An interview with Mr. Rayben Chen, Founder of The Savoir
Mr. Rayben Chen is not only a hotel enthusiast but also an “Aman fanatic.” Before founding The Savoir, he had visited various boutique vacation hotels both domestic and international. Among all of them, Aman’s humanistic vacation aesthetics deeply impressed and even captivated him, sparking the dream of creating a resort that embodied a similar humanistic aesthetic. During the selection of the Xixi Wetland location in Hangzhou, fate brought him into contact with Mr. Zheng Jie, the landscape designer for Aman. As a result, “The Savoir” naturally came into being and was born.
Please share the story behind the name “The Savoir” and its significance for the resort.
For a newly established brand, the importance of brand naming is undeniable. It needs to encompass positioning attributes while being conducive to communication and promotion. The Chinese characters “Suo Jian” are the simple and straightforward words that I believe perfectly aligns with the brand positioning of the destination hotel, with its landscape attributes clearly evident. However, expressing the brand’s humanistic attributes presented a challenge. In fact, it took me nearly half a year of contemplation until the appearance of the French word “Savoir”, which filled in the missing piece. Savoir, meaning “knowledge and insight,” is the true essence of what I envision for “Suo Jian”, forms a complete resort name, I am happy.
What sets The Savoir apart from other boutique resorts in Hangzhou?
One point of pride for us is that most of our hotel guests have given us the feedback that they can “enjoy the beauty of Xixi Wetland, without leaving the premises.” Up to now, The Savoir can be regarded as the resort in Hangzhou that best integrates natural landscapes and local culture. Resting by the water’s edge with The Savoir (枕水榻岸，所见西溪) embodies our uniqueness.
How did you incorporate the natural beauty into the design and construction of The Savoir?
The core idea behind the design and construction of The Savoir is to provide guests with a direct and immersive experience of the surrounding landscape. However, presenting the wild, tranquil, serene, and elegant characteristics of the Xixi Wetland in a limited space of over 50 acres posed a considerable challenge. One of the main difficulties lay in finding the right balance between natural elements and human intervention.
The current landscape of The Savoir is essentially a result of reconstruction. Each island within the hotel is formed by dredging and piling up ponds. To create a winter landscape with winding waters and blooming plum blossoms, we transplanted over three hundred plum trees. Unfortunately, due to soil issues, the survival rate was less than one-third, which came at a significant cost. Nevertheless, the final outcome was gratifying, and we are glad that we persevered in this endeavor.
Throughout the process, our design team continuously strived to seamlessly integrate the natural beauty into the resort’s design and construction. Despite the challenges and setbacks, their unwavering commitment eventually realized the essence of The Savoir, allowing guests to intimately experience the beauty of Xixi Wetland within the hotel, immersing themselves in its untamed, serene, and refined natural scenery.
What prominent features or experiences can guests expect when staying at The Savoir?
The architectural design style of The Savoir is typical of the South part of China – Jiang Nan water town dwellings. With a waterfront setting and ample use of white space, it creates a slow and unfolding ink painting. The interior design prioritizes guest comfort, adopting a modern minimalist style. Large floor-to-ceiling windows bring in the views, and the decor embraces simplicity and natural elements.
We are dedicated to offering guests diverse experiences that capture the essence of Xixi Wetland’s fishing and farming culture throughout the four seasons. In spring, guests can participate in silkworm-raising and silk weaving, a unique aspect of Hangzhou’s cultural heritage. During summer, they can enjoy boating amid the blooming lotus flowers, and in autumn, they can partake in harvesting persimmons. In winter, there are activities like wandering along winding waters to appreciate blooming plum blossoms and gathering around a fireplace to brew tea. The resort’s rowing boats can accommodate guests’ personalized experience requests, with the boatman possibly being our general manager, a role that guests adore. Our team is attentive to the design of these experiences, aiming to preserve authenticity while paying attention to detail, ensuring they are in line with The Savoir brand standard and fully showcase the beauty of nature and culture.
The Savoir also offers a rich array of cultural activities. Guests can participate in traditional cultural experiences such as flower arrangement, tea ceremony, incense appreciation, calligraphy, and various elegant gatherings at the hotel’s tea space, Piaoxiang Academy (缥缃书院). We regularly invite renowned writer Teacher Xue Xiaochan to interact with guests and share insights into aesthetic living. We often invite calligraphers and painters from across the country to do sketches of Xixi Wetland and hold pen gatherings to leave their artistic impressions. We are also planning to host an art exhibition to inject strength into the cultural heritage of Xixi Wetland.
What are the unique health preservation methods offered by The Savoir Spa?
We have partnered with the Bo’ao Yiling Life Care Center, which possesses the world’s most advanced medical equipment and is renowned as a pioneer in the health preservation industry. We have introduced their advanced concepts and technologies, including the ancient Sandalwood Therapy, tailored to suit the constitution of the Chinese people.
