DEPARTURES TRAVEL MOOD BOARD Very Verbier A trio of hip hoteliers brings big-city chic to the Swiss Alps. by Erin Riley GSTAAD MAY BE RITZIER, St Moritz more cultured, but ask those who frequent Verbier, the town at the heart of Switzerland’s Quatre Vallées, and they’ll tell you it has everything its neighbours do, plus a cool cachet the others don’t. It’s that same something you get at any of Experimental Group’s hotels and bars in London and Paris, and why owners Olivier Bon, Pierre-Charles Cros and Romée de Goriainoff decided to open Experimental Chalet, their first non-urban property, there in December. “What I like about Verbier is that it’s such a highend resort, but it has a very relaxed feel,” says de Goriainoff. “The main reason people go is for the skiing, especially the off-piste, which isn’t always the case at other resorts.” In other words, you’re more likely to see skiers clad in performance gear than in fashion, and the person you saw out dancing at 4am will be on the slopes with you at 9 the next morning. Experimental Chalet’s design follows the same formula as the group’s other hotels – Grand Pigalle and Hôtel des Grands Boulevards in Paris and Henrietta Hotel in London – and feels very different from anything else in the Alps. “We wanted to move away from the Swiss chalet look, with all the fur and dark wood,” says de Goriainoff. While the 39 rooms, with their clean, white surfaces accented by emerald Clockwise from top left: Romée de Goriainoff, Pierre-Charles Cros and Olivier Bon, the Parisian trio behind Experimental Group; the bar at Paris’s Hôtel des Grands Boulevards; the lobby lounge at the Henrietta Hotel in London; the bar at Experimental Chalet COURTESY EXPERIMENTAL GROUP
