HOTELS LIKE HOMES

Press, Volume C, Issue 29514, 16 May 1961, Page 2

HOTELS LIKE HOMES

Woman Owns Four

Some of the most significant hotels in the world are owned by a woman, Mrs Evelyn Sharp. And she assured me the other day, during a visit to London, that in spite of their size—one has 1575 rooms—they are run like comfortable private homes, writes Susan Vaughan from London. Mrs Sharp’s husband, who died in 1941 of a heart attack because of overwork, was a hotel owner on a large scale. The hotels were sold upon his death, but Mrs Sharp decided to keep one, in New York, because her mother had lived there. Three More In 1957, in a single day, she acquired three more: a resort in the mountains (with its 35,000 acres, this one is as large as Monaco), one in Los Angeles (where a threeroomed suite costs £3O a day) and another in New York. As grey-haired Mrs Sharp, who is in her 60’s, sat in an hotel lounge, wearing a dress by Jacques Hein, and garlanded with pearls, she told me: "Right now I'm negotiating for another hotel in the heart of America.” I had a glimpse of her efficiency when she told me that, before she arrived in London, she wrote to 1806 persons in Britain who had stayed in her hotels in the last five years asking them for suggestions on how to make her hotels “more perfect for British visitors.” You can be sure many of the suggestions—the homely ohes—will be built into Mrs Sharp’s hotels.