Ian Schrager is the father of the hip hotel. Walk into any hotel these days and you’ll see something he invented, from the lobby “scene” to the baffling taps in the loos. As Covid restrictions ease, what does he think the future holds for the travel industry?
“It will come roaring back — a V-shaped recovery,” he says, sipping a Starbucks in his duplex penthouse in Soho that has views across Manhattan. “I remember my parents saying in the 50s that New York ‘is just not the same anymore’. People said the same thing after 9/11. No way! New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo — those cities are forever.”
But the man behind the Mondrian, Delano and Edition brands who opened St Martin’s Lane Hotel