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I attended the 2017 edition of the ILTM Conference in Cannes. Over the course of the program, I sought out numerous hoteliers and hospitality experts to discover the latest themes and challenges facing the luxury hotel industry today.
One theme that is particularly dear to my heart is sustainability and wellness. Let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, the primary purpose of a hotel room is to provide a good night’s sleep. I was eager to seek out hotel groups that shared this same philosophy toward preserving a client’s well-being and relaxation.
I was lucky to run into Neil Jacobs, CEO of Six Senses Hotels & Resorts. A passionate believer of wellness and health, Neil described the importance of integrating some of these key considerations into his group’s identity.
Six senses – Bhutan
How do you manage health and food at your hotels?
For us, it’s a huge part of our DNA. A lot of hotel groups are talking today about wellness, etc. but you can’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m in the wellness business”. It takes a long time, requires a lot of commitment and a lot of money to do it properly, and often most hotel groups can’t. They say it’s too expensive, there’s no return on investment, etc. So they don’t do it. We don’t look at it like that. It is our DNA. We don’t look at things and say, “Ok, it cost me $100 to develop ‘Sleep with Six Senses’. I need to sell it at $200.” I don’t look at it like that. I look at what it is doing for the brand, how it’s driving occupancy, how it’s driving average rate and length of stay by having this programmatic stuff that we do every single day. We don’t think about it in the same way that others think about it.
We’ve been doing it for a long time. Every year we add something new. We have to keep developing the platform. Next year, we’re going to be into our version of anti-aging. We’re going to have a children’s wellness called ‘Grow with Six Senses’. We’re rolling out ‘Eat Now’. It’s all under the same umbrella
Even our sustainability activities. Actually, sustainability and wellness are the same thing today. Five years ago, we had the sustainability department and the wellness department. It’s the same thing. For us, it’s a huge passion, and we believe that it’s important to our customers. If someone can leave our hotels in a better place than when they arrived, even in a small way, then we’ve done our job.
Do your rooms have bio-light features to help clients fall asleep in a natural way?
We do some of that, not all of it. We talk about bio-filling design, and that’s about bringing outside into the room and nature. We even have equipment along with our sleep programs that work with light and sound to wake you up very slowly and gently. Absolutely—I love all that.
How do you manage a consistent standard of clean food and health across your different destinations?
We can’t produce the same level of quantity, but on the other hand, in New York, I can buy organic food that comes from 10 km away. When I’m in Vietnam, I need to do more work myself. In New York, it was very important to me that we have a rooftop garden. We got the rooftop, and the developers said “Let’s do a pool. That’s what everyone does. Do the swimming pool with the rooftop with a bar.” I said, “No, let’s do an organic farm with a bar.” It’s the brand. It’s facing the Hudson River, so you’ve got the water view, you’ve got the Highline, and I said, “We’ll do incredible functions on this roof. We’ll do dinners for 50 people with one garden”. They said, “Ok, let’s do it.” So the thinking is changing, but not everybody sees that because they’re stuck—most people are stuck. Most people would say, “You have to have the pool because people expect the pool.” I said, “Exactly, that’s the reason not to do it.”
Sometimes it takes a while to change old thinking. There is some organic farming in Brooklyn, for example, on the roof. But nobody’s really done it in Manhattan. When you talk to Manhattan people, to them, Brooklyn people are crazy druggie hippies. No one has said, “Let’s do this in Lower Manhattan,” so maybe we’re the first, and once we’ve done it, other people will do it. It’s a process. There are some great organic restaurants, but a lot of the food comes from upstate New York.
What are the most challenging issues today for Six Senses Hotels in the luxury market?
We go to some pretty difficult places to function, so it’s difficult to find the right kind of like-minded people who intuitively understand the brand. I don’t care if people know how to make the bed or don’t know how to make a bed. We can teach that. But you need people who feel the DNA of the company, and that’s not always easy. It’s changing. We’re going into Israel into the desert. Israel is an incredible country, but they don’t have a service culture because they’ve been worrying about more important things than how to serve the coffee. So to find and develop the right talents—that’s hard.
Management is easier to find, but it’s more challenging to find the day-to-day junior-level jobs. We need exciting people who are passionate about what they’re doing. As we get more and more known, we see people questioning, “What am I doing at Marriott? What am I doing at Sheraton?” and who want more purpose in their lives.
I wanted more purpose in my life. When I left Four Seasons, I loved the brand; it was my family, and they’re still my family, but I didn’t want to do just another luxury hotel. I don’t have a problem with luxury hotels, but I wanted to do upscale hotels that were more purposeful that had a narrative around it and that would improve people’s lives in a little way or a big way—just to do something that was a little more important than just doing luxury hotels. There’s enough of them in the world. That was for me very personal, so I look for people who are at the same stage of their lives. It sounds very religious; it’s not religious, it was just what I wanted to do.
Six senses – Bhutan – Lodge
Known for his international expertise on luxury hotels through his magazine, Laurent Delporte shares his vision and experiences in the world of hotels on his site DELPORTE Hospitality. He decodes the behind-the-scenes action in the sector: from food and beverage facilities, accommodations, architecture, to the quality of services. He offers interviews, advice, and articles as pragmatic resources that industry professionals and private individuals can refer to in their search for information.
