A visit to Jnane Tamsna and Marrakech really changed my perspective on travel. Morocco had always been on my hit list for many, many years, but the kind of welcome I received and the perspective I gained from being at this hotel and spending time with a woman and an iconic personality like Meryanne really centred me and made me realise that there’s literally nobody like her on this planet.

She’s one of the most unique people I’ve met in my life, and I really want to keep talking about her until everybody knows about the kind of hospitality offering and oasis of calm that she has created in the Palmeraie of Marrakech.

I have fallen in love with Jnane Tamsna, and I believe you have cracked the code when it comes to ensuring that a like-minded crowd is magnetised towards the hotel and property, creating a space for connection. What do you feel is the most important ingredient when it comes to hospitality for an independent hotel, especially looking at your own success?

The most important thing is to offer something different, naturally different   nothing affected or artificial.. Otherwise why would people come and return? The difference starts with what you feel, see, eat and experience… at first here, you see gardens, architecture and interiors. Nothing feels formal, or standardised. Our personal lifestyle flows everywhere. We love books, there are plenty. We love art, there is plenty. We love travels, there are influences from India, Mexico and West Africa.

My husband created a garden which looks like it has always been there and I designed a hotel which is also a reflection of timeless style and values.  Layers of life, reflected on bookshelves, through textiles, old prints, old family photos, art on the wall, antiques… I think that this “ lived-in” bohemian feel, immediately put people at ease in a way that the formality and usual distance of other hotels rarely offer.

Thank you for mentioning “our own success”, but nothing was ever thought with this in mind. We created a space that reflected us and we are very happy that many demanding travellers immediately feel this is “their place”.

The hotel has been designed and conceived by creative people who have their own home on the estate. In a way, the hotel lives as we like to live.

Our life is connected to nature, to the gardens, and to the daily vegetable crops that are harvested before the meals. Decades ago, we fell in love with Morocco — with its history, its culture and its aesthetics. So, of course, we wanted to design our place with a Moroccan identity, mixed with our own diverse cultural heritage. This is the subject of my book, “ Inside Marrakech” published by Rizzoli.. How foreigners have been inspired by Morocco and designed their house with a beautiful fusion of local inspiration and personal cultural heritage.

There are the archways, old doors and perspectives that bring in the Moroccan inspiration, and then there is everything that reflect our eclectic and bohemian taste. The gardens, architecture and interiors have been spontaneously designed with timeless aesthetics … All feels like it has always been there.. Standardisation, uniformity, matching — these are words that are really a foreign language to us. So I think this is what people like about our place: it’s incredibly personal. We are not Moroccan, but the place has a very strong sense of place.

What are your favourite features across the property?

Gardens, with their hypnotic sense of nature, authenticity and well being.

I love all the Moroccan elements of the architecture and the interiors. I conceived the architecture myself and had a map done of the existing palm trees. The idea was to slide the construction between the trees. The trees have been my canvas.

What I particularly love is that the new green tent in Karwan has a fantastic baby grand piano. We’ve already had some amazing artists play there — people who have performed in some of the biggest theatres in the world, who happened to be staying. And because the piano is so good, they would simply sit down and start playing.

Your personal style will inspire not just your own generation of leaders but also the upcoming leaders. How would you say you curated your personal style and wardrobe, and what makes you feel confident? What is most important for confidence?

Haha.. At a time, when most people will go for logos and branded clothes, I am the worst example. My personal confidence comes from not caring about trends. I don’t care. You will never see me with a logo. I think the ultimate luxury is having your own style, mixing things that caught your eye in a shop, it can be vintage, it can be new, mixed with statement accessories. I believe in personal style, not the trend of the year. I keep my clothes forever and mix old and new ones.

I’m fiercely anti-logo. Why would I do free advertising for a brand and, on top of that, pay for it? It’s completely beyond my understanding. Luxury without a visible signature is the essence of chic for me. Eclectic, bohemian and timeless is what I love.. This summer out of fun, I designed Thirty-five different necklaces, they sold like hot cakes in Martha’s Vineyard.. I decided to also do it now for the hotel shop, which will always carry my own line of necklaces. I will also create shawls and wraps.

