If someone hit you over the head (hard) just before the pandemic and you woke up only now in mid-2024, you’d notice some changes, like the proliferation of Six Senses hotels and resorts worldwide.
Once a relatively quiet group focused on wellness-focused Asian resorts for European insiders, Six Senses has been opening at a furious pace, with an eye on the U.S. Since hotel giant IHG spent $300 million in cash to acquire the 16-strong hotel and resort portfolio from private-equity group Pegasus Capital Advisors in 2019, Six Senses has grown to 26 urban hotels and resorts in 21 countries across four continents. (Its Vana resorts in India are among Robb Report’s top 50 luxury hotels in the world.)
Blink again and that number could be doubled. Currently a flagship brand in IHG’s luxury and lifestyle portfolio, Six Senses wants to have locations in London, Bangkok, Dubai, Lisbon, Napa and Tel Aviv by 2026. With 43 Six Senses properties in the pipeline, that would take the brand’s footprint from the Carolinas to Victoria Falls. Many of these new properties will feature branded residences.
So, is Six Senses looking to conquer the world through Ayurvedic medicine, longevity spa treatments and mindfulness exercises?
“It’s been a tough journey,” CEO Neil Jacobs acknowledges, “but the answer is no. We’re on the right page about it.”
CEO Neil Jacobs says spirituality is a growth area for the brand.
We’ll expand on this angle in a moment, but it’s worth pausing to note that, despite Jacobs’ protestations, before joining Six Senses he spent 14 years at a hotel group that is perhaps far more explicitly interested in turning the globe into one giant five-star hotel lobby: Four Seasons. As senior vice president of operations for Asia-Pacific at Four Seasons, he saw the company expand from roughly two dozen hotels to the luxury enterprise it is today, with some 130 addresses owned by Bill Gates and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Four Seasons’ stated goal is 200 hotels. But Jacobs told Robb Report that neither he nor IHG intend to turn Six Senses into the Michael Kors of luxury wellness resorts.
“We believe that less is more,” he says of the aforementioned mindset. “Our competitors are all about growth. With Six Senses, the conversation is about the opposite. We have to be really careful about what we do and where we go. We started with eight resorts in 2012. Then we went to 11, then we closed a couple. Now we’re at 26. That means we’ve only opened 18 in nearly 12 years.”
Still, the Bangkok-based company is hustling toward 60 or more properties, a number that Mr. Jacobs said he would be “comfortable with.”
“We have four projects in Italy. We could do five more, but why not?” Jacobs says. “Instead of tying the brand down in one country, why not expand and branch out to other countries, even though there are plenty of places to do that. There’s a constant debate internally: Italy has some great places coming, but Venice isn’t there yet. So does my team say, ‘If Venice is the deal, why not do it?’ That’s a good question. But the answer is, maybe.”
The brand is expanding into urban centers like Rome. Courtesy of Six Senses
Whether it’s Six Senses, Four Seasons or Auberge (another brand that has expanded rapidly as well), the answer to the question “When will quantity extinguish the spark of quality?” is worth at least a billion dollars. But it’s also a question that highlights the happy fact that, despite the current economic downturn, “luxury” is winning. Maybe it’s already winning.
From fashion to travel, a growing number of companies are repositioning themselves to serve the luxury consumer, as rising global wealth supports the superior profit margins that relatively simple luxury rebranding can deliver. Yesterday’s affordable family resorts become today’s coveted seaside playgrounds. As long as the demand for luxury is here to stay, well-funded hotel groups will grow to meet it.
At the same time, the success of “luxury” creates a clear existential dilemma: when luxury becomes standard-setting, then by definition it is no longer extravagant, it is no longer luxurious. And as luxury becomes more nebulous and undifferentiated, the vague, in-the-eye-of-the-beholder qualities that were once luxury’s strengths are now luxury’s weaknesses.
Jacobs feels that this is a problem Six Senses is uniquely designed to solve.
Jacobs says it’s not just about finding the perfect place, it’s about finding the perfect place. Courtesy of Six Senses
“We think of the sixth sense in our name as intuition,” he says. “It’s interesting because one of our wellness initiatives this year is spiritual wellness. In the past, we’ve done a lot of yoga and meditation, but we haven’t done many overtly spiritual programs. We think now is the time.”
Offering a secular, lightly seductive take on spirituality on a silver platter, these programs will launch later this year and provide a key differentiator for the brand’s fastest-growing customer demographic: Americans.
“In 2012, the majority of our customers were European, I would say 85 percent,” Jacobs says, “and we had no business from the U.S. Now, the U.S. is our largest market, even though we haven’t opened anything there.”
It wasn’t for a lack of trying: Sixth Senses was set to open in a Bjarke Ingles-designed tower on Manhattan’s High Line, but it was scrapped by the Gambino construction bribery scandal and subsequent bankruptcy of the developer. Sixth Senses has since found a new location on 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in Chelsea, but it will be at least three years before it reopens.
Times are easier on a 236-acre farm in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. Formerly the site of a failed “Secret Hotel” project, the property was purchased by Six Senses in 2022 for $13.7 million, making it one of the brand’s few properties (as with many brands, ownership is typically with outside investors). It would be the first Five-Star Flag in the region, but the project has faced community opposition that could derail the brand’s latest attempt to establish a U.S. presence.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Del LaMagna, who owns land bordering the site, told the Hudson Valley Pilot.[IHG] They decided they wanted to be here and started hiring local talent to find a solution, but the idea of a luxury resort for the rich just wasn’t working here.”
From Bhutan to Napa, Six Senses has been more successful than any other hotel. Courtesy of Six Senses
That’s a matter of opinion, but Six Senses’ plans for the U.S. extend far beyond the town of Clinton. In addition to urban hotels in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, the company plans to open a string of resorts, starting with a 500-acre site on the edge of Napa and a multi-island project spanning Hilton Head, Daufuskie, and Bay Point off the coast of South Carolina. The sheer scale of these properties will eventually facilitate hosting the festivals and retreats the brand has been investing in of late.
“There’s a lot of yoga, spirituality, fun, dance and movement,” he says. “These festivals really resonate with people.”
If you’ve just woken up, welcome to a world where Six Senses will be everywhere, all at once. But Jacobs hopes that by selecting “exceptional properties” and “demonstrating our values in a really meaningful way,” the resort will blend into the ecosystem like a sequoia in a pine forest. Call it a sixth sense.
