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EnlargePalais de Tokyo cofounder Jerome Sans has been assembling an all-star cast of artists to reimagine Le Meridien. | Jo Magrean

EnlargeLe Meridian's brand honcho Eva Ziegler, pictured here in a hotel room in Paris, has been the champion of its artist-driven strategy. | Jo Magrean

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Under The Sea

Le Meridien reinvents the art of the hotel experience.

Henri Scars Struck is holed up in the attic of a building in Manhattan's Flatiron District. The bald French composer is cornered by electric guitars, a grand piano, and a blue Moroccan mandolin -- only a fraction of the instruments he used to orchestrate his latest opus: a 24-hour track that syncs a mélange of sounds, from galloping horses to an Indian sitar. With a strike to his keyboard, Struck unleashes the music he spent four straight months composing with 20 musicians around the globe. "The goal is to be surprised," he says.

The only thing more surprising than the music is its patron: the $9 billion Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, specifically the Le Meridien brand. Last year, it hired Struck to be part of the LM100, a rotating group of artists heightening the experience at the "upper upscale" hotel chain. "When the business guy who just did 10 meetings in a day arrives at the hotel, all he can dream of is room service and sleep," he says. "We want to reset his mind!"

Channeling the sounds of galloping horses, shopkeepers yelling in a Cairo market, and water pulsating down a drain seems like a counterintuitive approach to courting an exhausted guest. But catching its customers off guard, says Eva Ziegler, senior VP of Le Meridien, is exactly the leap she believes the 36-year-old hotel chain needs to take. Starwood hired her shortly after it acquired Le Meridien, in late 2005, to refashion its 115 disparate properties to appeal to the more creative customer. "The first 10 minutes when you walk into a hotel, what do you typically remember?" she asks. "Nothing. It's a transaction."

To change that, she's in the midst of a five-year, nearly $10 million project to create a hotel where guests can revel in their tuna tartare while feeling as if they've spent a day at MoMA. Her first move: In 2006, Ziegler recruited Jerome Sans, the whimsical blond Parisian who cofounded the edgy art institution Palais de Tokyo, to become the chain's first cultural curator. "My role is to create unique experiences for the guest that stimulate all five senses," Sans says.

His primary mission has been to court LM100's cast of artists -- painters, designers, and architects -- to transform more than 50 aspects of the hotel. The first group of 12, which includes musician Struck, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and filmmaker Kiki Allgeier, is focusing this year on guest arrival and cuisine. For the 15 Le Meridien properties that have been converted thus far, arriving guests are greeted in the lobby and elevators with Struck's visceral sound track. At check-in, they receive a limited-edition key card designed by artists such as Michael Lin and Sam Samore that doubles as a free pass to a local art institution. Samore's book of adult fairy tales awaits guests in their rooms as a take-home souvenir.