If someone hit you in the head (hard) just before the pandemic, and you’re only waking up now, in the middle of 2024, you’ll have noticed some changes. For instance, the global proliferation of Six Senses hotels and resorts.
Once a relatively quiet group of wellness-focused Asian resorts for in-the-know Europeans, Six Senses is now in the midst of a breakneck opening spree with the U.S. square in its sights. Since 2019—when hotel giant IHG dropped $300 million in cash to acquire the operator’s then 16 hotels and resorts from private equity group Pegasus Capital Advisors—it’s grown to 26 urban hotels and destination resorts in 21 countries across four continents. (Its Vana resort in India is one of Robb Report‘s 50 best luxury hotels in the world).
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Blink again and that number may have doubled. By 2026, Six Senses, now the flagship brand of IHG’s luxury and lifestyle portfolio, hopes to have a shingle hanging in London, Bangkok, Dubai, Lisbon, Napa, and Tel Aviv. There are currently 43 Six Senses in the pipeline, which will extend Six Senses footprint from the Carolinas to Victoria Falls. Many of those new properties will come packed with branded residences.
So is Six Senses trying to conquer the world via ayurvedic medicine, longevity spa treatments, and mindfulness exercises?
“It’s been a hell of a ride,” admits CEO Neil Jacobs. “But the answer is no, and we have a real point of view on that.”
More on that point of view momentarily, but it’s worth pausing to note that despite his protestations, Jacobs comes to Six Senses with 14 years of experience with a hotel group that is arguable much more overtly interested in turning planet Earth into one massive 5-star hotel lobby: namely, the Four Seasons. As senior vice president of operations for the Four Seasons’s Asia Pacific region, he witnessed the company expand from roughly two dozen hotels into the 130-ish-address, Bill Gates– and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal–owned leviathan of luxury it is today. The Four Seasons’s stated goal is 200 hotels. But Jacobs tells Robb Report it’s neither his or IHG’s intention to turn Six Senses into the Michael Kors of opulent wellness resorts.
“We think less is more,” he says of that aforementioned point of view. “Our competitors are all about growth. With Six Senses the conversation is very much the opposite of that. You’ve got to be really careful about what you do and where you go. I mean, we started with eight resorts in 2012. Then there were 11, and we got rid of two or three. Today, there are 26. So we’ve only opened 18 in nearly 12 years, really.”
Still, the Bangkok-based company is hurtling toward 60-plus properties, a number Jacobs says he is “comfortable” with. What happens beyond that is stickier.
“We have four projects in Italy. We could do another five, but why?” says Jacobs. “Instead, let’s move to another country and spread, rather than just inundate the brand in one country, even though there’s places to do it. It’s a continual argument internally. We have some great places coming to Italy, but we don’t have Venice. So then my team says, ‘If we have a Venice deal, are you going to say, ‘Don’t do it?’ Good question. But the answer is, ‘maybe.’”
Whether it’s Six Senses, the Four Seasons, or Auberge (another brand that has seen a similarly rapid expansion), the answer to the question “When does quantity extinguish the spark of quality?” is worth at least a billion. But it’s also a problem that highlights the welcome fact that, despite the current slump, “luxury” is winning; it may have already won.
From fashion to travel, a growing share of businesses have repositioned themselves to serve the high-end consumer, as growing global wealth supports superior margins realized through the relative simplicity of a luxury rebrand. The affordable family resort of yesterday becomes the aspirational seaside playpen of today. As long as demand for luxury everything is here, deep-pocketed hotel groups will grow to meet it.
At the same time, the success of “luxury” creates a clear existential dilemma: If luxury becomes the standard setting, it is by definition no longer an indulgence, no longer a luxury. And as luxury becomes more gray and undifferentiated, the vague, eye-of-the-beholder quality that was once its strength, is now its liability.
It’s a problem that Jacobs feels that Six Senses was uniquely designed to address.
“That sixth sense in our name, we see it as intuition,” he says. “It’s interesting because one of our initiatives for this year in wellness is spiritual wellness. In the past, we’ve done a lot of yoga, we’ve done a lot of meditation, but we haven’t done a lot of overtly spiritual programs. We think the time is right.”
Those programs serving up, non-religious, lightly-woo spirituality on a silver platter roll out later this year and offer a key differentiator for the brand’s fastest growing customer base: Americans.
“Back in 2012, it was predominately a European customer, I’d say 85 percent,” says Jacobs. “There was no business coming from the U.S. Today, the U.S. is our number market, even though we don’t have anything open in the U.S.”
It’s not for lack of trying. Six Sense planned to open in Manhattan along the High Line in a doomed Bjarke Ingles–designed tower that was crushed by a Gambino crime family construction bribery scandal and the subsequent bankruptcy of its developer. Six Senses has since found a new site on 23rd St. between Seventh and Eighth Aves. in Chelsea, but is at least three years out.
It’s having a better, if not altogether easier, time with the 236-acre farm in Hudson Valley in Upstate New York. The site of a failed “secret hotel” project, Six Senses snatched up the land for $13.7 million in 2022, making it some of the only real estate the brand owns (as with many brands, outside investors typically carry the deeds). Although it would be the first five-star flag in the region, the project has faced community opposition that could scuttle yet another attempt to create a footprint in the U.S.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Del LaMagna, whose property shares a border with the site, told the Hudson Valley Pilot. “[IHG] decided they wanted to be here, they started hiring good local people to figure it out, but this whole idea of exclusive resorts for rich people just doesn’t work up here.”
That’s a matter of opinion, but Six Senses plans for the U.S. extend far beyond the town of Clinton. Besides urban hotels in New York, L.A., and Miami, it will open a series of resorts, starting with a 500-acre estate on the edge of Napa and a multi-island project off the coast of South Carolina spanning Hilton Head, Daufuskie, and Bay Point. The gargantuan scale of those properties will eventually facilitate the festivals and retreats that the brand has been recently investing in.
“It’s a lot of yoga, a lot of spirituality, a lot of fun, a dance, a lot of movement,” he says. “Those kinds of festivals resonate with people.”
So if you’re just waking up, welcome to a world where Six Senses is everywhere all at once. But Jacobs hopes that by selecting “extraordinary properties” and by “demonstrating our values in a highly meaningful way” that the resorts will fit into the ecosystem like redwoods in a pine forest. Call it a sixth sense.
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