Pillow talk

Mr and Mrs Smith is the guide every boutique hotel wants to be a part of. Managing Director and co-founder James Lohan tells Diana Milne about its unique appeal.

From its cryptic name to its unconventional team of inspectors, Mr and Mrs Smith has truly broken the mould when it comes to hotel guides. Managing Director James Lohan, founded the company with one target market in mind - young professional couples with plenty of disposable income to spent on luxury hotel breaks. And despite having targeted such a niche audience, the company has expanded far beyond the former party organiser's expectations, and now offers a three tiered membership service with 75,000 subscribers, which includes a 24 hour travel booking service. It's a great achievement for a company that was started by James and his wife, Marketing Director Tamara Heber-Percy, with the sole aim of finding romantic places where couples like them could spend the weekend: "We had no idea it would get this big," he admits. "It was one of those lovely hobby businesses that crept up on us and had this huge initial success."

Small is beautiful

Despite having grown on a global scale the company has stuck to its original business plan of only featuring individual boutique and luxury properties - all of which have been reviewed anonymously by couples after spending the weekend there. "A lot of our properties are owner run so we're looking for that real passion that's behind the hotel rather than the corporate giant behind it," says Lohan. "We're looking for hotels where the attention to detail is second to none and where there are some surprises that you wouldn't get in other hotels. Ultimately it all culminates in the experience you get as a couple." To ensure the hotels in its collection meet these specifications Mr and Mrs Smith handpicks its inspectors to ensure their tastes match the company's brand values. It's a far cry, says Lohan, from the traditional image of hotel inspectors: "We use what we call our taste makers. We shied away for professional inspectors with huge manuals and tick boxes on how the napkins should be folded or how big the diameter on my egg yolk needs to be. Because those are the things that frankly, don't matter at all as far as we're concerned. We send people away who may already have touched us in some way. We may have drunken in their bar or eaten in their restaurant. These taste makers are people who already affect our every day lives." Lohan goes on to say that the company has even enlisted the help of celebrities to review hotels, including Stella McCartney and Dita Von Teese. Unfortunately, he says, since the business has expanded he only rarely gets the chance to review properties himself. "We're also known a bit now so we have to keep the anonymity up," he adds.

One of the most labour intensive parts of his job currently is filtering through the many requests from hotels asking to be reviewed for the guides. "We get about 400 hotels approaching us at the moment and it's a nightmare to go through that. We have a huge queue. We're pretty up to date. We're not at the cutting edge of every single boutique hotel that opens up but we're not far behind." 

New horizons

This high demand, he says, is partly due to the fact that Mr and Mrs Smith - though initially based in the UK and Europe - has now expanded its horizons and opened offices in the US, Australia and Asia Pacific. The US, says Lohan, is a particularly hard nut to crack: "It's blooming difficult but we're doing ok. We are getting some traction there and it's growing softly, softly. There is a lot to be learnt about the US. It's a big, big place. When Starting something in the UK if you can get London interested then the message will filter out to the rest of the country. In the US you have to try to get everyone interested or you have to take one city at a time, which is the strategy that we adopted." The biggest challenge about the US market is its sheer size, he says: "The thing about America is that it's almost like several different countries in one. They all have different habits in the way they take their travel and in terms of their budgets, their wants and how far they will go geographically. It's a completely different animal but we're chipping away at it." It has adopted a similar strategy in Australia, with an Australia and New Zealand focused guide coming out soon, and South East Asia where it hopes to launch a new office this year. Once those markets have been targeted he says the company plans to tackle the Middle East and India.

It's an ambitious plan in an economic downturn that has seen that has dealt a harsh blow to the global hospitality sector. While he admits his staff are having to work harder than ever to secure sales, Lohan says his company is doing "really well" despite the recession, having experienced 50 percent growth since last year. "I will say people are having to work a bit harder because some of the hotels are suffering but we've got such a varied collection and we're not just about five star hotels. We have an ever growing boutique B&B collection and we also represent great pubs and restaurants with rooms." He goes on to say that he doesn't believe the Mr and Mrs Smith customers are prepared to give up their luxury travel treats, despite having made other financial sacrifices. "People are looking for deals. But they are not willing to give up their travel. I wouldn't want to be in the new kitchens or cars business. But I think travel is the last thing to go." Nevertheless the company is diversifying its offering and branching out into more budget friendly options, such as self catering properties. This, says Lohan is also due to the fact that the profile of its customers is changing to include couples with children: "The average age of our customers is 35.5 and about 55 percent are female. It's the sort of cliché cash rich, time poor urbanites and they are city dwellers trying to escape. But we are having a few Mr and Mrs Smith plus ones now. So we've actually started up a stylish self catering section as well which is a big new trend." But, he says, as with everything Mr and Mrs Smith does, this is self catering with a difference: "People are very willing to go for self catering but they are not willing to sacrifice style and go to some chintzy, old fashioned place. We have people who bring in their own chefs and DJs for example."

It's all a far cry from what the average holidaymaker would expect to get from their travel agent. But then nothing about Mr and Mrs Smith could be described as average.

A husband and wife team:

James Lohan set up Mr and Mrs Smith with his wife Marketing Director Tamara Heber-Percy, the brains behind the company's website and online activity. He says; "It's great, we sit at very opposite ends of the office now which is quite big so we lead very different work lives then we come home together in the evenings. She's very much in charge of the website side of things and I'm very much on the marketing and branding side. So it works very well and we complement each other in terms of our skill sets."

Lohan's background was in events organising and he formed the London based party organising company Atomic before founding the restaurant and member's club The White House. Heber-Percy graduated with a degree in languages from Oxford and worked as a marketing consultant for brands such as Ericsson, Honda, Unilever, and Swissair. In 2002 she left the corporate world to set up Mr and Mrs Smith and her own introductions agency, The County Register.

A growing concern

The first Mr and Mrs Smith hotel guide was launched in 2003 by Spy Publishing. The online booking service was introduced in 2005 and in 2006 the company set up an in-house reservations team. It has since developed a full three tier membership programme which includes a travel and lifestyle concierge service, and has 75,000 members.

Its latest projects include launching the Smith brand in the US, opening an office in Australia and launching a 24-hour telephone booking service for luxury travel worldwide.