Divia Thani • Conde Nast Traveller • Global Editorial Director

peaker 1 (00:05):

Divia Thani sits at the epicentre of how the world thinks about luxury travel. As global editorial director at Conde Nas Traveller, she's not just chronicling where the wealthy go, she's shaping where they want to go. Next with readers who think of nothing of booking perhaps a 50 K safari, but then agonise over the ethics of a carbon footprint, divvy has to navigate the contradictions of modern luxury daily. Don't we all? She's watching Instagram influencers reshape century old hotel brands, Michelin styled restaurants open in unexpected corners of the world, and documenting how a generation raised on experiences over objects is redefining what it means to travel. Well. From her vantage point, she sees the industry's biggest players pivoting, innovating faster than ever, but still grappling with questions that a result as travel itself. What makes a journey truly transformative? Divya, welcome to what The Luxe.

Speaker 2 (01:01):

Thank you. I love that introduction. Can I steal it?

Speaker 1 (01:04):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:04):

I want it on my bio. It's fantastic. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (01:08):

You are very welcome to steal it. It would be, I would feel honoured. I divya. Can we just start, how did you find your way into the very enviable position that you are in today? Can you give us the life story?

Speaker 2 (01:22):

Sure. Well, when I look back, it feels quite natural that I would end up in working in travel, but I never intended to. Travel has just always been a part of my life. I come from a community ethnically, I'm ndi, and that's from a province called Synth, which is now in Pakistan after the partition of India and Pakistan. In 1947, that region became part of Pakistan, and my grandparents on my dad's side moved over to India. During that time, it was, as many people know, it was a terrible, brutal time. It was extremely violent. It was the darkest chapter, I think in the history of the subcontinent. And they left with basically nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Speaker 1 (02:14):

Wow, really?

Speaker 2 (02:15):

Yes, and absolutely no belongings left their entire homes, everything they owned, nothing. All of their wealth, nothing. You couldn't transfer anything over. You basically had to leave overnight and you didn't know if you were going to get there in one piece. And so many Hindus from sin and from Punjab ended up moving to India and vice versa, of course. And when that happened, they sort of ended up in India, but they really had nowhere to go. They didn't have roots in those regions, in those areas. And so they took any job that they could get and that was anywhere in the world. And so if you look at my family, my family is spread out across the planet. I grew up going to visit my mom's side of the family in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, where my mom grew up. My dad's side of the family was all in the Caribbean.

(03:11):

Right after I was born, my dad moved to Africa to Nigeria where he lived for about 20 years before he moved to the Caribbean as well. So my entire childhood was really about, we didn't really look as travel as a sort of journey of adventure or exploration. We looked at it as a way of spending time with our family and reconnecting. Yeah, completely. You went to, we call it VFR, visiting friends and relatives today, but that's really what it was. And in the most basic way, we were going to see our families and that's how I grew up travelling. Every single vacation holiday that we would get, we would up and leave. I spent a lot of my summers here in London actually. I would visit my dad in Lago and Nigeria and then we would come to London and sometimes we would do somewhere else in Europe. I have family in Malta, but it was kind of like if you're a Cindy, you definitely have family all over the world. And it's partly why I think that community has adjusted and adapted itself so well to wherever they are that they're very sort of local. They always speak the local language. They're very sort of in my house. Sunday lunch was sometimes it was a bani, but most of the time it was, hi, Ani is chicken rice. And so that's just the way that we grew up.

Speaker 1 (04:37):

Isn't it funny for people of roughly, I'm going to say roughly our age, that when I was growing up, and I hadn't really thought about this actually until you mentioned travel as being functional and just a part of everyday life, not everyone had travelled.

Speaker 2 (04:52):

No,

(04:52):

No. It was very unusual for most people. I was in a class and I went to a Jesuit British convent school, and I think in a class of maybe 50 girls, I was probably one of the very, I would say maybe five of us that travelled every summer and went somewhere international. But again, it was a very different dime. It wasn't today. I think kids are very aware and conscious of where they're going, and there was a lot of status involved. And I don't think that that was the case that all when I was going up.

Speaker 1 (05:27):

Well, the thing is not only had many people not travelled, but when you did travel, you didn't have a mobile phone. And it was the cultural differences were far greater.

Speaker 2 (05:40):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (05:41):

The practicalities of life that make you feel out of your comfort zone have largely been homogenised. You could go many places in the world and experience a certain design ethic, a certain level of hygiene.

