Dune Landing

In the hills near the port town of Essaouira, hotelier Willem Smit realised his lifelong desire to build a home of a different stripe by the sea.

- Jeremy Callaghan

Dutch by birth, Willem Smit says he has forever had one foot dipped in the decorating pond. As a child he recalls being fascinated by the form of the Eames ‘DCW’ lounge chair. While the beginnings of his professional career path were in the theatre as commercial director of The Hague’s Royal Theatre, then as managing director of Stage performance space, he was always renovating, revitalising and rebranding with an identifiable ‘look’. “As a kid, I always wanted to be a decorator, but I couldn’t draw, which was a prerequisite for art and design school in Holland, so I turned to hotel management,” he says. Even in that role, he says he found himself decorating when he was executive director of the S.S. Rotterdam, a former flagship of the Holland America Line, which was transformed into a dockside hotel.

Willem’s initial move from the Netherlands to Morocco was to manage El Fenn, an exotic boutique hotel in Marrakech co-owned by the Branson family. Since then he’s continued on the path of renovating and expanding the establishment which has won several international awards under his management, including ‘Sexiest Hotel Room’ by one British newspaper.

“I’d never even been to Morocco. I was running a huge hotel and had no interest in moving here or running a small hotel. But I was invited to come and check it out, and I’m still here. I must have been ready for a life change, I suppose,” he says. That was six years ago.

But in the background of this busy life, making sure that everything was perfect for others, Willem nurtured the need to build something for himself. There was the growing desire to realise a lifelong dream, to build a house by the sea. Three hours’ drive west from Marrakech lies the seaside port town of Essaouira, and he bought the first piece of land he saw here.