Sandalwood Therapy is based on the ancestral secret formula of renowned traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. After years of dedicated research, it combines clinical practice with modern technology to create a targeted and transdermal traditional herbal therapy. Following the principles of traditional Chinese medicine as stated in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon (Huang Di Nei Jing), the therapy focuses on calming the mind, sinking the Qi, and relaxing the body and mind. It is achieved through the use of aromatic inhalation, six types of sinking, eight therapeutic techniques, atomization, and bathing. The therapy is composed of three aspects: Sandalwood Warm and Moisturizing Care, Sandalwood Cleansing and Relaxing, and Sandalwood Therapeutic Healing. It targets both the external tissues and the internal organs and energy. These therapies align well with The Savoir’s traditional Chinese health and beauty aesthetics, promoting harmony of the essence, energy, and spirit while relaxing the body and mind.
In the future, we will continue to deepen our cooperation with Yiling, striving to integrate traditional Chinese aesthetics of vacation with nurturing and healing into a harmonious whole.
How do you educate and train your staff to effectively communicate with guests and share these profound cultural concepts?
Our staff training is quite interesting. Besides skill training, we emphasize teaching our employees about the names and stories behind the 26 guest rooms, which were named by the famous writer and tea culture scholar, Mr. Wang Xufeng, for The Savoir.
Each room name represents a historical connection to Xixi, reflecting its cultural heritage. For example, Hengshan Study Hall (Heng Shan Shu Wu) was a villa built by Wang Ranhong, a scholar during the Southern Ming Dynasty, in Xixi. We named our poolside villa Hengshan Fragrant Snow (Heng Shan Xiang Xue) to pay tribute to this history. Yuanmiao Pavilion (Yuan Miao Ge) comes from the name of a pavilion in a temple in Xixi and was the place where Chen Hongshou, a famous painter in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties and the author of “Sixteen Observations in Seclusion,” created his artworks. When our employees introduce these room names and stories to guests, it’s like opening a treasure chest and offering them delightful surprises.
How do you make guests from different cultural backgrounds appreciate the cultural uniqueness of The Savoir?
During our operation, we have indeed welcomed guests from all over the world. We found that the more diverse their cultural backgrounds, the more they immerse themselves in and engage with the unique cultural atmosphere and experiences we offer at the hotel. Some friendly and lovely foreign guests even voluntarily wrote lengthy reviews in English on online platforms like Ctrip, which moved and surprised us.
This cultural distinction also resonates well with guests from the same nationality and cultural background who have a relatively higher sensitivity to cultural arts. We have hosted celebrities, writers, artists, and more. The more seasoned the guests, the more they immerse themselves in the experience here, engage in deep conversations with us, open up themselves, and create connections with the surroundings, both inside and outside their rooms.
What other unique initiatives have you undertaken to attract a following and loyal fans?
Last autumn, we had the privilege of becoming the cooperating filming hotel for the Hangzhou edition of “Big Wanchai Night 2.” Several prominent Hong Kong actors, including Jordan Chan, Julian Cheung, Simon Yam, Lam Suet, and Bosco Wong, filmed at the hotel for several days. The production team spent a significant amount of time and effort conducting location scouting and research on the hotel and its surroundings. They collaborated with our staff to develop tailored shooting plans that highlighted Xixi Wetland’s fishing and farming culture and the hotel’s cultural uniqueness. When the show aired, the hotel’s appearance received excellent feedback, leading to a stream of program viewers visiting the hotel to take photos and leaving reviews on platforms like Ctrip.
We have also collaborated with renowned fashion magazines such as “Fashion Bazaar” and “Readworld,” shooting magazine covers featuring celebrities like Mei Ting and Yao Anna. Furthermore, in 2022, famous actress Tong Liya shot a series of spring photos in the hotel’s garden, which exuded a fresh and lively vibe, becoming a template for many fans to take photos and check-in at the hotel. In the spring of this year, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that renowned actress Zhou Xun personally booked one of our waterside villas, taking photos and checking in at the hotel spontaneously, and even sharing it on her studio’s Weibo account. There are actually many cases of celebrities booking hotels themselves to experience stays, such as our general manager once finding that a guest having breakfast in the restaurant was the famous singer, Tengger.
In the future, we will continue to strive for excellence in quality and service, expand our brand influence, and look forward to welcoming more artists and celebrities to the hotel for vacations, photography sessions, and even deeper collaborations.
Please share some future plans or development directions for The Savoir.
The positioning of “The Savoir” determines strict requirements for hotel location. Besides considering excellent landscape resources, we place even greater emphasis on the uniqueness of local culture. As a result, we have received numerous invitations from local governments, but our development plans remain relatively conservative and cautious. Currently, our plan is to establish the second resort of The Savoir in Yunnan province.
