Secrets of Soneva with Sonu Shivdasani

In a world of global hotels where the concept of sustainability is often gloss and window dressing, Sonu Shivdasani is a pioneer of successful properties that genuinely keep the planet front of mind. Shivdasani is the inaugural winner of the SevenRooms Icon Award as part of The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2023 (https://www.theworlds50best.com/hotels/awards/icon-award.html).

The Head of Content for The World’s 50 Best Hotels, Emma Sleight , catches up with Shivdasani to discuss legacy, hospitality and what’s next for the legend behind some of the world's most sustainable tropical properties.

Where does the inspiration behind each experience at the Soneva resorts start?

Eva [Sonu’s wife, Eva Malmstr?m Shivdasani] and I have always believed that a company must have a purpose beyond simply enriching shareholders and partners. When one does have a purpose, it can be extremely engaging for the employees of the organisation. At Soneva, our core purpose is ‘Slow Life’. In essence, we are offering our guests luxuries whilst minimising our impact on the planet and enhancing the overall wellbeing of visitors. Luxury, wellness and sustainability are not opposites at Soneva. They work hand-in-hand to create an overall experience. We do this by questioning and challenging what luxury really is.

In the 21st century, companies need to be creative, but creativity needs a structure. We believe that the word luxury is a misused word. Essentially, luxury is a philosophy. It's that which is rare, not commonplace for our target client. The driving principle of intelligent luxury is thinking about the context of our guests: where they come from, what they experience every day and what might be rare for them – this gives us structure and guidelines behind all our creativity and the experiences we create.

Our purpose is to create these fantastic, rare experiences for our guests that do not compromise the planet. We realise that today, those who can come and stay with us are self-made, living in an urban environment where some of the things that we take for granted are rare or impossible. It's this understanding that inspires our creativity.

Tell us how you deliver incredible hospitality with your bespoke teams.

My real title as the leader of the organisation is not CEO but Guardian of the Culture. I feel that for any organisation, the prime job of the person running it is to create values, beliefs, a philosophy and even a language that creates an overall behaviour.?

Our resorts are not populated with 'employees' or 'associates', but 'hosts'. They are continuously reminded about Slow Life, intelligent luxury and our overall proposition for our clients, which is inspiring a lifetime of rare experiences. Traditionally in the hotel industry, employees that did not work in food and beverage or rooms were considered to be part of the M.O.D: 'minor other department'. At Soneva, we've changed the name to LIFE, which stands for Learning Inspiring Fun Experiences. These strategies inspire our hosts to be creative.

What’s the most elaborate or special experience you have organised for a guest at Soneva?

We've hosted weddings, anniversaries and birthday parties of billionaires. Big event-planning organisations have arrived on our islands and have put together elaborate parties. That said, I personally feel that the best experiences we have offered our guests are those that we've come up with ourselves, for example Sonu’s picnics. In the morning, just before breakfast, part of the family go out fishing and catch a fish. They go back to the island and have breakfast. After breakfast, the other half of the family go to the spa for treatments, while the fishing team go to the picnic island where, together with the chef, they clean the fish, wrap it in a banana leaf and a potato sack and bury it in the sand to cook with Soneva homemade charcoal. By this time the spa-goers have arrived on the island so the whole family can snorkel and swim before digging up the fish, which is served by the team there alongside an elaborate buffet.

Another favourite is the New Year's Eve journey at Soneva. Rather than a big buffet in one location where people quickly finish dinner and are bored, we have a journey throughout our islands of pop-up restaurants. There are about 30-40 entertainers including magicians, acrobats, illusionists, dancers, bands, bubble blowers and sound artists. Our guests usually start the journey around 6pm in the evening and retire at about 3 or 4 am the next morning. It is literally a 9-10 hour experience.

How important is sustainability to you and your properties?

The ‘S’ in Slow Life stands for sustainability. Sustainability is a core element of our purpose. We recycle 93% of our waste. I'm not sure the average guest would realise that. We've been carbon neutral since 2010. We have a mandatory carbon levy and are one of the few hotel companies to do this. That carbon levy has generated close to USD$14 million to date for the Soneva Foundation, which is a UK-based charity. We've invested in a 1.5-megawatt windmill, giving subsidised energy to the local community. In Darfur and Myanmar, we’ve supplied roughly 50,000 cooking stoves with each initiative supporting about a quarter of a million people. We've also invested heavily in reforestation, planting half a million trees in Thailand and planting a million trees a year currently in Nepal and Madagascar, including a thousand hectares of mangroves a year in Myanmar. By the end of the year, once the solar power is installed at our new resort, Soneva Secret, it will run largely on renewables alone.

What inspired you to become a hotelier?

Simply, Eva and I fell in love with the Maldives, and the only way for us to spend more time there was to invest in travel and tourism.?

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What’s the key to great hospitality – what elevates an experience from the luxury to the exceptional?

We're very passionate about Japan and, in fact, we're working on a few projects there. I love the Japanese word omotenashi, which describes dedicated hospitality with incredible attention to detail. For me, it's this attention to detail, like noticing at the sushi restaurant whether the guest is left-handed or right-handed and placing the sushi on the counter accordingly. We ensure that after a day or two, one has recognised all the particular habits of a guest and is responding to the guest’s particular needs.?

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What are you working on next?

We've just opened Soneva Secret. We're working on a few projects in Japan. There are also continuous improvements at our existing resorts.

In all your years in the business, what are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of all the initiatives that we've pioneered over the years. We were the first to introduce wellness to hotels on a wide scale and we were the first spa in the Maldives in 1995.

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Today, our Soneva Souls offer a depth of wellness that one seldom finds in a dedicated destination spa, let alone a resort. I'm very proud of the fact that we recycle 93% of our waste and part of that effort creates unique experiences for our guests. Take Glasscyle, for example, which is our state-of-the-art glass factory that takes waste glass and turns it into objects of beauty. I'm proud of our hosts who arrived on our islands 10, 20 and 30 years ago with not much experience and who have developed their skills and their knowledge, creating amazing experiences for our guests.

You won the inaugural Icon Award for The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2023 – what is the legacy you hope to leave in the world of hospitality?

I would hope that our impact has been to show that one can offer luxuries and rare experiences to guests and win awards for offering the best guest experiences while still winning the equivalent of the Oscars for sustainability in travel and tourism at the same time. Luxury, wellness and sustainability do not have to be opposites. Traditionally people think that luxury, wellness and sustainability were mutually exclusive. Today I hope that at Soneva we've proved that they are not.

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What’s the best piece of advice you can give to someone looking to start a career in hospitality?

Whether it's hospitality or any other industry, one must first and foremost be passionate about what one does. If one's not passionate, one will not be successful. One should also not cut corners. It's very important that one pursues the long route. At Soneva we believe in our virtuous circle where one must first focus on creating a philosophy, values, and beliefs that inspire our hosts. Our hosts are then inspired and wake up each morning passionate Sonevians who want to create magic for our guests. This then leads to high levels of guest satisfaction, repeat clients and a profitable business.