When I spoke with Sjefke Jansen, he was general manager of Belmond Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg, a property that opened in 1875 and that he described to me as 141 years old at the time. The book notes that he has since become General Manager of Amankila in Indonesia.
Jansen speaks in the book to the question of what a heritage property is actually selling. His answer is that it is no longer a commodity. The rooms and the service at the Grand Hotel Europe are, in his telling, as good as those of any competitor in the market, and that is precisely why they are not the point. What the property sells is its history: the accumulated specificity of place, of guest memory, of the city around it, of the people who have passed through it across a century and a half. He was clear with me that this is not a marketing line. It is the operating substance of the hotel, and the marketing is only the visible articulation of what the substance already is.
“Selling a commodity is not difficult, offering something authentic is. The Belmond Grand Hotel Europe is as good as any competitor in the market, but what we’re really selling is history.” Sjefke Jansen, then General Manager, Belmond Grand Hotel Europe
In the book, Sjefke Jansen appears in Chapter 11, Staying True, and Chapter 14, The Future of Luxury and Craft. In Staying True, his account sits alongside those of other operators who protect the substance of a brand rather than working its surface, and I return to his years in St. Petersburg spent guarding the property’s distinctive Russian character against the temptation to internationalize. In The Future of Luxury and Craft, he appears among the forecasters, having predicted to me a fully virtual vacation that has not arrived and may never. What struck me in both places is the same thing. He was precise about the channels that would shift and never once suggested that the substance of the work would change.
“Facts and figures are becoming less relevant. Now it’s purely about the experience.” Sjefke Jansen, then General Manager, Belmond Grand Hotel Europe