Holly Phillips

This is Sonia Cheng.

The woman who reimagined Rosewood Hotels & Resorts from the ground up.

She was 30 years old when her family's business acquired a Texan luxury hotel brand with a quiet legacy and limited global footprint.

She had a Harvard degree in applied mathematics, a background in investment banking and private equity, and zero experience running hotels.

Her philosophy was direct:

"We reject the cookie-cutter approach in favour of honouring the unique spirit of each property."

So instead of scaling a standard, she scaled a principle.

Every property had to reflect the history, the culture, the sensibilities of its location, not a formula, but a point of view.


Rosewood Hotels & Resorts became what it became partly because of that.


She reopened Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel in Paris after a four-year restoration.

She opened The Chancery Rosewood in London inside the former American Embassy.

She built Rosewood Hong Kong as the flagship expression of everything the brand stood for.

In 2025, The World’s 50 Best Hotels ranked Rosewood Hong Kong number 1 in the world.

Four Rosewood properties made the top 50 and seven across the full list.

The portfolio has grown from a handful of properties to over 58 hotels across 26 countries, with 30+ in development.

What Sonia understood and most hotel groups still resist, is that you can build a brand around consistency of product or consistency of character.


Which other CEOs reshaped a legacy brand without losing what made it worth saving?

This is Adrian Zecha.
The man behind Aman Resorts.
He wasn't a hotelier, he was a journalist.

He started his career at Time magazine, launched Asia Magazine in 1961 and didn't enter hospitality until his late 30s.


His theory was simple:

"Aman" means peace in Sanskrit. He wasn't building hotels. He was building places where nothing competes for your attention.


So he looked for land first, brands second. When he found a coconut plantation on a beach in Phuket, he went looking for a holiday home. What he built instead was Amanpuri 40 rooms, funded mostly from his own pocket because no bank would lend money for a project that small. Conventional lenders wanted 500 rooms.

He opened with 40 and charged rates five times higher than local competitors.
Aman Resorts became what it became partly because of that.


No traditional marketing. No race for room count. Growth came entirely through word of mouth guests so devoted to the brand they began following it from property to property. The industry coined a term for them: Amanjunkies.

Repeat guests estimated at around 50% of the brand's business.
Then came the part most people don't know.


Zecha was pushed out of his own company twice: once in 1998, and again in 2014 when new investors removed him. He was in his 80s.

Yet, he didn't retire.
He started Azerai a new brand built on the same philosophy, at a more accessible price point.


What Adrian understood and most developers still resist, is that the most loyal guests in the world aren't chasing amenities.

They're chasing a feeling. And feelings don't scale through investment decks.
They scale through restraint.


Which hotel brand do you think has come closest to replicating the Aman effect?

I mapped the wellness hospitality industry across 6 categories onto a single page.

Here's the full 2026 wellness landscape, organised the way the industry actually works.

Most hotels talk about wellness yet few have mapped who actually builds it, runs it, certifies it, and measures it.


So we built the map.

Here's what a guest actually moves through when wellness is done properly:

They arrive somewhere that has made a deliberate identity decision. Not "we have a spa." A genuine point of view on how the body, mind, and environment connect.

At Six Senses that means reconnection with nature and self. At Aman it means space, silence, and the removal of everything unnecessary. At SHA it means diagnostics, clinical precision, and a plan that continues after checkout. At Canyon Ranch it means a comprehensive programme that touches every dimension of health.


Different philosophies. 
All of them intentional.


They then enter a spa that was probably not built by the hotel. It was designed, programmed, and in many cases managed by a specialist. ESPA, GOCO Hospitality, Arch Amenities Group and Raison d'Etre Spas are the companies behind many of the world's most recognised spa experiences.

The hotel brand gets the credit. These operators make it work.

The therapist uses products that the hotel almost certainly did not formulate. ELEMIS , Valmont Group , BIOLOGIQUE RECHERCHE, Natura Bissé , Sodashi Skincare, THALGO the ritual brand is often the thing guests remember most.

The scent, the texture, the story behind the ingredient.


