Can Today’s Generation of Leaders Evolve Luxury Hotels?

09.08.2024 - 17:02 / skift.com / Colin Nagy

Jannes Sörensen has been a hotelier at some of the world’s best properties and is one of the most progressive thinkers I’ve encountered.

These days, he sees a significant disconnect between the opulence and excess – and occasional greed – of traditional luxury brands and how consumers are actually living their lives. 

“Many luxury hotels today are still a reflection of monetary success; they are the reward for a financially accomplished life, the idealization of that success,” Sörensen told me. “They are palaces of conspicuous consumption, and I think they no longer offer what today’s travelers require. In fact, they are promoting a lifestyle that clearly needs to change.”

In our conversations spanning years, Sörensen has always been an astute observer of the luxury zeitgeist, noting how the industry is sometimes slow to adapt to sea changes in consumer preferences. He’s also been radically customer-centric and built high-performing teams that adapt swiftly. As one of the youngest GMs in London, he turned a Mayfair property into an award-winning establishment firing on all cylinders with the Beaumont.

Sörensen is thinking big: “If the best hotels in the world’s great cities happen to be fully sustainable, happen to promote healthy lifestyles, change the very idea of what luxury is, and model human-to-human organizations, then this will have a halo effect not only on the industry but on society at large. It will inspire a new generation of travelers as a whole.”

Sörensen tells me that we need radical innovation in the hospitality industry. Put simply, he sees the necessary shift as “generous simplicity versus excess,” and delivered by teams and leaders who are not only strategic but heartfelt, personifying mindfulness in action and purpose. The result can then have a halo effect on the industry but also society at large. 

These kinds of changes won’t happen organically. Better leadership is required and Sörensen hopes to drive that change. 

His new project, Kepler International Hospitality Academy (KIHA), hopes to develop leaders to redefine and deliver this new type of elevated luxury in hospitality. He’s working with partners to rethink how hoteliers are trained: it’s a necessary reboot to the style of teaching to keep pace with the times. The first cohort is selective, with just 15 participants, each with 10 years of hospitality experience.

The curriculum will focus on three distinct themes: deep service hospitality, positive impact business models, and self-mastery and capacity. It is structured around three cities, which each offer a different perspective. Amsterdam focuses on new tourism models, Kyoto on the deep craft principles of Japanese hospitality, and Freiburg on sustainable systems and