The luxury concept didn’t occur to Mr. Sharp for years, after he had built a couple of successful hotels and was asked by an English developer to construct a property in London; it ultimately opened in 1970. Mr. Sharp argued that the place should compete with Claridge’s and the Connaught and other elite, old-world hotels. That part of the market seemed crowded to Mr. Sharp’s overlords, but he had been to those hotels and here’s what he noticed: They treated you like royalty only if they knew you. “If they didn’t know you and you walked in with blue jeans a regular shirt, you wouldn’t even get the time of day,” he said. “That was the difference.” The luxury hotel for everyone else — it could have been the corporate motto. Given Mr. Sharp’s eagerness to go head to head with British swells, you would assume that class resentment was a motivator here. After all, the guy’s dad grew up penniless in Oswiciem, Poland — known better as Auschwitz — and his parents arrived in Canada with next to nothing. But class resentment, he says, is not in his psychological makeup. He simply saw a niche.
