I attended the ILTM Conference in Cannes, where I had the occasion to discover some extraordinary hotel brands. Luxury hotel brands often play a fine gamble between maintaining a core brand identity through a historically iconic collection while seeking to reinterpret and translate that identity into new locations around the world. One excellent example of a global luxury resort brand that has done this with great success is Anantara Hotels and Resorts, a label within the Minor Hotels Group.

Born in Hua Hin in Thailand in 2001, Anantara Hotels and Resorts invite guests to escape into a myriad of destinations, from beach resorts in Bali to desert getaways in the Middle East. I was curious to learn more about how this brand captured the concept of ‘escape’ and translated it across a variety of landscapes around the world.

Can you introduce us to the Minor brand?

Minor is an opportunistic brand. We’re always on the lookout for something that will fit the DNA and would be a good idea for an investment, joint venture, or management contract. When we launched in Portugal, it was obviously a springboard for us to open our other brands in Portugal, as we have done, but also to see what other opportunities that we could find in the UK, France, and Spain. We certainly have great ambitions to see ourselves sooner rather than later in the UK and beyond.

How do you integrate digital technology into your rooms?

Every brand is a little bit different. We have handy phones in our hotels in Bangkok, and we’ll be rolling them out across all of our brands in all of our hotels. The handy phone is a complimentary phone in the room that you can take with you and use to make free calls to 14-16 countries locally. It also has downloaded maps, recommendations for restaurants and bars so that you can never get lost. It has a direct callback to the hotel in case you need someone to quickly talk to a taxi driver to get you back home. That’s something that especially Single Leaf travelers or female travelers will enjoy, or if you’re just out with your family and you need somewhere to go.

How are you developing wellness offers at your hotels?

At Anantara Tangalle, we have a holiday resort where we have a very large spa, so we can accommodate and develop our wellness offerings. We do so at our properties where we have leisure guests enjoying a beach break in Sri Lanka. We’re starting off with Anantara Tangalle, then we will move to Anantara Kalutara having a wellness offering as well and Anantara Kihavah at the Maldives. They will be the first ones; Anantara Tangalle is the very first one.

What kind of programs do you offer for families with kids?

Some of our hotels are city hotels more geared towards a business audience. Some of our hotels accommodate couples or indeed families. For example, Worldwide Kids, which is at the Anantaras in the Algarve and in the Maldives, we have dedicated programs where we work with Scott Duck. We have programs that range from 18 months all the way up to early teenagers dedicated to different types of programs so that we can cater to those different audiences. We work with specialists to do that and the staff that work there are all fully trained.

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Anantara – Banana Island Doha – Room

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