Speaker 2 (05:54):

Yes, there's a certain level I think of there has been gentrification in so many ways, but I would say that as much as some parts of travel have become so much easier, I would say some parts of travel have become so much harder. We didn't have anything like over tourism

Speaker 3 (06:12):

When

Speaker 2 (06:13):

I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, that was not a term that we ever thought about. You never thought about your carbon footprint, you never thought about the impact of what it meant if you went to a place you weren't thinking about. I spent pretty much every summer in London and Lagos, and I have to confess, I never travelled in Nigeria. We had very few friends who were local. We were very much in a sort of expat bubble. And when I look back now, I think what a wasted opportunity. But back then we didn't really think about those things. So in a way, I think that many things have changed for good. Many things have changed for the worse.

Speaker 1 (06:54):

Well, airline seats are no longer made of leather and aeroplanes don't have smoking sections.

Speaker 2 (06:59):

No, they don't. But we have way more aeroplanes and much better connectivity. And I think for me, what I would say is that the recognition of what a privilege travel was and continues to be, I see travel as being such an incredible privilege. I realised that later in my life, I realised how privileged I was to have seen it and to have not recognised at the time how amazing it was. And I didn't know how it was changing me as a person. I didn't know that my worldview was going to be so entirely different because I had been to all of these places and I knew that people lived very differently in all these places. And I knew that they all spoke different languages and they ate different food and they thought differently and that you had to cover yourself up in certain places, but you could walk down the street in a minikit and others.

(07:49):

And I think when you're very young and you notice all of these things and you absorb all of these things, they become a part of you just creating a perspective of the world that is different from the one that you might have had if you were raised just in one place. And there's a beauty in being raised entirely in one place, by the way. Absolutely. It's fantastic to have very deep roots in just one place as well. But for me, that wasn't the case. I felt very much like everywhere in the world was close by, that no place felt out of reach that every place I felt like, oh, of course we'll know somebody there. And that's very weird. Today it's very easy today if you want to reach out to somebody and you've never been to Copenhagen, you find somebody on Instagram that can tell you what you need to know.

(08:37):

But it was very different back then. Anyway, that I think really shaped my just sort of natural propensity I would say, to travel. And I went to college in America, actually studied abroad, partly in London as well, but I went to college in the US and when I came back to India, I went straight into publishing. I had been a literature major in college and always loved it, always loved to read and write, and I honestly just took the first job that I could get when I was back. There was a French fashion magazine that was launching in India at the time called, and I loved it. I just threw myself into it and I absolutely loved it. And I kept deferring my admission to an MFA programme in the US for many years, and then I just never went back. In 2007, Conde Nast decided to come into India and they were going to come and fully owned and operated, and I thought, I have to give this a shot.

(09:43):

And I joined the launch team for Vogue in India, and three years later they offered me Conde Nast traveller to launch it in India. And I did that for 10 years. 2020 was our 10 year anniversary of Traveller in India. And 2020, as you might remember, was not a year that we remember for travel. It was a horrible time, of course, if you worked anywhere in travel. But at that point is when Conde Nast completely restructured the company and they decided that each global brand would have global editorial director. I was very lucky to get that role and to get that.

Speaker 1 (10:27):

Did you apply for the role or get, was it sort of a natural

Speaker 2 (10:32):

No, I did not apply. Well, the thing is that at the time it was nobody in the company really knew, aside from the very senior management in New York, what the plan was for completely changing the structure of the company. And this was actually something that they had started doing prior to COVID even. But it so happened that the manifestation and execution of it happened in the second half of 2020. And so no, I did not know what I was, I did not apply. I did not know what I was applying for. Anna Winter, who's my boss, and

(11:08):

A legend of course in the world of fashion and luxury, met with several different editors and people in the organisation and just asked me lots of questions about my vision for the brand and about travel and how I felt about it. And before I knew it, I was meeting the board around midnight every night in India. I was meeting with all of these different people I had never met before on Zoom. And it was surreal. I had no idea why they were asking me so many questions, but when Anna asked you don't ask too many questions, and it was around Thanksgiving of 2020 when she called to tell me that I had this role. And honestly at that point I didn't even know it meant that I had to move. I had no idea what any of this was going to mean for me. So it was a big, big move for me. It was a big change. But that was four or five years now and I'm still here. So it worked out alright. It's

Speaker 1 (12:08):

This incredible job and it's amazing to move from India to a global role as well. I'm always in admiration of those types of moves because you can get quite pigeonholed within local market, can't you? In any type of job.

