EXCLUSIVE: Meet the three hotels that changed Greece

Part I: A little something out of the ordinary in often overlooked Syros.

Just nine suites, two with private plunge pools, all boasting gorgeous marble from the likes of TInos and Naxos, a gourmet breakfast experience, a swanky roof terrace with bar and view over the Ermoupoli rooftops and across the sea to Tinos—the Aristide Hotel brings some sizzle and added sophistication to Syros, and is helping to put it more squarely the tourist map too. I spoke with its tireless and enterprising young owner, Oana Aristide, from the comfort of the Naxos Suite—one of my favorites. Aristide has also just authored a novel, published in Britain, that's generating as much buzz as her ravishing boutique hotel…

Your book Under the Blue evokes a post-pandemic Europe, which seems very prescient under the current circumstances.

The backdrop to the novel is a pandemic that starts in Asia in 2020 and I finished the book in May 2019 and it was bought by the [British] publisher Serpent's Tail in September 2019. But it's not a big deal to have predicted this because it was a very likely scenario.

Now, from books to breakfasts...the ones that are served in the charming interior courtyard are heavenly—the saganaki omelette, for example, is not something you see at many hotels! Who's your chef?

His name is Spiros Varelas and he was the Executive Sous-Chef at the Hotel Grand Bretagne in Athens.

And that amazing caper jam served with the local artisanal cheeses?

It's actually made in Syros.

In addition to being a novelist, you are also an economist by vocation and now quite obviously you are a hotelier too, on a Greek island certainly known to Greeks but that is still a bit obscure in terms of its international touristic profile. How did you come to choose Syros for this quite dramatic hotel project? Or did Syros choose you?

We were not actually looking for a hotel project, we were looking to buy a holiday apartment because we like the island. I was spending my holidays here, my family visited and they liked it as well. We didn't find anything we really liked and then by chance we saw this house [the building that is now the hotel] and fell in love with it. Obviously it was far too big for us. So it had to be a business and the hotel project was born.

We found the property in September 2017 and it was ridiculously over our budget—like eight times over!—so we had to get a loan and we managed to but it in spring 2018.

Did you realize what you were getting into, by not only buying a historic property but also launching a hotel in a destination not iconic like nearby Mykonos and Santorini? In other words, did you have a sense of the challenges not only in terms of the physicality of the renovation project but also the marketing challenges?

I had never renovated anything. But I like the fact that Syros is off the beaten track. I think that makes it a more interesting place and we really couldn't have done something like this in a more popular holiday island. Plus I had been coming to Syros for the past five or six years and often friends were visiting me and they were always returning, so this gave us confidence that island's popularity would grow. That made it seem like less of a gamble to invest in tourism here.

The main reason Syros is not so touristic is that the locals had other options, the shipyards and prior to that the trade, all the administrative institutions.

The building was the Tax Office of the Cycladic (South Aegean) region. The government was actually renting it, so it was always a private property. The last owner had rented it out to the tax office. They hadn't done any renovation work, although they did insulate the roof which did help a lot with preservation. Everything had to be redone of course, but there were no structural issues.

You are a dual citizen Romanian and Swedish; your mother is Romanian and your father is from Yemen. You set out to transform a grand old building in a gracious Greek island capital, and you did it. It's an absolute gem. Was it daunting to have to deal with the red tape of the Greek bureaucracy?

The main problem was the lack of clarity. There are so many grey areas and you don't know sometimes. That created some frustration. And does take more time.

You're also enriching the cityscape of Ermoupoli. Has the community been supportive?

I get very positive feedback from the locals, partly because we have been featured so much in the international media. They realize the hotel has helped raise the profile of Syros. This summer we have started receiving some support from the municipal authorities in terms of media relations.

Maybe half of our guests come here because of the hotel—in other words they had no plan to come to Syros. They came because they read about the hotel. So the media does make a difference.

Italian chandeliers, velvet-covered designer chairs, Tiffany clocks, designer water pitchers from Denmark, state-of-the-art Swedish mattresses, bathrooms featuring gorgeous marble from Naxos and Tinos—someone here has some pretty exquisite taste!

The decor and furnishing was a cooperative family effort between me, my sister in Sweden and my mother. All the items in the guest suites we selected as if we were buying them for themselves. As for the marble, it was hand-cut by an expert here in Syros.

How did you source the enormous gold-framed mirror in the Naxos Suite? It's quite dramatic, and looks like it could have come from the Palace of Versailles...

Actually it is an authentic 18th-century French mirror! We bought it at an auction in Sweden and then it came by truck [and eventually ferry] to Syros.

After all the work, it must be gratifying to see the finished product. Especially as you are not just a hotelier but a storyteller, and the journey from decaying Greek neoclassical mansion to posh hotel is a story too—and one that is attracting the attention of the Financial Times the Wall Street Journal and others. What has been the most satisfactory thing about this story, if you will?

Since we opened [in 2019] it's been very satisfying to see guests enjoy the hotel, to see how they might sometimes arrive tired and grumpy but then leave happy. The general feeling that it's appreciated. We only just finished the entire renovation, but it's very satisfying to see it come alive and to see that people are happy with the results.

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