Why lifestyle hotels need rethinking: from wellness to technology

Think about the last hotel that genuinely surprised you. Not the one with the perfect mattress or the biggest breakfast bar. The one where something happened that you were still talking about a week later. 

Eric Jafari is building AENDRE, a company that acquires, develops and operates wellness and lifestyle brands. His argument is that too few hotels deliver the surprise and delight that guests deserve, and that lifestyle hotels – once the leaders in this area – have become complacent. 

On the latest episode of Matt Talks Hospitality, Eric – who also co-founded Locke, edyn and Birch – spoke to Mews CEO Matt Welle about the state of lifestyle hospitality and the importance of wellness and technology if the segment is to have a comeback. 

How lifestyle hotels got diluted 

It’s not that hotel design got worse. When the major groups worked out that the same 25 square meters in a lifestyle hotel can generate much more than the equivalent space in a traditional hotel, they hired the same design studios and used the same palette favored by original lifestyle hotels. The visual gap narrowed to almost nothing.  

This homogenization makes it harder for guests to discern which are true lifestyle hotels and which are clones. Eric also argues that the widespread use of loyalty programs has made it harder for customers to justify paying a premium for more interesting and unique stays. The pull of the points is strong. 

All of this has diluted what lifestyle hotels can be. Often, they’re now described as “inoffensive” by guests. But inoffensive is what happens when every decision gets optimized without thought or creativity. Nothing is wrong, nobody complains and nothing stands out. As Eric puts it, "The magic happens when we make mistakes." 

Wellness is not the spa 

The clearest gap Eric identifies is wellness – and how badly the industry has misread it. 

"When hoteliers hear the word wellness, they immediately turn to someone sitting by a pool waiting for their massage," he says. The guest he's building for defines it as roughly the opposite. Think saunas with fifty strangers doing breath work before an ice bath. Running clubs and fitness communities. Cooling mattresses and organic food. "It's communal. It's loud." 

It also doesn't switch off when people travel. The average international visitor to London now stays more than five nights, long enough for tiny gyms and treatment rooms labeled "spa" to become a real problem. 

Eric extends the door policy to these spaces. If the locals don't want your gym, your sauna, your meditation class, why would a guest choose your hotel for them? Beautiful design is table stakes. The crowd is the product. "Magic happens with energy. Energy happens with people." 

The wellness market is scattered. Healthy food store at one end of town, mindfulness studio at the other, the gym somewhere else again. Nobody has put the whole day under one roof, but a hotel with a restaurant, gym, spa and a rooftop is closer to doing it than any standalone concept. It just has to stop treating those rooms as square footage that failed to become bedrooms. 

What technology can actually fix 

Personalization is an integral part of lifestyle and luxury hospitality. Asking staff to memorize a guest’s history and preferences is a system problem dressed up as a service problem.  

Lifestyle and luxury hotels sit on the richest guest profiles in the industry. The dietary requirement, the drink order, the third anniversary in the same room: it's all in there somewhere, in a system that can't act on it.  

AI that’s deeply integrated into the system, with full context of the guest profile, can make a real difference here. It's why Mews is building an operating system where AI has the whole guest picture to act on – so the welcome surprises lifestyle hospitality has been missing become built in to the operation, not a happy accident.  

Matt Talks Hospitality explores the technology, strategy and people reshaping the hospitality industry. Enjoy the full episode – and many more besides – wherever you enjoy your podcasts. 

Watch the full episode