Speaker 2 (12:21):

Yes. No, you're so right. And I certainly was a dark horse. I think that for all of the other global brands, it ended up being the American editors who got those global roles. But I don't know why Anna offered it to me, but I'm very grateful that she did. And I think it's also really an exciting thing in the world of travel because as we all know, and continental traveller obviously deals in the luxury niche of travel. The new markets for luxury travel, the really high growth markets for luxury travel are no longer in the West. They're actually all in the Middle East, in India, in China, in India, a massive

Speaker 1 (13:09):

Market,

Speaker 2 (13:09):

Massive market, and obviously a small base, but the growth is exponential and everybody knows that it's the hottest market that everybody wants to now be part of. And so I feel like in that sense, I think the timing is great. I'm very excited to be able to tell the India story to people. And I have to say even the difference between 2019 and now when I talk about the India market, I no longer have to convince anyone of its potential. Everybody knows it. So it's a really exciting time I think to be an Indian working in luxury because every luxury brand, not just travel across every sector, is looking at that market and knows that it's a long-term play. They know that it's not going to be immediate, but they realise that it's not a market that they can ignore. And so it's really exciting.

(14:00):

It's actually, I'll tell you one story that I love to tell. When I first started my job at Traveller in India, so long time ago around 20 10, 20 11, this probably happened, I went to, and I still go to this fair which is called it's ILTM, it takes place in Tan every December. And it's really where all the luxury brands and travel and hospitality come together. And it's a trade show. And that first year that I went, it was the opening forum and I was watching people on stage, very well-known people in the world of travel and hospitality talking about the next generation of luxury travellers. And to be perfectly honest, I was really upset during this forum because they kept talking about the ish

Speaker 3 (14:54):

And

Speaker 2 (14:55):

They kept talking about the India market, all the sort of brick countries and the Middle East. And they kept talking about how they had money, but they didn't really have any taste.

Speaker 3 (15:06):

They

Speaker 2 (15:07):

Weren't refined, they weren't sophisticated travellers. And they kept talking about how these markets always wanted gold taps. And the gold taps were sort of meant to be signifiers of very ostentatious taste. And it was really condescending.

Speaker 3 (15:24):

And I

Speaker 2 (15:25):

Couldn't believe how this conversation was unfolding openly in front of hundreds of people. And I've never forgotten it. And I remember when I was on a very long business trip in Europe in 2019 because we were planning a luxury travel fair in India and I was in Paris and I remember being at every top hotel in Paris, every top luxury hotel in Paris. And I remember every bathroom had gold taps and gold fittings, and even the wallpaper had touches and accents of gold. And I just thought to myself, and I was laughing thinking how much things have changed in the world? Because today, and look, part of it is yes, of course there's some sort of social consciousness reckoning. People are thinking about these parts of the world in a different way, but also the reality is that's where the money is. And the money guides a lot of decisions.

(16:29):

And so when you have a tremendous number of travellers coming in from India, the Middle East from China, and they're spending more money than anyone else's, you are going to start catering to that taste. And all of a sudden that becomes the new epitome of elegance and sophistication and luxury because that's paying the bills. And I think these things are cyclical very much. But it is to me, I always tell the story because I think for me it really signifies where we've come the point from A to B. It's very distinct in this one example for me, and it's something that I think about a lot when I talk about luxury because so often we talk about it from this very western perspective, and that's not my favourite preference, but

Speaker 1 (17:15):

It's with everything, it's how people choose to comment on Saudi Arabia. It's how people choose to

Speaker 2 (17:23):

Everywhere. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:25):

And we export this western ideal of what happiness ought to look like, but it's not working. If you look at America that well, let's be honest, it's a country which has the highest rate of loneliness, one in three people in the US under the age of 30 claim not to have a best friend.

Speaker 2 (17:44):

I do feel like we need to reevaluate what is success, what is happiness, what is luxury? I mean, we're doing a luxury podcast here. What is luxury? I think that definition has changed radically, at least in travel. I can definitely say that it has. And I do believe that at the moment. I really feel like we're at a tipping point overall in terms of how we define luxury. I think that

Speaker 1 (18:09):

The first episode of this podcast is called Why I Hate the Word Luxury.

Speaker 2 (18:12):

Oh really?

Speaker 1 (18:14):

I did. It started as a joke to be honest.

Speaker 2 (18:17):

Well, you know what? I think you're right. I mean I feel the same way about that because it gets so overused. And I feel the same way about in the world of travel about experience because we all toss this word around experience and authenticity.

Speaker 1 (18:29):

We're about elevated experience.

