ANNA HART THE HYPE

In their hot pursuit of Instagram ‘likes’, hotels have lost their creative spirit of adventure – we’re living in an age of bleak, safe minimalism

hen was the last time you stayed at a hotel you truly loved?

Not just “liked”. I’m talking about love, in all its complexity, a mingling of lust, fascination, fear, edification, pleasure and mild obsession. I’m finding it harder to fall in love with new hotels, because they’re all so desperate for me to “like” them.

We’ve lived through a bleak age of blanket minimalism, and all this safety is threatening to suffocate us. In hot pursuit of Instagram “likes”, mass appeal and fervent inoffensiveness, hotels have lost their aesthetic spirit of adventure. War has been declared on rich velvets, bright prints, chandeliers, textured wallpaper, plush carpets and any ornaments other than succulents. Good taste has always been a disaster for creativity. And it’s good taste that is responsible for the blandness epidemic afflicting hotels around the world.

So it was a delight to meet one of the design world’s great maximalists, the architect and landscape designer Bill Bensley, at his studio in Bali – where his recent opening, Capella Ubud, is turning heads. “Buy first, think later’ is my mantra,” he says, as he rummages around the attic, handing me an antique Indian carving, and blowing the dust off the perfectly dilapidated deco chandelier next to a pile of handblown glass doorknobs.

“If I find something magnificent, I find a place for it somewhere.”

Bensley’s other mantra is “the weirder, the better”, which makes his a dissenting voice against the tyranny of minimalism in hospitality. But happily the industry seems to be listening; Bensley’s two studios, in Bangkok and Bali, are currently juggling some 40 hotel projects around the globe. The term “maximalism” was first coined in the late Seventies, a backlash against Sixties minimalism, and this playful, daring aesthetic can be seen in late Seventies and early Eighties art, fashion, architecture, film, literature and even cuisine. Bensley’s own brand of maximalism is a mishmash of diverse textures, colours, shapes, finishes and aesthetics – a taxidermy stoat he found in an antique shop in Worcestershire might loom over a handwoven Moroccan rug in a Singaporean hotel room.

Of course, it’s easy to understand the ubiquity of minimalist decor in hotels. Whether it’s the exposed brickwork and enamel pendant factory lights of what we lazily call “industrial chic” (think upmarket Escape Room), or the slightly swisher “Scandi-luxe” brand of minimalism, all blond wooden flooring and felt furniture (picture a poshed-up Ikea showroom), minimalism is a relatively affordable and easily replicated design formula. It’s also less risky. I mean, what sort of guest is going to pick a fight with a dove-grey felt sofa?

It could also be argued that this epidemic of safe, bland, familiar minimalism in public spaces is an aesthetic response to our turbulent political and ecological times. In the political realm, after all, weird is the new normal. Perhaps tastemakers think the world is chaotic enough without this madness pursuing us into the bedroom. But personally, if I want safe interiors, I’ll check into rehab.

Humans are wired both for novelty and security; we respond well to the thrill of the new and the familiarity of the old. It’s these two primal impulses that fuel human evolution, ensuring that our species is daring enough to thrive, yet cautious enough to survive. And while I don’t have a problem with minimalist design in itself – I can absolutely understand a traveller’s desire for simplicity, comfort and familiarity – I do have a problem with how it has been rolled out on a mass scale, for maximum profit. This is timidity played out at a high volume, drowning out any daring creative murmurs.

It’s less risky. I mean, what sort of guest is going to pick a fight with a grey felt sofa?

So now, when you show me a felted sofa in a hotel room,

I see the sad homogenisation of contemporary culture, I see a misplaced lust for halfhearted “likes” on Instagram or Facebook, I see algorithm bias that cocoons us in an eversmaller bubble of sameness.

It’s particularly sad to see bland design assail the travel industry, because at its core, travel is a rebellion against sameness. The whole point of travel is to break free of what we consider “normal” and “safe”. Travel is supposed to shatter our parochial ideas of culture. So please, hoteliers, don’t always pursue the most likes. We might “like” a minimalist hotel. But we’ll never love it.

The view from Capella Ubud, Bali