A great lady of the planetary hospitality industry
If you don't want to hear you can cover your ears, if you don't like being touched you can walk away. If you want not to smell something you can just cover your nose. And that has a limit. There is no defense against smells: they attack you from behind , by the chest, by the arms and by all the centimeters of the skin. On all sides except for the brain. The world of smells is a civilized world of unreason.
The strange thing is that hotels do not take advantage of this power more and better. La Mamounia does, but La Mamounia is not “the hotels” . This Moroccan place is one of the great ladies of planetary hospitality. He has gone through wars, put up with unbearable stars and knows what splendor and decadence are. It has never lost its pride, that great intangible of some hotels.
With the reform of 2009 and, once again, its return to glory, La Mamounia decided to implant its scent. A new era was beginning, aesthetic Jacques Garcia , with a Moroccan and Frenchified aftertaste. It is also the Tripadvisor era, in which guests are overinformed, the era of transparency and the hunt for details for better and for worse . That of the intersection of the tangible and, again, the intangible.
It was the perfumer Olivia Giacobetti who distilled the essence of the hotel. This woman, one of the world's leading noses, He has created fragrances for Hermès, Penhaligon´s or L´Artisan Parfumeur . This new perfume had to smell of dates and orange, local fruits, of rose, because this is Morocco, and of cedar, the noble wood. It had to be a perfume for men and women, young and old, exquisite yet caressing, like Mamounia herself. The perfume is not for sale but a candle is . Who wants to smell it, has to go to Marrakech. We can cheat: the bathroom amenities are made from this same fragrance and, yes, we can store them furtively in the suitcase.
The smell of Mamounia appears when you cross the doors of La Mamounia, once you have overcome the astonishment of the infinite porters dressed in white who open them. It blends with the gloom present throughout the hotel. It walks the corridors with you and sneaks into your room and even into your bed. Always intangible.
The Mamounia. Avenue Bab Jdid Marrakech 40 000 Marrakech Morocco. Telephone: +212 44 38 86 43.
La Mamounia: intangible values