Speaker 2 (18:31):

Oh, elevated experience is the best. You say these words so much that they lose all meaning. But when I think about luxury now, I think very specifically about two things or maybe three, I think about meaning, and I think about, and I hate this word because again, it's very overused, but I think about meaning and I think about connection. And now I think very much about value. And the value could be monetary, but it could also be completely intangible. But I think to me, when I think about luxury now, and I'm thinking very much of myself, not as just someone who works in the space of luxury travel, but someone who is just a consumer and is consuming all of the same content that all of us are on Instagram or I don't actually use TikTok, but on TikTok presumably and everywhere else, all of these different platforms. And I really feel like for me, that's what it boils down to. Now I want to know the story of something, not the brand.

Speaker 1 (19:35):

I think people get desensitised to talking about story, but story is so important and it's stories and how they're progressively told and be meaning into the experience that you engage with when you arrive completely. And it's the journey and how you design it to the point of arrival, the impacts the frame of reference you have for the experience as you engage with it.

Speaker 2 (19:59):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (19:59):

When you're there.

Speaker 2 (20:01):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (20:01):

And that's really the platform that allows you to connect with the cultural nuance, with the place, with the felt experience you have with those around you, with yourself.

Speaker 2 (20:10):

Totally.

Speaker 1 (20:11):

And basically travel is, everything is in the mind right with we are travelling further afield really to find the things that sit deeper within

Speaker 2 (20:21):

You are so right, you're saying it so well. I think that's perfectly articulated the more we travel the night Pico ier, who's one of my absolute most favourite travel writers in the world, the last book he wrote was about sitting still staying in one place and the importance of that to not always be moving around. And I think when all of us today are thinking about luxury, well, even when we're not thinking about luxury actively in our own lives, I think all of us today, and it feels like this is something that again, post pandemic has become totally mainstream. That's why you're seeing the massive rise in wellness tourism for example, is that we are searching for a deeper meaning. We are feeling a little bit lost.

Speaker 1 (21:07):

There's never been a more important time to think about it, right? If we automate life with AI or automate life through technology to create and actually start supplementing our very character

Speaker 3 (21:18):

With

Speaker 1 (21:19):

A synthesised version of self that has stylistic, this stylistically represents ourself as well as just in terms of the functional aspects of how you communicate, then what have we freed up that time to do?

Speaker 2 (21:34):

Sometimes travel can transform you, but I think very often we think there's going to be some sort of radical transformation, but probably usually isn't incremental. It's about little things that happen that make you kind of slightly shift perspective or make you slightly question things differently or make you feel slightly better about yourself and the world or slightly worse even. And those are the things that incrementally add up and really sort of change who you are. And I think travel is such an amazing avenue when you are looking to feel something. And I think so often about when I'm planning a trip for myself, it's guided by what I want to feel completely. It's like I have a picture in my head of what that trip is going to do for me and how I'm going to feel. And I really, to me, that's what I'm looking for.

(22:20):

And I think that hopefully, I think the more that we say AI to your point, the more that all of this enters our daily life, the more we're going to yarn and seek feeling. So I think in a certain way travel is going to, I think already if you look at luxury, we all know that luxury is having a bit of a hard time at the moment financially, but luxury travel has been on a rocket ship since the pandemic and touch wood so far shows no signs of slowing down. And I think it's because of that. I think it's really the more time we spend on our screens, the more that you can travel through your screen apparently and see every nook and corner. It's amazing to me what you can actually do with technology today, but it doesn't replace being there because you won't feel the same way.

Speaker 1 (23:13):

Can I ask you a question about leadership? Because strikes me that you've sort of started your career in editorial roughly around the time when social started creating influence on decisions, and then you moved into a fairly senior leadership role

Speaker 3 (23:32):

Through

Speaker 1 (23:32):

COVID and you've watched significant changes and in travel specifically in the importance of journalism versus citizen journalism and also in team management and basically probably having a bit of a baptism of fire as you consolidate a position in leadership, global leadership. So what have you learned through that?

Speaker 2 (24:01):

I think that for me it's very much about, I think as a leader, being as transparent as possible and acknowledging that we don't have all the answers and seeing and feeling genuinely the excitement and the opportunity that comes with disruption. And I think we're at one of those very critical junctures again at this moment with ai. And that's going to be world changing. That's not just changing travel or not just changing publishing. It's changing every industry in fundamental ways. And I think there's great opportunity there. I think that, and this is something that as we've been seeing the disruption unfold and that there are moments when everyone is panicking and I had those moments myself thinking, how are we going to deal with this? And are we set up to really sort of do what we need to do to survive this, not just survive, but continue to have a very successful business.

