The Royal Mansour Edition

On hotels, countries, and vision

Colin here. Cultural diplomacy for a country is vitally important. It is the “soft power” that stems from art, culture, food, craft, and countless other offerings that stem from the soul of a place and make it different. It is typically manifested within the country through art museums or perfectly framed experiences with a narrative. Think of the National Museum in Qatar or the storied museums in London.

This energy, coupled with the idea of “nation branding” attempts to package up a tidy narrative for a country, with a tag line, a font, and a unique art direction. But sometimes the experience itself can be stronger.

Why is this interesting? 

It is rare to see cultural diplomacy and the best of a country’s “brand” manifested in a hotel. But if you think about it, it is an incredible touchpoint with multiple angles to tell a story about the collective output of a country. There are service elements and hospitality. There is design and experience. There are culinary elements, scent, light, and otherwise. 

All of the above is manifested in the Royal Mansour in Marrakech. The hotel opened in 2010 after three years of construction. It was intended by the King of Morocco to be a showpiece of the absolute best output from Morocco. There was no budget ascribed, only a royal mandate to build everything to the highest possible artistic standards.

An estimated 1,500 artisans from across the country worked on the project and much is on display—everything from carved cedarwood, intricate stucco work, beaten and cut bronze, and silver furniture was meticulously crafted by the individual best craftspeople in the country.

General Manager Jean-Claude Messant, formerly of Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, and the Hôtel Métropole Monte-Carlo, told me the intention was not a museum where things are off-limits, but rather highly sensory. As he put it, it’s meant to be “a hotel where when you walk around, you can touch and feel, you can touch the tiling, you can touch the plasterwork, you can touch the woodwork, you see beautiful uniforms being made by the best Moroccan designers. You can see and smell and taste beautiful cuisine. You have the best of what can we produce in the kingdom.”

The interesting thing here is the hotel is far from a museum. It is a place where a guest or visitor is experiencing Morocco—you smell the orange and jasmine scent of the gardens, you can lightly run your fingers across woodwork that took artisans thousands of hours to complete, and see how light refracts through Moorish iron walls. 

These elements—down to the acoustics of running water and the interplay of red walls and verdant greenery—form one of the most powerful statements of intent for a country I’ve experienced. It is doing and not telling. And the marketing and word-of-mouth that has come as a result of the hotel has been impressive. By making hospitality space a proxy for the best parts of national culture, you make things more tangible, more sensory, and create a deeper emotional bond between the guest and the country. (CJN)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)

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