Skift Take

Jannes Sorensen thinks the key to unlocking the future of luxury hospitality lies in the skillsets of its leaders: and it requires a new curriculum and “whole person” approach to do it.

Series: On Experience

On Experience

Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond.

You can read all of his writing here.

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