(25:08):

And I found great solace in this idea that nobody has it figured out. There's no one sitting there that says this is what's going to happen and this is where you're going to end up going. Everyone is trying to navigate their way through it. And I believe that I've always worked, I've worked for so long now with Conde Nast and so long with Conde Nast travellers specifically as a brand, and it's a brand that I absolutely love so much. And I really do believe that the power of a brand is enormous. And I believe that if you are able to grow that and take that brand and move it through, yes, of course there's been great disruption with social influencers and all of that, but the truth is, as a brand, what we stand for, the integrity, the fact that these are people that are trained journalists that are writing that know how to fact check, that are doing really fundamental things that aren't going to say great things about a place just because they gave them a free meal or whatever it is. Audiences have evolved as well and become a lot smarter. So I would say, I dunno, five, seven years ago maybe that I was really worried about the fact that influencers were taking away so much of the budget and if you had a small budget, you were spending it all on influencers because you felt like you were getting more reach.

(26:38):

But the truth is we've seen that backlash because we've seen that it didn't convert. The brands have seen that it doesn't convert. And so I think you have to be good at adapting and navigating to new tech and really figuring out what your place is there. But I think you have to be really, really confident that you are still adding value and that you're being true to the brand. And I think when you do that, you're able to make the best of that traveller today is very successful on social, it's very successful on YouTube. It's got all of these different things, but we're not selling out in the way that we're not going to do something with celebrity just because it's going to get us the numbers if it doesn't work for travel, if it doesn't actually add value to our audience. And we know very well who our audience is because we've been talking to them for years now,

(27:31):

We don't do it. And having a brand and being part of a stable like Conde Nast means we have the opportunity and the ability to make mistakes. And so I think that for me as a leader, going back to your original question, I would say that for me it's very much being able to talk about these things openly and trying to really sort of get the team to rally around what is true to us and how do we stay there. And within that idea, how do we expand and embrace everything that's coming at us and how do we grow?

Speaker 1 (28:06):

Because your leadership role extends beyond internal leadership as it does for any successful leader. It extends to the distribution of footfall globally actually. And with that, you have to navigate tensions. We spoke over tourism earlier. You have the ability to highlight, to dilute traffic and to highlight other places that have amazing cultural capital

Speaker 3 (28:30):

That

Speaker 1 (28:30):

Could benefit from an influx of tourism and build economies around that completely

Speaker 2 (28:36):

And

Speaker 1 (28:37):

Perhaps remove the focus from the more obvious postcard perfect versions.

Speaker 2 (28:40):

Completely, completely. And that's not just me, that's the brand that's every single person on my team feels that responsibility because I think that

Speaker 1 (28:50):

Tricky. Is that quite tricky?

Speaker 2 (28:52):

No, it's wonderful. It's wonderful. I'll give you an example. We used to talk about sustainability in a very different way 10 years ago. And then there was a point where we used to have sustainability specials, issues that were completely dedicated to sustainability and everything that was happening in that space in the world of travel. And then we started to realise as we went along that we also had a sustainability editor, Julie Kinsman, who's still very much a part of the brand and is wonderful, but really as we went along we realised that, but all of us on the team now know what to look for. We're looking for it all the time. So why are we talking about a sustainability special? Because it makes it seem like all of the other issues or all of the other content that we're putting out is not looking at sustainability.

Speaker 3 (29:46):

But

Speaker 2 (29:47):

All of us over time have realised what to look for. We've taught that to ourselves. We've listened to everybody around us. We have enormous opportunity and privilege to talk to the best people in the business to understand it for ourselves. And everyone's now adopted it so much a part of the way that we look at travel now that it's not even something we have to highlight. I remember when I did a sustainability special once and I had a little green leaf motive on every page that we talked about sustainability. And I look at it now and I think, my God, this feels like it was a different era. So I think things change radically. So it's not just me in my position that feels tremendous responsibility to the audience to talk about these things. It's every single person on the continental traveller team across all of our eight markets knows that feels that because it's part of the brand DNA,

Speaker 1 (30:37):

I just think in my mind, people tend to focus on a very narrow version of what sustainability means, but durability and cultural sustainability and the sustainability of an actual business and all of the work that goes into creating something if it's not going to standard test of time, ultimately is they're bad forms. That's unsustainable business as well. And I think it's just overlooked.

Speaker 2 (31:01):

I think you're absolutely right, and I think part of the issue is that there is simply no perfect answer.

