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Amid a broader market slowdown, the luxury travel industry has proven more resilient. Ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) are looking to spend more on travel and hospitality this year (64 percent) than on personal luxury goods, according to The State of Fashion: Luxury 2025 report, published in partnership with McKinsey & Company.
Indeed, what McKinsey and Knight Frank describe as “the aspirational luxury traveller” — those whose net worth sits between $100,000 and $1 million — now represent 35 percent of the global luxury travel market. This consumer cohort is expected to increase its spending on luxury leisure hospitality from $84 billion in 2023 to $107 billion in 2028, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5 percent.
Millennials — the generation that catalysed the cultural shift in spending on experiences versus physical items — are now reaching their peak earning and spending years, according to Boston Consulting Group data from 2024.
Consumers’ increased appetite to spend on holidays has made for compelling growth opportunities for Kerzner International — a global developer and operator of luxury destination resorts including One&Only, SIRO, Atlantis and Rare Finds.
The company’s portfolio allows them to cater to a wide range of luxury consumers: One&Only targets “ultra-luxury” consumers; SIRO provides for those focused on wellbeing and/or fitness; Atlantis offers ocean-themed entertainment experiences; and Rare Finds immerses guests in the cultural offerings of its global locations.
Kerzner International’s strategy to date has revolved around connecting with their UHNW guests in ways that resonate with each brand’s target customer. SIRO, for instance, has collaborated with football club AC Milan and obstacle course series Spartan Race Middle East — including a menu developed with AC Milan’s lead nutritionist — to appeal to performance-first, health-oriented guests.
Remaining nimble to respond to consumer shifts is a key priority at Kerzner. At the corporate level, the business has removed internal barriers in order to adapt quickly and launch new concepts. Indeed, SIRO was conceived in response to One&Only guests’ desires for a more holistic and developed wellness offering, as well as in-depth analysis of their guests’ data, including frequency and duration of gym visits.
Wellness has emerged as a key focus for UHNW consumers today, with clients cited in BoF and McKinsey’s The State of Fashion: Luxury 2025 report saying they seek more ways to enhance their lifestyle and take care of themselves, both physically and emotionally. Some 80 percent of HNWIs expect to shift part of their spend to experiential luxury and wellness.
Offering guests memorable, ultra-luxury experiences is also at the core of its mission. One&Only — a global ultra-luxury collection of resorts, private homes and spas with a recognised food and beverage offering — has a capped growth of 35 resorts. With 12 currently operating across the likes of Mexico, the Maldives and Dubai, the strategic cap offers Kerzner room to grow while ensuring the group’s offering is not diluted, with the individuality of each global location still meeting core consumer expectations.
Now, BoF sits down with Kerzner International CEO Philippe Zuber to understand how the group is building a genuine connection with luxury consumers, responding to their clientele’s shifting demands and planning for the future.
What typifies UHNW clients’ needs and expectations around luxury travel today?
UHNW clientele are well-travelled and extremely sophisticated. They have increasingly heightened expectations around bespoke experiences and a desire for hyper-personalisation. Before, these clients would buy into a pre-packaged experience, trusting the brand; now, they want to go beyond that.
Today, our clientele engages more deeply with our brand before arriving and staying with us. For instance, we had a guest visiting our One&Only resort in Rwanda with a group of friends, and we worked with him ahead of the trip to organise a gorilla trekking experience. We added personal touches for them, from a surprise picnic bordering the Volcano National Park with a traditional Rwandan welcome to a curated spread of locally inspired dishes.
We are seeing a clear shift among UHNWI, where business and leisure are no longer separate spheres. Our guests often travel with their families yet still need to stay connected to their business. Longer stays, Covid and the rise of remote working, as well as the desire to travel less frequently but consciously, has all driven this change.
At Kerzner, we have responded to and supported this shift by creating environments where both worlds coexist seamlessly. For example, at One&Only Reethi Rah in the Maldives, we recently hosted a guest who needed to manage investor calls and a virtual board meeting while traveling with his young family. We prepared his villa with a fully equipped, sound-insulated office, while his children took part in our ‘Kids Only’ programme, while his partner had wellness treatments and curated excursions during those hours — so the entire family was individually cared for.
How are you elevating personalisation strategies across the different Kerzner properties?
For us, customisation is about making a standard event something truly memorable. We are about to open One&Only Moonlight Basin in Montana, which will be our first alpine resort and our first property in the US. To offer our guests an elevated skiing experience, we have invested in the Wintersteiger Jupiter, what we call “the Ferrari of ski tuning systems”. This machine prepares your skis or snowboard to your exact specifications and the conditions of the day.
