Jeremy Goring: “If the entire town becomes a hotel, what will people actually do?”
Jeremy Goring is not your average hotelier
In September 2000, George Goring, grandson of Otto Goring, namesake of London’s last family-owned-and-operated hotel, received a handwritten letter pertaining to a series of illustrations that hung above the urinals in his gent’s toilets. ‘In a spirit of helpfulness,’ began the letter, ‘may I suggest that the subject matter of most prints is sexist in nature, is probably offensive to your female staff and to some guests, and is out of touch with the anti-racist, anti-sexist etc. nature of the present times.’
The exhibits in question were by Auguste Leroux, a collectible Parisian painter championed for his ability to capture the Belle Époque on canvas, who, judging by The Goring’s intimate collection, had something of a fascination with the female form. You can see the nudes for yourself in the men’s loos, where they remain, alongside the disgruntled letter, which George framed and hung with a note: ‘Close your eyes girls!!’
All great hotels have strong personalities, and George’s response to the Leroux lament does a fine job of summing up the playful irreverence and old-school charm that is The Goring’s magic cake mix (see, too, Teddy, the hotel’s Shetland pony, which can sporadically be spotted grazing in the garden (the largest private garden in this part of town, don’t you know)).
The Goring, as you may be able to deduce by the bowler-hatted doormen, is all Edwardian grandeur and English eccentricity. But it’s also ecumenical good taste and best-in-class international design (there is furniture by David Linley and wallpaper by Fromental, while the Dining Room was recently overhauled by Russell Sage Studio); a grand country house beamed into the big smoke, which knows better than to take itself too seriously. Both HM Elizabeth II and The Queen Mother were regulars. Catherine, Princess of Wales, chose to stay in one of the hotel’s 69 rooms the night before her wedding.
In 2005, George, who’d once, legend has it, had a dust-up with actor Russell Crowe in the toilets (nothing to do Leroux’s brushwork this time around) relinquished chief executive duties to his son, Jeremy, an equally gregarious, quick-as-a-whip man-of-the-world who, like his father, leads by impish example and won’t be caught mincing his words.
Having worked for both Four Seasons and Rosewood hospitality groups, as well as London’s The Lanesborough hotel, Jeremy has spent the previous two decades going toe-to-toe with an ever-energetic compset in possession of much deeper pockets than his own. His key for keeping up with the internationally-conglomerated Joneses? “Don’t forget to have fun! Our number one rule is the opposite of a rule,” the 59-year-old says, over a mid-morning coffee at The Goring’s marble-clad cocktail bar. “Our staff are allowed to be themselves. Rule number two: enjoy it – and we do!”
Well, I don’t really know, because the people that don’t stay here obviously think it’s something else. But I guess a hotel needs to feel like it belongs where it is, that it’s part of the neighbourhood. You can tell when something’s a bit vague, a bit put on. They’re trying to do this Disney thing, and it doesn’t work. Look at Dubai. A lot of people love that, obviously, and it’s fun to go and see, but would you go back time and time again? Good hotels create a sense of belonging. You feel at home when you’re there.
To be honest, I’ve only been there once. It lived up to my expectations, in terms of what a plastic place it is. That sounds appalling. I’m probably wrong. Maybe I should go back.
It’s got positives and negatives. It’s great that London as a destination is being pumped up and reinforced by all the new stuff that’s happening. As a country, we’ve been sliding off the edge of the map for a few decades. The fact we’ve got the greatest hotel companies in the world having the confidence to invest serious money helps keep us on the map. But, yeah, how many old buildings are being turned into hotels? The Old War Office, the old American embassy, Admiralty Arch, the cop shop down the road [the former Belgravia Police Station]. If the entire town becomes a hotel, what will people actually b***dy do?
Guests now want to be recognised. They want to feel you remember them and that your welcome is real. If you do something that’s for them, that’s genuine, that’s thoughtful, they feel good. ‘F**k me,’ they think. ‘They like me.’ They also want their breakfast within seven minutes – or you’re dead.
You need a number of things to make people interested in your hotel, and it’s easier to get people interested in a restaurant than it is bed linen. Sometimes it’s a perception thing. The F&B side of things doesn’t make money in most hotels. That said, in some hotels, a restaurant or bar can become the beating heart of the place. In which case you have to invest.
It’s weird, considering how as a country we’ve f**ked up so many things in the past 15 years, but we do have an incredible restaurant scene. You could probably argue that London is the best place in the world for restaurants. It started at the end of the ’80s, but it took until about 2000 for perception to catch up with reality. Unfortunately, everything has got crazy expensive. For various reasons, it’s tougher than ever to run a restaurant in this town. It’s almost become unviable.