Speaker 3 (31:09):

There

Speaker 2 (31:09):

Is simply no right answer to this. Every single thing that we do professionally personally, there is an impact that is much larger than us and much of that is negative. And so what can we do consciously to try and make sure that the weight ships from it being mostly negative to being mostly positive because it's never going to be 100% positive. And I think that the more we wrestle with these things and the more we think about them, you know what? I work in travel and this is very difficult for me because any form of travel is going to be bad for the environment. If you think about air travel, of course it's a massive issue. But do I think overall that the world is a better place because we travel or a worse place because we travel? And I would say it's a better place because we travel and I feel that very strongly.

(32:11):

I always say people that have travelled the world and have appreciated its wonders and beauties and magnificence are going to be probably the people that feel very invested in saving it and protecting it and preserving it. And I think if you look at the state of the world today, I think to your earlier point, I think if more people travelled and met people in these different cultures, Saudi's one of my favourite places in the world, I didn't realise what it was going to be like on the ground. It's incredibly beautiful. The people there. The people make the place as we know.

Speaker 1 (32:56):

I have to agree with you on that actually. I just want to say I've never been somewhere. There's been such a warmth of culture and sense of hospitality actually

Speaker 2 (33:08):

Absolutely sense of hospitality. And I think they're so proud of where they come from. They're so proud of that culture and they really want to genuinely, they want to share that with the people that are there because they realise how internationally and in the media, how they are completely misrepresented. And one of the big things, and I think this is probably something that I feel very strongly because when I was growing up and reading magazines and I was always a big magazine lover, and even when I was older and working in publishing, when I looked, frankly, even when I looked at Conde Nast Traveller International editions and I would look at the coverage of India, there would always be an elephant and there would always be some sort of reference to these very sort of mystical people, and they would find the oddest one. Many of them are very odd, but they would find the oddest one, then they would sort talk about those stories. And it was just so frustrating to me to read that and to know that that's what people were going to read about my country.

Speaker 1 (34:20):

How do you manage against content written by ai? How does the trade manage against that? Firstly, is the first part of my question.

Speaker 2 (34:35):

Well, the truth is I don't know. We're figuring that out. I think that what I can say is that AI is something that we also know can have tremendous advantage for us in how we use it and how we use it to our advantage. So I think we're at that point where we're, again, there's good and there's bad, and we just have to figure out how to make the net sort of weightage positive. But I will say that in a world of AI and AI overviews and things like that, the answers that you get will be very, I would say they're more generic and everyone will get that answer if you type that question in. And I type that question in, we're going to get an answer that's scraping everything off of the internet. But I will say that the way I see it, again, we're not for everybody. We're for a very specific kind of traveller and a very specific kind of audience. And the reason that they come to us is not because we have all the answers, because we can't compete with chat GPT. If you ask us a question about travel,

(35:50):

Where we do compete and where we're better is because we have a curation and a taste and an aesthetic that you as the audience trusts and places value in, people don't come to traveller because they want to know what the top 100 hotels in New York City are. That's not why they come to us for that. They go very different places. If they want to know what the cheapest is on a certain night, they're not coming to us.

Speaker 1 (36:18):

They're

Speaker 2 (36:18):

Coming to us because they want to know what are the top 10 hotels in New York that Conde Nas traveller thinks are the top hotels? And I think that that's something that has come about over time. And again, back to the importance of a brand that is our strength. That is our strength, is the fact that we have for years, all of our editors are people who travel the world nonstop.

Speaker 3 (36:46):

They

Speaker 2 (36:46):

Know what makes the good hotel all hotels, for example, and I always say this to people, people always say all the hotels in the Maldives are the same. They are not the same.

Speaker 1 (36:54):

They're really not.

Speaker 2 (36:55):

And if you had been to more than one hotel in the Maldives, you would know that MA address have been to like 15. So they know what makes a hotel in the Maldives amazing. And that's why people who are discerning travellers, who really plays a tremendous amount of premium on not just their money but also their time, that's why they come to us. And so I believe that that advantage for us is gold, and that for us is where the opportunity sits. And so really for us, I think it's not about, I don't know how we're going to compete with this in the sort of larger picture, but I do know that we have to use AI to get better at what we do. And that's something that we're already doing very actively. But I think also we are now looking for great opportunities in that space to partner with people because our voice is a very trusted voice. We have a point of view and we have an opinion, and that's something that people really value and really trust. And that to me is the thing that is going to make sure that this brand survives, not just this particular disruption, but whatever comes after it.

