Sonu Shivdasani is the Chairman, CEO and founder of the Six Senses Group together with his former-model wife, Eva. He is a British born former student of Eton College, and holds an M.A. in English Literature from Oxford University.

Sonu began his career with a two-year induction into the family business in West Africa and Europe covering industries such as Breweries, Vineyards, Tea Plantation, Oil Services, Computer distribution, and Financial Services.

In 1991, Sonu reduced the amount of time he spent in the family businesses and made a
small investment in Pavilion Resorts. The original shareholding was later extended to
full ownership and renamed as Six Senses Hotels and Resorts, later to become Six Senses Resorts and Spas.

In October 1995 he opened his first new build resort, in the Maldives, and created the
brand: Soneva. This was followed by the Evason brand, initially in Thailand and Vietnam,
and then Six Senses Spas.

Phuket Post caught up with Sonu one Saturday morning at their Rawai beachside property.


The phrase ‘Intelligent Luxury’ is at the centre of your corporate ethos, what does it mean to you?

Within all our brands we endeavour to offer the personal touch, a sense of space, privacy and tranquility. Increasingly, we find our guests also look for experiences that they can’t get at home, whether they are spiritual, physical, cultural or culinary. These days even our most well off customers often live in over-crowded, congested and polluted big cities.

Intelligent luxury is the means to re-connect with nature and oneself through inner relaxation and silence, good food and wines, and to experience a re-awakening of who you
really are deep down.

We want to facilitate that state of being and so it’s no coincidence that we refer to our employees as “hosts” because that’s exactly what we want them to consider themselves.

Before you come onto one of our islands, you are given a cold towel, a coconut drink, and a little bag that says “No news, no shoes.” The shoes go into the bag, and we write your room number on the tag. The butler puts them back on your feet just before you leave to go back to the international airport. That’s all part of our intelligent luxury philosophy.

Some have said you fell into the resort business almost by accident. How much do you feel that the brands you’ve created are in fact a projection of your own personal philosophy about how to live well?

I was born in England, studied at Eton and then went to Oxford, where I took English literature, so nothing that you would normally associate with a business or hotel career. When I graduated from university, my wife, Eva and I used to go on holiday to the Maldives. We had this unique opportunity to lease what’s now Soneva Fushi, the Island of Kunfunadhoo, which had been abandoned since 1979, when the previous resort had closed. In those days, the boats weren’t very sophisticated, so it would take some guests three days to transfer the last 60 miles across the channel to get to the resort.

The resort failed because of the transfers. Eva and I went to see the island and fell in love with it. It’s the largest island for tourism in the Maldives and at that time, we were the only island in that atoll, so we had 60 uninhabited islands to ourselves.

We still have five private picnic islands in addition to our main resort island. It was a unique environment, so we took it over. With a bit of luck, as well as hard work, Soneva Fushi was a success that led other people to ask us “Will you manage our hotels?” That’s how we expanded and developed the Soneva brand.

Both you and Six Senses have become identified with sustainable tourism and green tourism. Now it seems like everybody has now jumped on the bandwagon.

Our DNA at Six Senses is to create innovative and enlightening experiences in a sustainable environment. We’ve got a team of people who are continuously focusing on that.
Every property has an environmentalist. The challenge we have at Six Senses is to take people luxuriously back to nature, to show that natural harmony with the environment
and luxury can work hand in hand.

We’ve built a zero carbon villa. For example, the walls are made of earth—no cement in the construction of the room, just the lining of the pool—and the beams are made from local eucalyptus trees. The foundations are stones found on-site. It’s about six degrees cooler than just a simple thatched roof because there’s a lot of earth and then there’s planting on the roof. But the villa has a Bose Sound System and a big plasma TV.

You can have all the normal comforts with very little CO2 emission. It is our goal to get Soneva Fushi not carbon neutral, which it will be by the end of the year, but zero carbon
where we turn the generators off. I think we’ll get to that by the end of 2010.

A component part of the luxury side of the Six Senses Brand equation is the almost mythical importance with which wine is regarded. How so?

When I was studying at Oxford I developed and refined an interest in wine and when we started to build the Six Senses brand, first in the Maldives and nowadays through 26 resorts and 41 spas around the globe, we placed food and wine at the center of the luxurious experience we are trying to create. We have integrated great wine and food into our core company philosophy of ‘SLOW LIFE’ which stands for Sustainable-Local-Organic-
Wholesome Learning- Inspiring-Fun-Experiences. Our aim is to give our guests luxurious experiences that are also healthy and environmentally sustainable.

Our wine cellars are a central part of this with their niche offerings of organic and biodynamic wines, supporting the group’s Essential and Sensational wine list programmes, which include many small boutique wineries focused on indigenous grape varieties and biodynamic practices.

Please tell us a little about your new Phuket east coast development.

Our new destination spa on the east coast is very beautiful. It’s on the Island of Naka
with views of Phang-Nga Bay and is a pure destination spa. The lady who created Chivasom, Anna Maria Tavares, who’s now our MD of Six Senses Destination Spa, put it together. We have 80 practitioners, therapists, lifestyle counsellors, Chinese herbalists, and acupuncturists who are there for overall well-being and counselling. Every guest is doing about two or three treatments a day, so when we’re full, we’re up to 350 treatments a day.
The difference from other destination spas is that people are given more freedom and flexibility with the schedule. You have a nice villa with space and privacy.

We are targeting the 21st-Century, wealthy traveller that lives in London, Paris or New York, where a 300sqm apartment costs US$30 million. Our guest villas are about 300-square
metres. When they’re on holiday, they want a nice pool villa and time to relax in the morning if they want to. People normally live very hectic schedules, so we want our guests to take their own time when they are with us.

Tell us about the management philosophy and “virtuous circles” that is a part of your corporate policy.

The virtuous circle at Six Senses is that a profitable bottom line comes after various steps. If you just focus on the bottom line without the basics, you’ll miss the plot and never be truly profitable. So we believe that our success comes firstly from our hosts and
their ideas of capturing the imagination with great concepts. We have a team that is
passionate about delivering amazing experiences and have really brought culture and values right into the company. Once you’ve done that, you will have satisfied guests who come back again and again. Eventually you get the profitability. But if you straight go for the financial numbers, you miss the first three steps, and you’ll never really be truly profitable and successful.

If you ever get time away from business, what do you like to do when you’re not working?
Eva and I love all sorts of art and creativity, travel and food. Good food is a great pleasure, and travelling for food is nice. We love beautiful places, Florence for example
is a gem! From a sport point of view, I love skiing, and we love beach resorts. We enjoy water sports a lot.