Effortless is fun for me. Anything creative is fun — interior design, clothes, style, jewelry, accessories. Customising, creating your own thing — that is totally fun. I am blessed that this personal fun can be connected to work!

What are your favourite brands and concepts across the world that resonate with you?

For clothes, elegant things without their initials on them, in general. And very often, amazing things that may not be known by so many people, but they are a powerful statement of elegance.

I also love antiques, and antiques are obviously not branded, except if they are attached to a certain art school or era. Anything with character resonates with me.

For lamps and accessories, I love JAMB in London.

I love textiles such as Pierre Frey, Dedar, Harlem Toile Girl of Sheila Bridges. I love Aissa Dionne’s fabrics in Senegal, she has supplied Hermès, and has worked with the most famous architects in the world. 

What is your advice to female leaders who want to create a unique business like yours?

There are some female leaders who have access to finance, but don’t necessarily have the creativity I have. 

What has helped me is that I can design my own projects from A to Z. I think that’s quite rare among people developing boutique hotels, because they usually have to hire designers and architects. For my next, larger-scale projects, of course, I’ll be working with two fantastic architects, but I’ll still be involved in the creative part and interiors.

It’s tricky to advise female leaders, though, because if they want to get into hospitality as an investment it is a different thing than what I do. They can find a great team, and the product does not need to  be a reflection of the owner, like at our place. Since there are fabulous architects and interior designers, it can turn into something cool anyhow..

We really created something that reflects the way we like to live. We have writing retreats, music events, books everywhere. The hotel is really an expansion of our own lifestyle. Do they want the same ? The best advice that I could give to someone who wants to get into hospitality is to make a serious introspection, and when the answers are strong and convincing, to move forward with the best team.

What makes you love Marrakech the most after all these years?

The first time I came to Marrakech was in 1985. I could feel that this place would change my life. It was love at first sight — absolute, irrational, totally, madly in love with the place. And it has never ceased to enchant me. I’m not at all “blasée”.

It has evolved in a phenomenal way because today you have such a rich and creative array of things to do, to visit, to eat and to explore  . There are some  hotels where I couldn’t sleep one night because they’re not to my taste, but it is great that there are different tastes out there!  Why should one taste dictate everything? There should be a choice of style and budget, and I think Marrakech does this very well.

At the end of the eighties, there were only big hotels. La Mamounia remained the historical anchor of Moroccan chic hospitality and is still today an absolute fabulous place. In the last twenty years famous five star brands have opened here. They’re phenomenal. Service can be spectacular, food exquisite and style breathtaking.

However, it was only when Marrakech started offering a wider range of hospitality styles — and I’m very happy to have been, at my humble scale,  by coincidence and chronological fact, at the origin of this with our first property, Dar Tamsna — that the city really opened up and attracted people who would never have come before. This paved the way for boutique hospitality in Marrakech. Today boutique hospitality offers a very wide range for all budgets. It has also created a very strong loyalty to the destination.

As for myself, I just designed a place, which I opened in ’89, that was my dream of the kind of place I would want to find when I travelled.  It became a phenomenon. One of our first guests was Brad Pitt. The late photographer Peter Lindberg used it for iconic shoots for Vogue. Giorgio Armani came several times. Our clientele was people of extreme taste who had found ” their place” in Marrakech.

What makes me love Marrakech so much is that I am never bored here. From exploring the markets and discovering the millenary work of craftsmen who now mix their knowledge with some modern touches, to being able to have dinner in the most refined places, to having the great Art Fair 1:54 to meeting remarkable creatives, writers, artists, musicians.. It simply never stops, while I am also running a business.

Here you’re connected to a place that has been here since the Middle Ages and was a powerful cultural crossroads. The Moors from Morocco created Andalusia, which they occupied for eight centuries, minus ten years. Much of what we now call “Spanish colonial” in Latin America actually comes from the cultural heritage of Andalusia, which was deeply Arab. 

Marrakech being at the crossroads of so many cultures, is a big part of why I love Morocco so deeply. It has influenced the aesthetics of the world — architecture, courtyards, perspective — in a way that doesn’t get nearly enough credit