How The Set’s CEO Refuses to Play It Protected

5 4 minutes read

How The Set’s CEO Refuses to Play It Protected

The Set CEO Robin Stangroom has a principle: Luxurious inns getting forward are those keen to take an actual danger.

Take Nay Palad Hideaway, a 10-villa property on Siargao Island within the Philippines. It is one in every of 17 member properties in The Set, the boutique assortment Stangroom has spent 9 years assist constructing. Friends arrive by way of zip line over the jungle cover. There are not any menus, no eating places, and no check-in desk. A chef arrives every day to ask what you need to eat, builds the menu round your reply and what the native market affords that morning. One evening you may dine in a treehouse; the following night meal could possibly be in your personal seaside.

The property has been extremely profitable, profitable awards and accolades alongside the best way. The mannequin can be the alternative of how the luxurious lodge business more and more works within the period of massive model takeovers.

Tree housing eating is a must-eat expertise at The Set’s Nay Palad Hideaway within the Philippines.
(The Set)

“I actually consider that is the place the luxurious shopper goes,” Stangroom advised Luxurious Journey Advisor of The Set’s strategy to hospitality. “They need one thing extra genuine, extra private — much less off the shelf.”

Stangroom joined The Set in 2016 (again when it nonetheless glided by its authentic moniker of The Set Resorts) and have become CEO in Could 2024. The model affiliation now counts 17 properties throughout Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Center East, from The Siam in Bangkok to Resort Café Royal in London. Additions lately embody Higher Home properties in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chengdu, and the newly introduced The Chedi properties within the Center East.

Whereas there’s definitely development underway, Stangroom is not about chasing scale, imposing standardization, or treating inns as items in a world machine.

“We do not have a guidelines,” he stated. “We spend numerous time attending to know the folks behind it, ensuring we share the identical DNA and the identical values.”

The Impartial Resort’s False Selection

Earlier than The Set, Stangroom spent years at Jumeirah, InterContinental, and Le Méridien, arguably contained in the machine he now challenges. He watched unbiased luxurious inns face a brutal binary: Stay invisible on the worldwide stage, or be part of a large portfolio and turn into commoditized.

“You are immediately one in every of 700 inns,” he stated of going the latter path. “You are a quantity slightly than an actual shining instance.”

In sprawling collections, properties compete with one another. If a vacation spot has 10 inns in the identical affiliation, there isn’t any incentive to collaborate or share information. You are preventing for a similar visitor.

The Set was based in 2011 as an owner-operator of unbiased inns. However by the point Stangroom joined in 2016, the corporate was pivoting to a model affiliation mannequin of 1 distinctive property per vacation spot and avoiding competing inns and the complications related to development targets.

“The second we begin chasing a quantity is after we begin compromising,” he stated.

That self-discipline extends to enlargement inside the portfolio. When a Set member opens a second property, The Set evaluates it individually; no model contract locks it in. A lodge that executes brilliantly in a single metropolis does not routinely earn membership in one other.

To remain accountable, Stangroom created an exterior growth board: journey advisors, media figures, no inside workers. They vet each new alternative.

Curation requires saying no much more typically than sure, Stangroom notes.

Hotel Café Royal — The Dome Penthouse at Resort Café Royal in London
(Resort Café Royal)

What Boldness Truly Seems Like

At Nay Palad Hideaway, boldness interprets to business success. The property eradicated menus, eliminated conventional service rituals, and forces real every day personalization. The technique has generated press, awards, and repeat clientele who really feel they’ve found one thing real.

The Siam in Bangkok proves the purpose in another way. Owned by a household of musicians and artists, the property homes greater than 11,000 items of artwork. Strolling by it, you encounter the household’s style and fervour.

“It isn’t nearly placing in clichéd gadgets to show you are within the location,” Stangroom stated. “It is about connecting to the people who personal and run that property and put all their ardour into it.”

At a time when it could seem to be a lot in luxurious journey is turning into protected, The Set pushes within the different course.

“When one lodge does one thing rather well, the opposite lodge thinks, ‘Oh, properly, we’ll try this as properly,'” he stated. “Or if one thing was profitable final yr: ‘Let’s do it once more this yr.’ That is the actual danger: not attempting one thing daring however copying what already exists.”

So, how does one strike the proper steadiness between curation and development? The Set needs to remain sufficiently small that each property issues however massive sufficient that vacationers can advocate these getaways confidently throughout continents.

For advisors promoting to UHNW shoppers, this distinction is all the things. These shoppers are drowning in loyalty factors. They’ve stayed in a whole bunch of lodge rooms that look disturbingly comparable. They need to really feel like they’re discovering one thing new and never consuming a predictable product.

The Set’s mannequin says you do not sacrifice international attain to ship that.

“There isn’t any unhealthy model affiliation,” Stangroom stated. “There’s simply the proper one for each lodge. And possibly 9.5 out of each 10 conversations we now have, we find yourself saying: stunning lodge, simply not proper for the Set.”

In an business obsessive about scale, selectivity is the precise luxurious.

Nay Palad Hideaway’s dinner in a treehouse suggests the mannequin works.