The founder and CEO of UK luxury travel consultancy firm Perowne International, Jules Perowne, has asserted concern the industry may be heading for crisis in a rising sea of sameness, and an age of discernment.

Perowne International, in nine years, has established an enviable stable of luxury travel and hospitality brands, from the likes of Oetker Collection and the Doyle Collection, to Scott Dunn, Singita, Time + Tide, Six Senses, Upper House and Raffles Hotels & Resorts. Not to mention dozens of ultra-luxury standalone properties scattered around the globe, such as Passalacqua on Lake Como, The Beaumont Mayfair in London, Nihi Sumba in Indonesia and Gleneagles in Scotland.

Addressing an audience of 150-plus at the annual Perowne International Supper during ILTM Cannes last week, Perowne described the past 12 months as a year of “seismic global events – political upheaval and crises, military interventions, economic whiplash from tariff madness and disaster budgets, tech transformation and innovation.”

“Then of course climate emergencies, the AI evolution and the great wealth migration.”

“Travellers are spending more than ever before, hotel rates are at an all time high and yet something feels off.”

“After a decade of expansion, extravagance and exuberance, exacerbated by COVID, we have entered a new age – an age of discernment. And within this something has shifted with our relationship with luxury.  It’s not just the traveller, the globally fluent, experience-saturated consumer no longer seeks opulence as proof; they seek meaning as reward,” the Brit said to a captive audience. 

“Luxury in many ways feels like its in crisis; it has lost its subtlety and its awe.”

“It feels dare I say it, a little dirty. Just look at that tacky Bezos wedding. Poor Venice. It just felt so out of date and tone deaf.”

Perowne continues: “We all know that luxury has become much less about stuff and much more about an emotional connection. It’s not about what we have, but what we feel or even how something makes us feel. It is not brand, it is not excess and it is certainly not dictated by price. It is craftsmanship, quality, individuality, uniqueness, intuition, thoughtfulness and generosity. It’s those small details – the care and intentionality that connects us to the hand that actually made something.”

She adds that as consumers’ needs are changing, wanting less not more, many brands appear to be “getting less intuitive and focusing on growth, growth, growth.”

Perowne drilled down on the hospitality sector too, which is under threat of becoming “beige”.

“Scale seems to have become the narcotic of the industry – the need to build, expand and be bigger,” Perowne said.

“But with each new branded location or residence, so many of the brands have lost their novelty and now look the same. They have become beige.”

“In the last year, the global hotel development pipeline hit somewhere near 18,000 new projects. London added 757 new luxury hotel rooms with many more to come in the year ahead. Hilton announced another 150 luxury and lifestyle properties worldwide and IHCL announced a masterplan of development across Africa. It is happening on our doorsteps, and around the world at an escalating rate,” Perowne warned.

“Please god, are we hitting peak hotel development? Because I am so conflicted. Because parts of our industry just don’t feel good right now.”

“As we stand at this crossroads of overdevelopment and overtourism, we all here have an enormous responsibility as people that promote tourism, in which ever way we do it – as hoteliers, as sales reps, communicators, media, agents and operators – to do it right.

“Those developers that see hotels as a cash cow, purely a short-term transaction, are not my tribe.  The tribe is the future and in the tribe we trust. And those savvy next gens, won’t buy into anything that doesn’t align with their values.”

Perowne adds, it may not be a “sexy headline” to discuss no growth, “but the reality is that it’s increasingly becoming the most admired approach.”