1805. The appeal is less about the history than the ritual. I know what I’m going to get, and I don’t particularly want anyone to reinvent it. It feels like a fixed point in a city that keeps changing around it.

Classic luxury hotels have to make a similar distinction between gravitas and modernity –  the things guests want improved and the things they emotionally return for. For a group running several much-loved hotels, that gets harder. It needs to make the experience dependable without making every property feel standardized. Dorchester Collection has an interesting range to work with. The Dorchester in London, Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris, and The Beverly Hills Hotel in L.A. carry the weight of instit