IT’S holiday time, so let’s ask an expert what he recommends.
“I’ve just been up in a 40-year-old Lightning jet above Cape Town,” says
Geoffrey Kent. “We went from sea level to 40,000 ft in a minute. I took 5Gs
in a T-shirt.” Then he shouts: “It’s so cool!”
Cool? It sounds bonkers. Not at all, says Kent, it’s brilliant. You’re so high
up, you can see the curvature of the Earth. “It’s the closest thing to space
you can get. And space is going to come. It’s going to be amazing . . .”
Kent, dyed-blond hair pushed back, cheesecloth shirt gaping on a tanned, hairy
chest, is one of the travel trade’s great characters. Nobody aged 65 should
be taking 5Gs in an old jet above Cape Town, but Kent, a self-styled
adrenaline junkie, is a chief executive who likes to push the limits. “Age,”
he tells me later in his Knightsbridge-visits-the Hamptons accent, “is just
a state of mind.”
He also has a reputation to keep up. Kenyan-born, former British Army officer,
a polo nut and old buddy of Prince Charles, Kent is a renowned adventurer
whose lifestyle epitomises the values of the travel firm he heads. He has
seen Abercrombie & Kent through boom and bust, and now it’s booming
again as it focuses on providing luxury adventure trips for the world’s
rich.
And in good times, that’s a great niche. A&K’s sales, $500m (£247m),
are growing by a quarter each year. Its A-list of clients – Bill Gates,
Warren Buffett, Hillary Clinton, Gene Hackman, Michael Crichton, Sting –
gets longer, too. There’s even a suggestion that Kent, whose private wealth
is estimated at £250m, may float the business soon.
Well maybe, he says, when I push him. Luxembourg-registered A&K is now
majority owned by the American investment group Fortress, which might, or
might not, want to cash out while business is booming.
There is logic to raising more money. A&K is a five-star travel group that
runs its own river barges and Nile boats and expedition ships, keeps its own
people on the ground, and wants to expand. That takes capital.
“Other travel firms are just brochure publishers,” sighs Kent, when I mention
the copycat rivals. Their “asset-light” approach, he says, just doesn’t give
quality control.
But forget business, let’s get on with the anecdotes. “Oh I have so many
stories,” he chuckles, before we even start. And he’s right, he has. What a
life.
His parents were part of Kenya’s White Mischief set. He grew up mucking round
on motorbikes in the bush. Expelled from a Nairobi boarding school aged 16,
he was sent to Sandhurst by his British Army dad. He ended up ADC to war
hero Major-General John Frost (of Bridge Too Far fame), and a world-class
polo player to boot.
So when his parents lost their farm and launched a safari business, he had the
right connections to help out. He had the smart idea of targeting rich
Americans, and even invented A&K’s name to fit – there is no Mr
Abercrombie, it was just a clever way to climb the phone list, with a nod to
Abercrombie & Fitch, the once-venerable American travel outfitter.
For Kent, there has followed four decades of expanding A&K, plus two rich
wives, a second career playing polo, and a single-minded approach to
building a brand that suddenly looks right on the button, as the world’s
rich look for something special.
Most importantly, Kent has survived the downturns, in particular the crash
after September 11 and a clutch of personal problems. He retrenched, and
sold a majority stake in A&K to the American travel group Intrawest –
then bought by Fortress – but claims he still has control, though he has
only a 16.5% stake.
“Someone said to me last week, you stayed in the game, Geoffrey, you stayed in
the game. That’s what counts.”
He is a survivor. He endured a 1995 polo accident that put him in a coma (he
still has the smashed-up nose from that fall), divorce in 2002 – his second
wife, Jorie Butler, of Butler Aviation wealth in America, has another 16.5%
stake in A&K – and entanglement in a tax-fraud case involving the art
dealer Larry Gagosian in 2003, which he settled out of court.
Now, after a torrid decade, Kent is back on the up, obsessed with rebuilding
his stake in the business, and getting his kicks away from polo. His
pastimes include racing Ferra-ris, windsurfing and diving. He has this great
new plan for A&K holidays in a submarine with oceanographers . . .
Don’t get him started. Sitting in A&K’s modest London offices, piles
of notes in front of him – he likes to research everything, even interviews
– Kent is an irrepressible bundle of energy, stocky and barrel-chested, part
entrepreneur, part playboy toff.
Beneath lurks a meticulous business brain. “Sometimes I sell myself short, he
nods, slyly. A&K is envied for its efficiency, its 2,160 staff – many
executives were once in the British Army – and its profit margins. What
started as an expertise in safaris has now broadened into bespoke travel to
just about anywhere, from the Nile to the Yangtze to the Antarctic, with
concierged villas in between. For the new breed of time-short, super-rich
corporate leaders, A&K is often the first port of call.
Most expensive trip organised? “Well, we organised one for an American boss
that cost $1.7m,” says Kent. “But he did want to take 70 family and friends
to east Africa.”
He grins. Kent’s strengths are an eye for detail and a feel for people. His
weakness is a fear of boredom.
He loves the fact that he can get advice from the best corporate brains, often
while sitting round an A&K campfire. He remembers telling Bill Gates how
Rolex chairman André Heiniger had advised him to change nothing. “If it
ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“Then Bill just looked at me and said, ‘My slogan is, if it works, it’s
obsolete.’ I left and told all my people, ‘Quick, guys, change everything.
