What will the future of hospitality look like?

By Sonia Cheng, Chief Executive Officer, Rosewood Hotel Group

Travel and hospitality has continued to show strong signs of recovery. Although COVID-19 continues to cast its long shadow across economies, especially in Asia Pacific, the gradual reopening of borders and lifting of restrictions have been exciting to say the least.

According to a September 2022 report from the UN World Tourism Organisation, tourism in Europe and the Middle East showed the fastest recovery from January to July 2022, with arrivals reaching 74% and 76% of 2019 levels respectively. While Asia remained 86% below 2019 levels during those early months, we see lots of reasons to be optimistic as the relaxation of border restrictions continues to pick up pace. We have seen the unleashing of pent-up demand as avid travellers go back to doing what they love most.

At home, Hong Kong has made considerable strides to support and encourage the return of international travel safely. As a Hong Kong headquartered company, Rosewood Hotel Group is confident in the outlook for Hong Kong’s travel and tourism sectors and we were among the first companies to convene its global leadership team immediately after Hong Kong’s reopening (0+3) for our annual meeting.

Joined by our leaders and hotel managing directors from all corners of the world, we used the annual meeting to reflect on how travel has changed, and how corporates including Rosewood must adapt. The pandemic has done more than change the ways we live, work, and socialise. It has caused many of us to dig deep and think about what truly matters to us, shaping our actions and habits accordingly. At Rosewood, we have observed that the concept of wellbeing has also shifted from a purely physical dimension to a more well-rounded one. With the acceleration of digital adoption, businesses across the board have had to refocus, re-evaluate, and reinvent themselves by taking this new mindset into consideration in meeting their customers’ needs. For our group, this means going beyond implementing the most advanced anti-epidemic measures to make a meaningful impact on our guests, associates, communities, and planet.

Prioritising People and Planet

Sustainability is the modern cornerstone for success. As travel recovers, Rosewood is looking to lead the hospitality industry by redefining luxury to make it synonymous with responsibility and impact. Luxury to the next-generation traveller no longer revolves around exclusivity and exquisite experiences alone. It encompasses values like diversity and inclusivity – enhanced by personalisation and a deeper sense of connection. Besides the guests, we are seeing these values manifested in the younger workforce, who want to work for companies that are doing good AND doing well. To quote a recent article by Jackie Ferguson in Forbes, “DEI and ESG are not future trends. They’ve already reshaped the way we work, lead, shop, invest our money and spend our time.” Stakeholder expectations have already changed and corporates must keep pace.

To effect change across the whole group, we were careful to define a social impact vision, Rosewood Impacts, to help us accomplish our goals. It covers all the ways with which we impact people and planet, as we commit to enabling equal access to opportunity through Rosewood Empowers and building a closed-loop ecosystem where nothing is wasted so we can achieve carbon neutrality under our circular hospitality initiative, Rosewood Sustains.

Under Rosewood Sustains, our dedication to protecting the environment for our future generations is showcased through our group-wide food waste management system, which we rolled out to minimise one of the largest contributors to global warming, as well as the system we put in place to track and reduce our energy and water consumption. To underscore and expand on these efforts, we adopt industry standards and partners to accelerate collective progress. For example, Rosewood São Paulo recently joined Brazil’s largest upcycling project. Besides pledging to use 100% renewable energy for a year by leveraging on-site solar panels, the property removed single-use plastics and an on-site water filtration system produces glass bottled water for guest consumption.

The hospitality sector must strike a careful balance between global and local considerations. Each property and its community has nuanced local needs. Through Rosewood Empowers, we are running Opportunity Employment programmes, where we seek out talent from underserved groups who typically have limited options and extend resources to help them overcome barriers in their careers. From mainland China to London to the Americas, we have been recruiting and nurturing people with diverse backgrounds and abilities from the ground up to foster inclusive and equitable growth.