Behind the scenes, the booking system, treatment scheduling, retail management, and therapist rostering all run on tech most GMs never see. Book4Time Spa and Ancillary Revenue Software, TRYBE , Zenoti , Mindbody this is the layer that turns a beautiful concept into a functioning operation.


And at the top of the market, wellness has moved into longevity. CLINIQUE LA PRAIRIE, Chenot, RoseBar, Euphoria Retreat, a Holistic Wellbeing Destination Spa these are no longer selling relaxation.

They're selling years. Diagnostics, biomarkers, cellular health protocols. A different category entirely and not everyone is doing it well…


The full map is below.


The question for hotel developers and operators in 2026 is not whether to invest in wellness. That decision has already been made by the market.

The question is which layer you are investing in, and whether the partners running it can actually deliver.


(Save this for your next wellness strategy conversation.)


P.S. Which brands or operators would you add to this map?

I’m thrilled to announce that after almost 5 years of partnership, I finally closed my biggest and most important deal.


I’ve had to work to cultivate this partnership and anyone who has ever built something with another person will tell you that the cultivation is the hard part, not the closing.


There were long negotiations, a few difficult conversations about scope, and several annual review trips that we insisted were strictly for strategic planning purposes.

But the contract is signed now, lifetime term, certainly no break clause and the terms were read out loud in front of everyone we love.


I married my business partner.


Here is the thing about Thibault he is the calm to my storm and I did not know how much I needed that until I had it, because I am the one who reacts first and thinks second and he has never once matched my panic. Honestly not once.

And I am the order to his ideas, the one who hears something brilliant and slightly unhinged and quietly turns it into a timeline, a price and a plan.


Neither of us would have built this alone. He would still be ideating. I would have ( maybe) burned it down twice by now and rebuilt it slightly better.


Working with the person you love means seeing them at their worst and their most brilliant in the same afternoon, sometimes within the same hour, and choosing them anyway.


I chose him twice, once for the company and once for the rest of it, and I would choose him again on the worst day we have ever had.



If you have ever mixed business and personal, tell me how it went, because I would genuinely love to know what year one post-merger looks like 😉

This is the European vs US hotel tech stack you asked for!
Mapped by category, across both markets. You are so welcome ;)


Same categories.
Different winners and the differences tell you more about each market than any report will.

Let me break it down for you.

PMS
Europe runs Mews. The US runs Cloudbeds.
Both modern, both API-first. Different ecosystems built around them.

Channel Manager
eviivo for Europe. Cloudbeds again for the US, handling it natively.

CRS
Blastness won the 2026 Hotel Tech Award for Hotel Reservations Software. Built in Italy, dominant across Southern Europe. Cendyn covers the US, historically the top-ranked CRS on HotelTechReport.

Booking Engine
Profitroom has become the default for European independents. innRoad for the US, a popular all-in-one for independents that bundles a booking engine with PMS.

RMS
Lighthouse out of Belgium, now the go-to for independent European hotels. IDeaS Revenue Solutions on the US side for properties with enterprise budgets.

CRM
dailypoint™ - The CDP for CRM & Loyalty is the CDP-first choice in Europe. Revinate owns the US conversation.

Reputation Management
TrustYou in Europe. Revinate again in the US.

That one is worth noting, because Revinate appears twice on the US side, CRM and reputation, one vendor. Whereas Europe splits those into separate tools.

Guest Messaging
HiJiffy for Europe. Canary Technologies for the US.

Upselling
Oaky by Plusgrade in Europe. Canary Technologies again in the US.

Operations
hotelkit runs a large share of European hotel operations. Actabl is the US equivalent.

Keyless Entry
Vingcard is the European standard. INTELITY for the US.

Loyalty
dailypoint™ - The CDP for CRM & Loyalty doubles up in Europe, covering both CRM and loyalty. The US runs The Guestbook, five-time HotelTechReport #1 loyalty program for independents.


The pattern across the whole map: Europe fragments by category, best-in-class per function.

The US consolidates around fewer vendors doing more and of course neither is wrong, but if you're a vendor expanding markets, or an operator benchmarking your stack, the differences really matter.


(Full comparison in the image. Save it before your next vendor conversation.)

