stress-related disorder | Caribbean

That sort of mutually beneficial back-scratching has figured largely into, de ­Savary says, "all the businesses I've been in. I never ever felt committed to any particular area of business, but I have always been a people's person who relates well to people of all nationalities, ages, colors, and creeds. So I always realized that whatever businesses I was in would be highly dependent on good interaction with other people." Even PdS's most crucial financial decisions have been based on personal instincts about people, from intuiting risk/reward ratios to hiring staff. "I never read résumés," he confesses cheerfully.

While his attitudes about people ­remain constant, his attitude toward making money­ changed radically after two near-­fatal events in the late 1980s: an emergency major operation (for a stress-related disorder) in which several feet of his intestines were removed; and a small-plane crash, in which he, his wife, and three of their five daughters nearly drowned in the Caribbean. "Before, it never occurred to me that I wasn't infallible, that life would ever end," he says. "After those two things I became less greedy, less driven by materialistic gain. I realized there's a finite amount of time, and nothing's going to go with you. Now I'd rather concentrate on creating things that are original, pioneering, that will stand the test of time."


LESS DRIVEN? HAH. When it comes to striving for excessive wealth, perhaps. But when it comes to striving for perfection on behalf of his paying customers, one only needs to experience a single de Savary workday to realize that the "de" must be an abbreviation for "details." And catching the man at work isn't hard. He visits each resort for several days to a week per month, and prowls the places from beach to broom closet to personally ensure that every little detail is just so.