The Pace of a Place

A place does not reveal itself to a visitor in a hurry.

Hotels taught me the art of hospitality, and I am grateful for every lesson. Its meaning I learned as a guest with nowhere to be: lounging on the deck of a catamaran, on an island reached by water, at a table set by the host who cooked every dish herself, from scratch.

Letting the place set the pace

Aboard a forty-five-foot catamaran in the British Virgin Islands, with a captain and crew caring for everything else, the day belonged to the wind and the tide. You cannot hurry the weather. You can only lounge on deck and be where you are. Cared for that well, you begin to notice: the light changing on a hillside, a quiet anchorage, the sound a place makes when it is left alone.

Traveling slowly to Isla Bastimentos in Panama meant letting the island decide the day. It is generous with anyone who allows it. At La Loma Jungle Lodge and Chocolate Farm, the hosts were a husband and wife team. He muddled fresh ginger into my cocktail nightly, and she cooked every meal slowly, from scratch, as an act of welcome. Nothing was staged. Nothing was missing. It was entirely theirs, and no hotel could have replicated it.

At Calabash Hotel in Grenada, our arrival was a seated welcome beside the ocean: a signature cocktail with fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, a cool white cloth to wash our hands, and a canopy of flowers where hummingbirds darted from bloom to bloom. Each evening, just before sunset, a selection of canapés arrived at our door, timed to the light. The welcome began with the place: the sea, the flowers, the birds and the hour.

What a sense of place is

A sense of place is the character that belongs to one place and no other: its landscape, its history, the people who live there, what is made and grown and cooked there, the rhythm of its days, and the way it speaks about itself. It cannot be imported. It can only be honored.

The finest hospitality understands this. It does not rush the guest through the arrival. It gives them reasons to slow down, and then it lets the place do the rest.

Why I begin with the place

Before a story is written or an experience is designed, I want to know the essence of the place and the people behind it. Everything that follows should feel as if it could only have happened there. That is my work: to notice these elements, and to help owners and their teams offer them.