More ships, different ships . . .’”
He bangs the table laughing. As for employees, he looks for attitude. “I
always give staff one of these,” he says, pulling a laminated card from his
wallet. It says in big letters: IF YOU CANNOT SMILE, DO NOT OPEN A SHOP.
George Morgan-Grenville, A&K’s chief marketing officer and a 20-year
veteran at the business, says that Kent, for all his brio, is also a clever
chief executive. “He’s good at defusing situations, and he never panics. And
he’s also very serious about how the business is run.”
That seriousness was seen in 2003 when September 11, Sars and doubts over east
Africa’s safety pushed the business into the red. Salaries were halved,
assets sold off, and mainstream rivals like Kuoni came sniffing. “Like lions
circling the wounded wildebeest at the waterhole,” says Kent dramatically.
“I just wanted to hang on. It’s my life.”
Others say he had taken his eye off the ball. “Polo had featured fairly
largely in his life,” says Nicholas Villiers, who sat on the Intrawest
board, “but Geoffrey is a fighter.”
Kent says the polo had a purpose – he captained an A&K-sponsored
team. “So it got the brand recognition, and got all the right people
travelling with A&K.”
In particular, his careful honing of what the wealthy traveller might want has
proved farsighted. “I created the A&K cocoon,” he says. “I
believed you had to offer an experience that was the brand. And to control
it you have to own the guide that meets the travellers, the beds they sleep
in, the vehicles they travel in. But the traveller doesn’t see this manic,
anal stuff. That all happens outside the cocoon.”
What drives him on? The business, he says – he pours everything into it. His
only son, 38-year-old Joss, is chief operating officer at A&K. Their
relationship became sticky after disagreements over strategy in 2001, but
they are reconciled now.
Joss must want to know when his father will retire. Kent deflects the
question. “I still run five miles four times a week,” he says.
He is certainly an obsessive. He tells how, at Sandhurst in the 1950s, he
practised polo every weekend on a wooden horse on his own, because he had no
friends to stay with. And he was determined to be the best polo player there
was.
He was always self-sufficient, too, riding to get the mail in Kenya aged four,
driving a Land Rover aged six. And having inherited his mother’s vivacious
charm and his father’s planning skills, he was intent on doing his own
thing.
How a possible float fits into this is anyone’s guess. Friends suggest Kent
wants to increase his stake, not dilute it. And is A&K now robust enough
to survive another down-turn? Kent says yes. His rich clients are
recession-proof, and his custom is less American-centric. His only fear is
another war in the Middle East or a global epidemic, like bird flu.
But he’s not losing sleep over it. “We’ve opened in Libya, Zambia and Morocco.
We are looking at Syria, Rwanda and Russia, and we’re building a new
five-star boat for the Yangtze. We’re going to have more concierged villas
in Europe, and we’re looking at licensing products like sunglasses and
cosmetics. Did you know Porsche makes more money from sunglasses than its
cars?”
Two days later he e-mails me a newspaper article headlined “An end to grey
bosses and pygmy leaders” and tells me he is off to stay with Hollywood boss
Jeffrey Katzenberg. Like I said, don’t get him started . . .
GEOFFREY KENT’S WORKING DAY
“I LEAD two different lives,” says the Abercrombie & Kent
chief executive. If in London, Geoffrey Kent wakes at his Belgravia mews
home at 7.45am. “I make phone calls to Africa, get into our Regent Street
office after 9am, then work through until after 8pm. Then I go to the gym
and out for late dinner, always work related.”
If scouting new destinations worldwide, he is up at 6am and on the road by
7am. “Back to the camp or lodge or ship at 1pm, then out again.” Often he
will drop in on A&K’s high-profile customers. “Sting wanted to meet me
on safari, so I said fine.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:July 14, 1942
Marital status:married twice, with one son
School:Duke of York, Nairobi
First job:British Army officer
Salary package:£225,000 plus dividends
Homes:Belgravia and Nairobi Car:graphite grey Bentley Arnage T
Favourite author:Wilbur Smith
Favourite music:George Michael
Favourite film:The Godfather
Favourite gadget:Iridium 9505a global phone
Last holiday:Botswana
DOWNTIME
“POLO was my only hobby until my accident in 1995,” says Geoffrey Kent. Now he
relaxes by playing tennis, skiing, windsurfing and diving. But he prefers
“anything that’s more adrenaline adventure – cars, planes, submarines. It
goes back to my love of motorbikes as a kid.”
Kent has two main extracurricular commitments: he is this year’s chairman of
the World Travel and Tourism Council, and president of the Prince of Wales
Foundation in America.
What does he spend his money on? “Probably cars – the latest Bentley – and my
homes in London and Nairobi. Mind you, I have spent more money on fun than
any person alive.”
Knowing Geoffrey from Palm Beach Polo days, I called him to arrange a fun day on the Egyptian Sahara for my children and myself. At 5:00 A.M. 3 camels and a Bedouin guide appeared at the elegant door of the Mena House in Cairo, across from the Pyramids. We mounted, and explored the golden desert, complete with a picnic lunch and Mint Tea, sitting on a multicolor Oriental silk carpet, in the shadow of a vast dune! Bravo, Geoffrey!! Aladin and his Lamp could not have created a more magical memory!
marylouise sillman, paris, france