We’ve got less wriggle room. Covid demonstrated that. We didn’t have a fighting fund behind us. We had all the money that we owed at the beginning of Covid, and it got ramped up by £300k a month for two years. So, we knew the clock would stop at some point and that’d be game over. But there are positives [about being independent]. You can make decisions that other companies can’t. You can say, ‘Right, we’re going to have five relatively not-so-fun years, but at least we’re not going to have shareholders getting in the middle of everything.’ It enables you to do things, to make the property look beautiful, to make sure it’s state of the art. You can spend money on things that accountants at other companies wouldn’t let you spend money on.
It forced us to get better at managing our businesses. We thought we knew it all, and then we realised we had a lot to learn. I like to think we’ve all got better at looking after our teams. The perception of hospitality as a profession, as a career, especially for young people, is slowly improving. We had bad raps before but now people don’t work the hours they used to. Hospitality is no longer a low-paid profession. Career advancement is much faster than it used to be. There are more good eggs in our game now, in terms of employers. You’re getting paid more for working less hours.
Well, it’s affected every industry. For a start it’s made eating out around 30 per cent more expensive. So that’s not helpful. It made us look really stupid. If you live across the road from the greatest talent pool in the world, whether that’s for hospitality, or engineering, or medicine, or the arts, and you decide you don’t want to benefit from that talent pool – you look a bit f***ing silly.
What made Britain transform from the s***test place to eat on the planet was proximity to skilled people who could teach us how to f***ing cook, and how to do proper service, and how to do professional hospitality. Those people came from France, Germany, Spain. They taught our kids how to do it – I was one of those kids! Now the life opportunities for our kids have been curtailed. Just because some w***ers decided they don’t like foreigners.
Graham Squire of The Dining Room at The Goring
When I worked for Four Seasons, I knew if it went wrong, they would just fire me. And if I started this business myself, I’d probably feel more chilled. But I didn’t; I took over from another guy who was doing a perfectly great job. So, the only way is down, but I like running this business. We have an epic team. We all pull in the same direction, we want the same thing, which is to look after our guests.
Depends on the day, and what I’ve had for breakfast.
Quite depressed, really, by the larger picture, about what’s going on in the world.
It’s funny. I think the way the country is run could be worse. The job of the businessman is always to complain about the government – and I could complain about all sorts of things – but when you look at the world, we could be a lot worse off. I think there’s a lot of things to be thankful for. I do think Britain is an epic, brilliant country.
Whoever thought it a good idea to create a machine that would become smarter than us, then connect it to every piece of knowledge in the universe, really needs their head examined. The people that designed AI designed it to take away the boring s**t from our lives. It’s turned out that it’s only good at the interesting s**t and it still can’t clean our toilets. If it cures some really awful diseases then great, but apart from that I think it’s a terrible own goal.
Read The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut, it’s about a real-life mathematician called John von Neumann who paved the way for one of the first supercomputers. Basically, he went nuts when he realised what maths was capable of.
Surfing. Although I hate the propagation of surfing. I wish it had stayed the way it was in the ’80s. I love the sea. I really like food.
Tooting, mostly.
Cornwall, mostly.
Cornwall is the most beautiful place on the planet when the sun is shining. I try to get to Sicily once a year with my little boy. I love Portugal, and the Portuguese. It’s one of the few European countries where they kind of don’t mind the British – the weirdos.
The Broadwick is really fun. It’s got a good feeling, good people, good rooftop bar, and it’s in a good part of town.
I adore The Albatroz Hotel in Cascais, a fishing port on the outskirts of Lisbon. If I was given three days off tomorrow – send me to f**king Cascais!
Toss up, but Lisbon could be it. I always wondered why the hell no one went – now everyone f***king goes.
One of the best I’ve ever read is The Count of Monte Cristo. [Alexandre Dumas] was imprisoned in a real-life castle called the Château d’If. I went to watch a rugby World Cup match in Marseille and you can see it from the shoreline. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman is one of the greats. Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential – page four, when he looks out the window… f***ing ripper.
Yes, but I can’t. I’m trying to build something very exciting, but ‘the man’ won’t give me permission at the moment. I’m working on it. There are meetings. It’s delicate, so I’ve been told not to say too much – in case I get into trouble.
I know, right?
From £870 per night, visit thegoring.com.
