Hotel Technology Next Generation

Emotional Luxury Hospitality: Jesús Terrés on Travel, Meaning, and the Power of Details

Emotional Luxury Hospitality: Jesús Terrés on Travel, Meaning, and the Power of Details
Jesús Terrés, whose writing explores travel as an emotional and everyday act, challenges traditional notions of hospitality and luxury.

In recent years, emotional luxury hospitality has emerged as a defining conversation for hotel leaders navigating cultural change, accelerated lifestyles, and shifting guest expectations. Beyond service excellence or aesthetic refinement, the discussion increasingly centres on how hotels make guests feel, and why those feelings matter more than ever.

This interview with Jesús Terrés, writer, co-founder and partner at Lobo, Director of Guía Hedonista, and contributor to Condé Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair, and GQ, explores these questions from a cultural and human perspective. Terrés reflects on travel, slowness, imperfection, storytelling, and the quiet power of details. His answers offer hospitality leaders a rare lens into how emotional resonance, not perfection, is reshaping the meaning of luxury.

Takeaways

Emotional luxury hospitality is built through small, precise gestures, not grand statements.

Imperfection, craftsmanship, and empathy can coexist with classic service excellence.

On the meaning of travel

In your writing, you often describe travel as something emotional and everyday. What does travel mean to you today, at a time when everything seems accelerated and digitised?

I think the pandemic gave us the gift of rediscovering small things and thinking deeply. What else could we do? About the meaning of travel. During those months, we realised that so often the greatest and most moving things are hidden in the smallest details: toast with olive oil, the smell of coffee, the purring of cats.

Years have passed, and not only did we learn nothing about valuing slower living, the beauty of the everyday, but we’ve actually made our lives even more overwhelming. We live surrendered to urgency. Remote work hid something worse: never stopping. In this context, I believe travel has become a way of searching for what we’ve lost: calm, perspective, slow time. We look for refuges, for escapes from the noise, for getting lost in order to find ourselves.

The soul of hospitality

In your opinion, what makes a luxury hotel truly move its guests, beyond offering impeccable service?

Details. The devil is in the details. Two anecdotes from two extraordinary hotels, small (yet great) gestures that move you.

The first is The Connaught. One afternoon, after lunch at the restaurant, we went for a walk around the neighborhood. I left my phone cables on my bedside table. When I returned, they were carefully coiled, resting on a cloth napkin, tied with a leather cord engraved with the hotel’s monogram. I still carry it with me.

The second, at the Mandarin Oriental, overlooking the Rhône. It’s mid-afternoon. I message reception on WhatsApp, I don’t want to call because Laura is taking a nap. I just want ice for champagne. Will they bring it if I ask like this?

“I’m Jesus Terrés, from room 662. Could you bring me an ice bucket with ice and silence, please?”

Culture and community

You’ve said that the brands you work with understand the importance of culture and community. How does that translate into the world of hospitality?

For some time now, brands shouldn’t be selling products or services, but rather a way of being in the world. We don’t buy cars; we buy belongings. We don’t buy sneakers; we buy the aspiration to be better. We don’t travel to reach another place; we travel to fulfill our dreams.

A brand, especially in this present moment, lacking firm beliefs, without a clearly defined culture, will slowly fade away like a candle. What matters is a coherent value system and a community, followers, in the end, who appreciate it. Nothing more (and nothing less).

Why we travel

In one of your talks, you reflected on why we travel. Could you expand on that? What are we really looking for when we travel?

I used to think we traveled to discover the world, to understand how life is lived elsewhere. Like Saint Augustine, I believed that “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” But over time, I’ve understood that I don’t travel to escape, I travel to find myself (that is, exactly the opposite, like a symmetrical Rorschach butterfly).

I travel to be moved, to build bridges with my memory, to love better, to understand the world. I travel because I feel, because I want to, because everything is still to be lived. We travel to become those other versions of ourselves that we usually bury under the routine of gray days.

The changing traveler

How do you think the way people relate to travel and hotels has changed over the past few years?