Speaker 1 (38:09):

What are some of the more kind of luxury macro things that you see from your role that have changed over the last couple of years?

Speaker 2 (38:17):

Everything's changed since COVID. It's really interesting because when I got this role, it's a global role, and I had to look over, I think at the time it was seven markets or six markets, I forget. And at the time I thought, oh my God, how is this going to work? Because everyone travels so differently when you think about Paris is not the same Paris to everybody. If I'm living in London and I'm taking the York, I could go to Paris for lunch and come back. And it's not a big deal.

Speaker 3 (38:45):

It's

Speaker 2 (38:46):

Very different to the way that an American traveller sees Paris and France and what they want from that particular trip or the way that a Chinese traveller looks at Paris or the way that the Middle Eastern traveller looks at Paris. And it depends on where in the Middle East they come from, because if they come from Iran, they come from kut, they have a totally different relationship to France than the rest of the Middle East does so much more familiar. So I think that when you look at that, I was very intimidated thinking, how am I going to be able to make any sense of this? Everyone is so different. But towards the end of the pandemic, we started to see that a lot of the trends that I thought were very peculiar to India and the Middle East, which culturally are quite similar, had actually started to become trends across the world. So an example, multi-generational travel,

Speaker 3 (39:41):

Something

Speaker 2 (39:41):

That we now talk about very normally in the West wasn't a thing before the pandemic from the West, Americans did not travel in big groups. Europeans did not travel in big groups. Today, everyone's travelling those groups. I remember travelling around Europe and lots of places more than 10 years ago, and they would always say to me, oh, we wish we had more Indian travellers, but you guys are so difficult. You always book so last minute, and your service demands are so high, you always need so much attention and you're vegetarian. And how do we cater for that? And you're so many people and then you want connecting rooms or you want sweets, and then you're booking so last minute, we have nothing to offer you. And they would just complain and complain about all of this stuff to me. And now the whole world is travelling like us. And so now they simply have had to learn how to adapt to that. And it's everywhere you go, you will find vegan options and vegetarian options. It's not something that's particular to Indian travellers anymore. And every luxury hotel is bringing down the number of rooms that they have and is increasing the number of suites that they have because that's what the demand is.

(40:52):

And so really, when you think about all of these things, all of this really shifted during the pandemic. And it's because people were spending much more time together as families, has extended families as friends, like families. And all of that mirrors the way that we've been travelling in the east culturally for a very long time. And so now you have a very different way of travelling. Villa bookings are through the roof, for example, and every villa, they want the private chef, they want the trainer, they want someone coming to do yoga with them every morning, all of this sort of thing. Wellness is, I think we touched on before,

Speaker 1 (41:30):

I was ask you about longevity actually as a subset of wellness. What have you seen in that space?

Speaker 2 (41:34):

Oh my God, pretty much everything you can think of. I think it is the word of the year, frankly.

(41:42):

Everyone's talking about, there's a real sense of, it's not just about extending the period of your life, but really, really enhancing the quality of your life and making sure that you're healthy and active up until whatever age it is that you live. It's not just about living until you're a hundred years old. And I think that for me, the really exciting things have been really the amount that we're seeing in the space where you're seeing a lot of the sort of western technology, the science backed treatments, all of that is really now melding with the sort of ancient schools of medicine from the East. And so traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, all of these two, all of this coming together. And I think for me, that's really, really powerful when you're able to take the best of Eastern West, because I've always felt that wellness for me, and because I grew up in India, I suppose it's always been around me, but I've always felt that Ayurveda, for example, didn't have that backing of science and data, and everybody wants data today.

(42:47):

Everyone's wearing fancy watches and contraptions to sort of make sure as you are to make sure that they know exactly how they're sleeping. They want to know exactly when they have a glucose spike. And I think when you're able to marry all of this data and information and take ancient Indians, ancient schools of wisdom, wherever they come from in the world, and then you're able to see that there actually is data that supports what these schools have been doing for hundreds of years, it's really very powerful. I went earlier the year to Palace Murano in the Dolomites and for a week's detox. And I have to say I was quite broken when I got there. I was really exhausted. I'd been travelling a lot and at the end of that week, I don't think I have felt more rejuvenated and stronger. I don't remember feeling that way ever, to be honest. So I think there's real merit to this. I think obviously we have to incorporate a lot of these things into our lives. It can't just be a week long retreat that we do once or twice a year, but it is something that the world is thinking about so consciously and all the time that I think it's already exploded, but it's only going to get better.