Before you leave, we offer the option of either leaving the skis with us to store until next season or having them removed and polished to pristine condition before your return home. If you bring your own skis or even if you rent them while you are there, we customise them for you in this way. When we talk about customisation, we work to take it to the next level in terms of comfort.
At One&Only Palmilla in Mexico, we also hosted a wedding recently at the resort’s chapel, located on the grounds of the property. The couple asked us to drop rose petals along the staircase when their guests entered the church. Our butler, whose uncle owns a tequila distillery, had the rose petals distilled into a perfume for the couple to take home as a memento from their wedding day. This is just one example of the kind of high-touch service that our teams are delivering.
How are you catering to UHNWIs’ increased focus on wellness experiences?
Our SIRO hotels were founded in 2020 to meet the needs of UHNWI around wellness and health — our clientele does not want to compromise on their daily routine while travelling.
We had been studying the wellness ecosystem and found a gap in the middle tier. The entry-level access to a wellness offering consists of a few boutique gyms, which do the job, with perhaps a chiropractor on-site. But there were no offerings that provided a 360 approach to wellness, with everything one could desire, from infra-red saunas, cold plunge, thermoregulated mattresses, and more, all under one roof. We thought — this is our business opportunity to own this space as a hospitality company.
Our clientele does not want to compromise on their daily routine while travelling.
When it comes to wellness, UHNWI expectations are high and their knowledge base in this area is expansive — so we’re working with a lot of scientifically based spa and wellness companies, like Clinique La Prairie and Chenot, to develop our offering because we want to meet the knowledge and sophistication levels of our guests.
How does the core demographic at SIRO differ from other Kerzner International brands?
Atlantis is a resort with a family-driven audience, then there’s One&Only, which typically attracts those from 38 to 55-years-old. With SIRO, we had always anticipated attracting those below the age of 35, but actually, individuals in their 50s and 60s have become one of our core demographics, particularly at SIRO One Za’abeel — businesspeople who are slightly older, perhaps they are CEOs, chairpeople or entrepreneurs.
These people want to live well and focus on longevity and their routine. They tell us what matters to them is not necessarily the traditional services of a luxury hotel, but actually, how our services can help them perform at their best physically and mentally. For instance, our offering of protein shakes is not traditional for a luxury hotel, but it’s what is important to our guests who we find, especially at SIRO, want to ‘grab and go’ something with nutritional value and that will keep them fuelled.
SIRO is about building a community of like-minded individuals, and offering them meaningful opportunities to connect and become a better version of themselves than when they checked in — all with an elevated service that goes beyond traditional hotel gym offerings. If you want a ginger shot, it’s delivered in under a minute.
How does SIRO’s offering aim to stay ahead of consumer expectations?
SIRO is a tech-friendly brand and by putting tech at the core, we can stay on top of our game. For example, we have an app that allows you to book your classes, access information about the hotel offering, and unlock your room with a virtual key. At the gym, we offer the AMP machine which seamlessly connects personal coaching, smart tracking and auto weight adjustments to maximise results. We were one of the first hotels in the UAE to have access to this machine and to test it live. We also recently introduced the Spectrum Pro Light Bed to our offering, which is a full-body red and near-infrared light therapy device.
We have also recently established new partnerships to engage our community in new ways. For instance, we are working with Sanctum, a group wellness experience where each participant has their own individual headphones. It totally changes the dynamic of being in a group class with the opportunity to hear the instructor alongside music. The partnership has been such a success that we have implemented it at our newest SIRO hotel in Montenegro and are exploring how we can pop-up with them in cities where we do not have SIRO hotels.
We also recognise that wellness is not only about being active, but also about rest and recovery. We set out to excel in recovery and sleep. For instance, the mattresses in the hotel were developed specifically to encourage the best possible environment for sleep. They are thermo-regulated, for example, to induce more REM hours of sleep than your average hotel mattress. The biggest opportunity now lies in mindfulness and stress management, with a growing focus on holistic activities like specific types of yoga.
What new developments does Kerzner have in the pipeline?
We are excited about SIRO — it is our fastest-accelerating brand. We have signed hotels in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Tokyo (Japan) and Los Cabos (Mexico). We have an ambitious growth plan for SIRO, with more openings to be announced soon.
For One&Only, we have recently announced a project in Hudson Valley, which we are so excited about as we slowly grow our footprint in the US.
We have also successfully opened ‘Atlantis the Royal’ in Dubai, which has attracted interest from global investors — creating significant momentum to scale the Atlantis brand globally at a faster pace.
This is a sponsored feature paid for by Kerzner International as part of a BoF partnership.