Although levelling the playing field is important, we must also focus on the future workforce. The pandemic took a heavy toll on the global workforce in hospitality. As a responsible employer, we are committed to creating and sustaining a pipeline of talent to support our sector’s future growth and development. To set people up for success, we need to invest in their education and champion their development. Currently, we are piloting a Rosewood Scholars programme that funds undergraduate students from underserved parts of society to offer them exposure to Cornell University’s hospitality programme as we bridge the gap towards higher learning. We have also been partnering with vocational training institutions at all levels – most recently, through Rosewood’s three-year strategic partnership with the Vocational Training Council in Hong Kong – to cultivate future talent in the hotel, hospitality, and culinary fields. This responsibility extends to the communities we serve. In Mexico, our Rosewood Mayakoba hotel has an ongoing partnership with Centro Educativo K’iin Beh, a non-profit kindergarten and school to support the children of resort employees and local underprivileged families.

Although we have been ramping up our Rosewood Impacts initiatives, we are aware of the long road that lies ahead. As we continue to put in the work towards addressing the two major existential threats to humanity today – inequality and climate change – we will be executing strategies that ladder up to our goals, anchored by our commitment to do more, as well as a clear sense of purpose: to inspire, enrich, and positively impact all our communities and planet.

An Evolving Definition of Luxury

If the pandemic has taught us anything at all, it is that change is constant. To stay ahead of trends, businesses would do well to perpetuate a resilient yet open culture that is rooted in a sense of purpose and empowers employees to be curious, to adapt, and to thrive. For us, we call it “The Calling”, which is about collectively inspiring imagination, enriching lives, and discovering the unchartered. Innovation is also no longer a “nice-to-have”, but a necessity for brands to set themselves apart.

Rosewood São Paulo

Technology creates opportunity. In redefining luxury and more, we are drawing on these factors to build a prototype room that offers the “guest experience of the future”, with lower environmental impact and greater comfort. Rooms of the future will feature more thoughtful touchpoints, sensory-friendly ambiences, and settings that are in-room behaviour-driven (e.g., lighting), guest preference-led (e.g., water temperature), and multilingual for a truly universal connection.

Yet the values of personalisation and connection are enduring. Rosewood’s “relationship hospitality” philosophy continues to focus on creating enriching connections among people, and between people and a place. Offerings must be increasingly diverse and curated, and at Rosewood we are expanding our brand further within the luxury lifestyle space. Beyond the Rosewood brand, we launched the Carlyle & Co. private members club in Hong Kong last year to offer a space to connect, be inspired, and live life to the fullest. We have also been working on our Rosewood Residences portfolio, comprising branded residential villas, homes, and serviced apartments, incorporating the Rosewood lifestyle – amenities, services, and facilities – into everyday lives.

A Rebounding Asia

Following the upward tick in tourism globally, along with the growing number of announcements from many Asian destinations that barriers to travel are being completely removed or greatly diminished, our outlook for the region is only positive. We are going to see more travellers returning to this culturally rich, naturally beautiful part of the world in the months to come; and through our collection of eight hotels and resorts as well as nine future openings in Asia alone, our brand is ready to welcome guests both new and familiar, back into the fold.

Hong Kong’s fundamentals remain strong as a finance hub. Its’ cultural dynamism, way of life and institutional set up continue to shine in the Asia Pacific region. In the near-term, the city needs to reboot its workforce in the tourism and hospitality trade so we can be ready to tap the growth as it returns.

As demand for travel looks set to soar in the coming years, the hospitality industry will continue to uplift the livelihoods of those around us and lay the foundation for talent to bloom.

About Rosewood Hotel Group

Rosewood Hotel Group, a privately owned company, is one of the world’s leading global lifestyle and hospitality management groups. It encompasses five brands: ultra-luxury Rosewood Hotels & Resorts®; upper-upscale New World Hotels & Resorts; KHOS, a lifestyle concept by Rosewood; Asaya, an integrated well-being concept; and Carlyle & Co., a modern and progressive private members clubs. Its combined hotel portfolio consists of 43 hotels in 20 countries with over 30 new properties currently under development.