Speaker 1 (44:05):

I think it's fascinating. I think for me, there's three aspects to this. The first is if we quantify the self to the point where we forget that our priorities should be felt experienced, then we've achieved nothing. Although it can correct how we perceive what's important or how we consider what's important and how we conduct ourselves every day. So I think if this can change your behaviours for better by giving you an insight into what works for you and doesn't, that's

Speaker 2 (44:31):

A great thing.

Speaker 1 (44:32):

When it becomes an end in itself, I think it's dangerous.

Speaker 2 (44:34):

Well, I was talking to a friend of mine just last week who's actually opened up an amazing wellness centre in Bombay, and I think that what we were discussing is, I don't think it's a blanket sort of rule because I think different people respond to different things. Some people are very data oriented. It really makes a difference to them. It helps them to know how they slept. It's a big thing for them. For me, if I wake up in the morning and I feel great, I'm like, oh, I slept well. I don't really need, don't need the data to support it. But I am, by nature, a very intuitive person.

Speaker 1 (45:08):

I mean, you're a lady who likes to watch the waves, as you said earlier, so that's not

Speaker 2 (45:12):

Surprising to me. So I think everyone is different and you have to find what works for you. I think that that's great because I think the more options people have, I've been to a lot of these wellness retreats and destinations over several years, and different ones work for different people,

Speaker 3 (45:33):

And

Speaker 2 (45:33):

It's just a question of what you need at the time, how you're intrinsically built, what you respond to, what time of your life it is, and what you're really searching for and what they're able to give you. Sometimes it's that one practitioner who was so amazing, who knew precisely what you needed that day, that it changed your entire experience and just worked for you. So I think a lot of these things really are, it's so personal and it's so complex.

Speaker 1 (45:58):

It is divya. I dunno where the time went. I feel like we haven't even got started. We've only got enough room for one more question.

Speaker 2 (46:06):

Okay. Make it good.

Speaker 1 (46:07):

I'll be happy to know. Yeah, I mean, where should I go on holiday?

Speaker 2 (46:11):

Oh, goodness. Wow. Well, this is a very personal question. I feel like I need your travel history to recommend something, but I am going to ask you another question back. How do you want to feel on this holiday?

Speaker 1 (46:28):

I want to feel significant distance between myself and my infants. No, I'm joking.

Speaker 2 (46:36):

You just need a long flight and you need a raw dog and you'll be great.

Speaker 1 (46:40):

I just want, okay. Actually, I'm going to ask you a question because maybe there's not enough time to go through the therapy session required to provide advice somewhere. I should go on holiday. Can you just give me a couple of jet lag hacks? I travel a lot as well, and

Speaker 2 (46:56):

Most

Speaker 1 (46:56):

Of the people who listen to this probably do.

Speaker 2 (46:58):

Okay, so I have some good ones.

(47:02):

Number one, the amazing thing about sleeping on a flight is that I feel like it doesn't count as sleep. It doesn't really mess you up. If you sleep on a flight, you will just feel better when you get off. Doesn't matter what time you're landing anywhere. So the trick to falling asleep on a flight, for me, it's going to sound weird, but is milk with vanilla and I mean pure vanilla, not like vanilla syrup that has sugar in it and this awful stuff, pure vanilla in milk, and it's always worked for me. And I never knew why until someone, a doctor said to me that there was an enzyme in vanilla that's the same that they find in breast milk. And then it kind of connected. And I thought, oh, maybe that's why. Because you get this cocoon sort of feeling and you just kind of want to go to sleep.

(47:52):

And I'm telling you, it works like magic. So try it. The other thing that I do is if I land in the morning and I'm going straight to meetings and I have to stay awake, I will eat a breakfast that is only protein and I will drink one giant cup of coffee and I will not allow myself to have any more coffee for the rest of the day. If at any point you start to feel tired or sleepy, get out of the room that you're in, get some fresh air, take a walk, or just pop open the window and get fresh air because that will instantly wake you up. And then when you're ready to go to bed that night, or if you land at night and you need to sleep, then you eat a big bowl of pasta and you drink a glass of red wine.

Speaker 1 (48:33):

Okay, fine. That's good advice for everyone other than people who are actors intolerant, but oh,

Speaker 2 (48:40):

Well, you could do T milk.

Speaker 1 (48:42):

I'm not actors intolerant,

Speaker 2 (48:44):

But

Speaker 1 (48:45):

So many people are. And on that note,

Speaker 2 (48:47):

It was so nice to talk to you all.

Speaker 1 (48:49):

Enjoy. Thank

Speaker 2 (48:49):

You. Thank you.