We travel worse because travel is no longer the exception but the norm. The “traditional” family now coexists with other family models, and more importantly, what for our parents was a “life purpose” has lost all meaning for the next generation. We’re more lost than ever. We don’t know what we want to do with our lives, and that’s why we get on a plane.

Against this feeling of being “cattle,” I believe the most non-obvious proposals will shine, those that best respond to Emmanuel Carrère’s mantra: “This domestic routine, without visiting museums or monuments, without tourist obligations, is my ideal concept of a stay abroad.”

Narrative in luxury

As a writer and content creator, how can storytelling help redefine what we understand as luxury in the hotel sector?

The word luxury is completely outdated, dead, a wasteland. When everything is luxury, nothing is luxury. But the need for beauty, transcendence, and moments that give you goosebumps will continue to exist because it’s part of human nature.

For me, it’s very clear: someone reaching out a hand, emotional connection, empathy. That’s where it’s headed.

Emotion versus perfection

Traditional luxury has been built on perfection. You often speak about emotion and imperfection. Do you think luxury hospitality is starting to embrace that shift?

I think two opposing trends coexist, and surprisingly, they get along well. On one hand, craftsmanship, work done by hand, nature, and the philosophy of kintsugi. Nature is imperfect, and that’s why we love worn leather travel bags, heavy with memories.

On the other hand, I sense a return to a more classic kind of luxury: an impeccable concierge, silk sheets, the beauty of an Italian palazzo, good food, reading by the fireplace, a mid-afternoon whisky. Celebrating life.

Sustainability and purpose

More and more travelers are seeking purpose-driven experiences. How do you see the relationship between beauty, honesty, and sustainability in the future of hospitality?

I read something by Tyler Brûlé, founder of Monocle, that impressed me with its honesty: “No one buys a holiday for mindfulness.”

This obsession with sustainability, sometimes bordering on the ridiculous, often does more harm than good, because people don’t forgive dishonesty. Sustainability will become a commodity in luxury hospitality. We travel to be moved, to be happy, to understand, to feel things.

Personal inspiration

What places, hotels, or experiences have inspired you most recently? What did you learn from them?

Two hotel experiences that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, yet where I was deeply happy: Passalacqua and The Lodge, Richard Branson’s Swiss chalet.

In the first, I felt like I was living other lives, fresh flowers everywhere, a dream at every step. In the second, I felt at home away from home.

The art of slowing down

Your writing invites pause and contemplation. Do you think hotels can be places that teach us how to “live more slowly”? How?

Hotels are not your parents. I’m very skeptical of hospitality that treats me condescendingly and tells me how I should live my life.

Your responsibility is to create the setting so that I can find peace, so that I can live more slowly. But you shouldn’t choose for me.

Conclusion: What Emotional Luxury Hospitality Demands of Hotels

This conversation with Jesús Terrés reinforces that emotional luxury hospitality is not a design style or a service tier. Instead, it is a cultural stance. It requires hotels to pay attention to details, trust guest autonomy, and create environments where emotion can surface naturally.

For hospitality leaders, the message is clear. Guests are not seeking instruction, moral positioning, or perfection. They are seeking recognition, calm, and moments that feel human. In that sense, emotional luxury hospitality is less about adding features and more about removing noise, operationally, culturally, and experientially.

About Shiji Group

Shiji is a global technology company dedicated to providing innovative solutions for the hospitality industry, ensuring seamless operations for hoteliers day and night. Built on the Shiji Platform—the only truly global hotel technology platform—Shiji's cloud-based solutions include property management system, point-of-sale, guest engagement, distribution, payments, and data intelligence for over 91,000 hotels worldwide, including the largest hotel chains. With more than 5,000 employees across the world, Shiji is a trusted partner for the world's leading hoteliers, delivering technology that works as continuously as the industry itself. That's why the best hotels run on Shiji—day and night. While its primary focus is on hospitality, Shiji also serves select customers in food service, retail, and entertainment in certain regions. For more information, visit shijigroup.com.

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