Did I miss anyone you would have added?

Here are the most anticipated 18 luxury hotel openings in 2026

They’re about how luxury is being redefined.


Across this list, a few patterns keep repeating 👇
• Wellness becomes infrastructure, not a spa menu
• Privacy beats spectacle (even in destinations like Mykonos & Venice)
• Heritage is rebooted, not preserved behind glass
• Ultra-luxury expands quietly into Japan, Latin America, Saudi Arabia & secondary Europe
• City hotels start behaving like resorts
• Resort hotels start behaving like sanctuaries

From Six Senses planting flags in London and Milan,
to Four Seasons reshaping Saudi Arabia’s global positioning,
to Rosewood doubling down on sense-of-place and slow luxury,
to Belmond reminding us why emotion still matters.


2026 isn’t about new hotels.
It’s about:
→ longer stays
→ fewer rooms, more intention
→ clearer positioning
→ and experiences guests can feel before they arrive


Here's the absolute 'scrollworthy' list and just a few already appointed GMs:

Six Senses London - Nick Yarnell
Six Senses Milan
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Mykonos
Four Seasons Resort Red Sea at Shura Island - Kai Dieckmann
Four Seasons Resort Amaala at Triple Bay - Ulf Bremer
Danieli, a Four Seasons Hotel - Christian Z.
Four Seasons Hotel Cartagena - Annie Monnier
Capella Hotel Group Kyoto
Airelles Venezia
Conrad Hotels & Resorts Corfu
Conrad Athens The Ilisian
Chesa Marchetta
Bvlgari Hotels & Resorts Ranfushi
Fregate Island, Seychelles
Rosewood Mandarina
Rosewood Gstaad
Grand Hotel Timeo, A Belmond Hotel

Which opening do you think will have the biggest impact on how luxury hospitality evolves next?

Not every hotel in the UAE is sitting still right now.


I spoke with a GM last week who’s reframed this whole period as a pre-opening season.

And honestly, it’s the smartest way I’ve heard anyone talk about it.


Markets move. They shift, they change and sometimes in ways we don’t anticipate.


The hotels that freeze, waiting for the world to settle before they take a single step, are the ones who will feel it most when things pick back up.

Agility doesn’t mean reacting to everything. It means never fully stopping and keeping some motion.


While others are in full pause mode, his team is doing the work that never gets done when you’re in the thick of operations.

- Reviewing the guest journey end to end.

- Identifying the friction points that have been quietly costing them bookings.

- Running audits across their marketing activity to decide what to keep, what to pause, and what to kill entirely.

- Getting their digital foundations in order so that when October comes, they’re not scrambling.

They’re ready.


This is the difference between panicking and strategising

The UAE hospitality market doesn’t ease back in gently. When demand returns, ohhh it returns fast.

The properties that get that first wave of bookings won’t be the ones who went dark and hoped for the best. They’ll be the ones who used the time to really focus in.

This is exactly what we do at For Digital Sakes.

We work with hotels to audit what’s working, fix what isn’t, and build the strategy that makes a strong opening rather than a slow restart.

If your property doesn’t have a plan for this window, we can help you build one.

Drop me a message and let’s get to work ✨

Louis Vuitton is opening a hotel in Paris.

You may or may not have heard.
But

No it's not a pop-up.
No it's not a collaboration.
It's a fully branded hotel.

Which is expected to opening thiiiiis year on the Champs-Élysées.


This isn’t a hospitality move.
It’s a brand move.


For years, luxury brands expanded sideways:
cafés, exhibitions, temporary experiences.


Louis Vuitton just expanded vertically.


A hotel gives them what no product ever can:
• Total control of the environment
• Time spent with the brand, not seconds
• Service as storytelling
• Memory as the final luxury


LVMH already knows hospitality through Cheval Blanc, Belmond, Bvlgari.

This time, they’re putting the core Louis Vuitton name on the door.

That’s the signal.

Luxury isn’t about ownership anymore.
It’s about immersion.
About owning the full end to end experience.


The real question isn’t why a hotel?

It’s which brand is brave enough to follow?

Which luxury brand would you actually trust with a hotel stay?