The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: The hotelier who created Maldives luxury now bets on wellness with a new brand

Following his departure from Soneva, Sonu Shivdasani is set to introduce Sosei, a resort dedicated to inner peace and wellness.

He is almost certainly the most influential living hotelier of Indian origin in the world. And ever since Sonu Shivdasani walked away from Soneva, the resort company he founded a year or so ago, the question has swirled around the world of luxury hospitality: What will Sonu do next?

Reflecting on his journey, Sonu Shivdasani aims to offer unique, luxurious experiences that address modern guests' demands for tranquillity and holistic healing. (Representative picture: Freepik)

But first a little background for those unfamiliar with the hotel world. Sonu is the son of Indoo Shivdasani who, in the 1970s, was one of the richest people of Indian origin in the world. Sonu had the classic British education (Eton, Oxford etc). His father died (at the age of 61) in 1979 when Sonu was 13. That still gave Sonu the option of joining the family business, one that he rejected. Instead, he married a Swedish model and the two of them bought an island in the Maldives which, at that stage, was a relatively unknown nation noted only for exporting tuna and hosting downmarket tour groups from Europe.

Sonu had never studied hoteliering so there was some consternation when he said that his wife Eva and he would open a hotel on their island. In fact, they ended up revolutionising tourism in the Maldives by opening a high-end luxury resort in 1995 that changed many of the rules of hotelier Ing and created a new kind of luxury: Barefoot, laidback, and yet, millionaire-friendly because it combined huge well-designed accommodation spaces with the world’s best food and wine.

Sonu Shivdasani exits Soneva, returns with Sosei

Soneva Fushi turned the Maldives into a luxury destination and now every hotel chain of consequence has opened several properties there. But the two best hotels are the older ones: Cheval Blanc (which opened in 2013) and Soneva Fushi which is now 40 years old. Sonu also later opened two more Maldives resorts, the flashier Soneva Jani and the more remote Soneva Secret.

There are very few parallels for what Sonu has achieved in the leisure hospitality space and the only one that comes to mind is the Aman chain which was also founded by a non hotelier, Adrian Zecha, who had been a magazine publisher before he ventured into hotels.

Sonu has faced challenges. In 2017, he was diagnosed with cancerous tumours, received treatment and recovered. The tumours returned again and he fought them off once again and resumed his role at his company after his recovery. He is now healthy and at 60, exhibits an energy that younger people would envy. But when he announced he was stepping back from Soneva and that KSL Capital Partners, his primary investors, would handle operations people wondered if his health issues had led to the decision.

In fact, it turns out that health had nothing to do with it. Sonu is now deeply immersed in a new project that, he says, will distill his years of experience in luxury hoteliering to create a philosophy that will guide his new hotels.

The philosophy and the company that will embody it is called Sosei and is dedicated to Japanese-inspired principles of peace and wellness.

When Sonu founded Soneva he believed that people wanted to be near natural beauty and away from the concrete world of their everyday existence. Many decades later, he believes that people still want the things that Soneva is about, but they also want something else: A sense of inner peace and calm, away from the tense noisy clutter of today’s world.

If Soneva was an outward looking concept, Sosei is more inward looking. It’s about healing not just the body but the mind and soul by allowing people to reconnect with their inner selves.

Soneva was a pioneer in healing. At a time when spas were a novel concept, Sonu created a new brand, Six Senses, dedicated to spas and body treatments that went around the world before becoming the basis of an entire chain. (Six Senses Hotels was founded by Sonu as a management company but he later sold his interests. It is now owned by IHG Hotels.)

Over the last few years Soneva went beyond massage and offered stem cell treatments, healing IVs and more complex treatments. That became one of the resort’s primary attractions and Sosei will offer even more advanced healing therapies.

But the basic idea, judging by the way Sonu talks about Sosei, is to create a new generation of hotels that offer a relaxing and luxurious escape from today’s frenetic world just as Soneva represented a retreat from the world of the early 21st century. The world has changed. The needs of guests have changed. And peace and inner wellness have never been more in demand.

Sosei is more than just a concept. Sonu is in advanced talks to open in Costa Rica (ideal for the US market). Projects in Switzerland, Oman and Egypt are under development. He is looking for opportunities in Sri Lanka. And three European projects are in the early stages of negotiation. His dream remains to open in India.

A changed man: from proving himself to seeking calm

Nevertheless, he seems determined to return to the Maldives, to open the Sosei flagship there and show us what he thinks a new hotel in that crowded market should be like if it is to stand out. Given that he created luxury tourism in that nation, it will be fascinating to see what he can do differently this time around.

And it’s clear that he will do it differently. He has had time to think of his journey in the hotel world, he says, and he reckons he has changed over the years. Perhaps because he lost his immensely successful father when he was so young, he was driven by the need to prove himself and to show that he was worthy of being the son of a legendary father.

He has got that out of his system he thinks. He is more relaxed about success now and has controlled the reckless streak that his ambition sometimes led to. In some ways, he is like the guests he wants to attract to Sosei, well off, comfortable with himself and conscious that what matter the most in today’s world are inner peace and all-round wellness.