Ms. Sciò, as the CEO of the boutique luxury hotel group Pellicano and a celebrated lifestyle website, would you consider yourself to be a tastemaker?
I have a hard time saying something about myself, but I do love beauty. I grew up around it, not only in Rome, which is an incredibly aesthetically pleasing city, but also at the hotel run by my father, Il Pellicano. I grew up around beauty, so I want to nurture and keep doing in what I do in the various parts of my job; the interior design, the stores, the style. So yes, I guess I'll take that I'm a tastemaker!
You are involved in almost every part of these projects, right? Everything from design of your hotels’ glassware, to the music that plays in its lobbies.
The hotels are kind of micro worlds, right? There are so many different areas within it. It really involves all of your senses. So as you mentioned, I curate everything that's got to do with the senses, what you see, what you hear, what you smell and what you taste, all of that is something that I really have my hands on. I’m curating the goods in our shops and the products we have online. I do all the interior design for the hotels, I do the music. I curate every single kind of touch point that exists with our guests, and I try to make sure that it's all quality driven, that there’s a real sense of harmony.
“I think if you put love and passion into something, it emanates and it shows. And at Il Pellicano, there’s a lot of that, not only from me, but from everyone who works there. We put a lot of care into each space.”
There’s also a collection of hand-selected books and DVDs that guests can borrow.
That’s exactly what I mean by touch points! I'm passionate about film and I know quite a few people in the film industry, so I asked them for their recommendations. I really enjoy curating that DVD library, and although not everyone is into films, a few people that are can go and find some specific film that they maybe wanted to see their whole life, and find it there. I think that is really enriching, it creates that emotional resonance. For me, it’s really about the details everywhere. It's about making you feel something.
I think guests can pick up on that which is probably why Il Pellicano’s ashtrays and towels often go missing…
(Laughs) Yes, exactly, and that gives us a funny sense of satisfaction that people love those things so much they want to take them home. When we launched our website, Issimo, we ended up offering all those objects, so the things you want to steal, now you can buy. This also extends into the fashion and other collaborations we’re creating; we created a book of photos and history about Il Pellicano, and that was a game changer for me creatively. I worked with several photographers: Slim Aarons who contributed some archive photographs, then also Jürgen Teller, Robert Violette, John Swope, all to craft this visual exploration of the hotel, putting it on the map for future generations. Then, as another example, we collaborated with Birkenstock on a sandal a few years ago.
That’s an unexpected partnership.
Very much so, I mean, a luxury hotel with a German footwear brand? But it was very successful. People loved that and still ask us about it! I wear Birkenstocks all the time, but I couldn’t exactly wear them out to meetings or dinners at night, so we just designed them to look a bit more elevated.
This entire world seems to come from such a personal place for you.
The hotels really are my creative canvas. I’m designing for me, but also for the 20 or 30 thousand people who check into our hotels. I think if you put love and passion into something, it emanates and it shows. And at Il Pellicano, there's a lot of that, not only from me, but from everyone who works there. We put a lot of care into each space. I don’t want to pick low-hanging fruit and create something that works for everyone… I believe strongly in identity, none of our hotels are the same. That’s the problem with big hotel chains, I think, because you could be in Shanghai or Paris or LA and you get the same hotel. Which is fine! It’s just not the way I want to do things. Our project is about celebrating different properties, different locations, and individual styles.
And also different histories, no? Your father took over Tuscany’s Il Pellicano and its Roman sister hotel La Posta Vecchia in the 1960s, also eventually helming Mezzatorre in Ischia. You share a long history with these spaces. How did you go about balancing the hotels’ legacies with their futures?
That has been a big concern for us. When I first took over Il Pellicano from my father, I had interviewed many architects, but they didn't know the history of the place, and they were all going to put their personal style into it, but they had no connection, right? That didn’t feel right. I had just finished architecture school, and said, “Well, I'm probably going to screw this up, but I won't screw it up that badly, because I grew up here, I know this place.” I had some kind of innate trust from my father, he told me, “You can do this.” I was really scared of changing radically something that meant so much for many people…
Because many of your guests were regulars for decades, they had been coming since it opened.
Yes, and I didn't want to disrupt that for them. I was very sensitive about that, and so when I designed the hotel, I had that in mind. I wanted it to feel like I did a refresh, but it's still us. So I think that approach has paid off. It was important for me to not go into this with ego, but actually with curiosity, a will to dive deep into the history and the story and imagine the lives that have passed, right? I think the walls have energy, and they've kept it, and they have those stories that have gone on for a long, long time. So it's really about respecting that and bringing that back to life. It can’t just be about my own style.
Do you think all of this is the reason why your hotels have managed to have a more organic and real customer growth? Because people actually enjoy staying there; it’s more than just a place to sleep.
Sure, I mean, we really have our tribe of followers. Almost half of our customers are repeat guests, that keep coming back year after year. I think it's because people feel comfortable there, and that makes a real difference. I think this applies for all the hotels that have an owner that has a face and that has a taste. You're at their home, and you feel it, and it's great. It's just much more personal.
Where do you think your instinct for both business and style comes from?
It’s interesting because my background at the hotel was purely design, I never thought I would be the CEO of the company. But my father is a businessman and an aesthete, and my mother is a great lover of beauty as well, so I come from a strong background in this way. I was always encouraged by my parents, I loved painting and filmmaking, I went to architecture school, and then when I started learning the business side of things, I brought all that personal interest, all that creativity. Hospitality was never considered, you know, a sexy job, people didn’t really want to do it… But bringing in my creative mindset, my questioning, curious mindset, and bringing in other disciplines like fashion and photography, that has given me a different approach to hospitality.
You don’t seem like the type of person that would shy away from any type of creative challenge.
Oh, I’ve never thought that! I’ve always thought that the world of possibilities is infinite. There’s not a right way to do anything. So I’ve always just approached life like, “Why not?” Give it a try, give it a shot. I just think it's so important to have fun at your job, and being creative for me is really fun — and the success that we enjoy at the company is really the result of that.