French hoteliers Alice and Jerome Tourbier on wellness, Covid-19 and hospitality

Wellbeing and wellness seem to be at the heart of your family business, in particularly your Les Sources hotels. What has inspired you, and do you think people in general are giving more consideration to wellness now?

We are very lucky that part of the western world is no longer living for essential needs but for living its own life. This life is customised by the individual according to their education, their dreams and their capabilities.

Of course, the purchasing of luxury goods has seen massive growth around the world. But we have observed also the development of travel and wellbeing as one of the priorities for the wealthiest people. We call it emotional luxury. Taking very good care of your body, of your soul, is becoming a preference for a growing number of people. We can call it wellness.

But even the travel industry has changed and we have seen individual travellers looking more and more for an authentic, local and tailor-made experience. Moreover, they want to share these experiences with their families. Memories are probably a new quest in luxury. This trend is enabling new destinations to challenge the established top touristic locations.

In our case, this trend has allowed us to promote our French art de vivre and the famous paradox, which says that on average people in France live longer because of regular consumption of red wine. Les Sources de Caudalie is located in the Bordeaux vineyards. Estate owners have long sold their great wines abroad through wine merchants, but hospitality is a relative newcomer to this part of France.

We found the area and the landscapes so beautiful that we created this “palace of the vines” 20 years ago. Wellbeing is multi-faceted. Of course, wonderful vinotherapy treatments (a combination of natural hot spring water drawn from 540m underground combined with grape and vine extracts) are a must do, but a ride through the vineyards heading to a professional wine-tasting is an experience that also leads to wellbeing.

Do you think in business and in our personal lives we all need to be focusing more on sustainability?

Having our properties, Les Sources de Caudalie in Bordeaux and Les Sources de Cheverny in the Loire Valley, in the middle of vineyards and the countryside has made sustainability obvious for us for 20 years. Of course, hospitality has to have a positive impact on the local area.

For instance, we grow some vegetables on site, but we also purchase the best products from local farmers and growers. We are in a partnership together, not in a classical business trade. We do not discuss price; they do not discuss quality. It allows us to serve the best meals to our clients, who are willing to pay for this quality.

This collaboration makes our region lively and keeps activity in our countryside. Attracting travellers to a region can be sustainable, provided we avoid mass tourism. This is the high-end approach that we must adopt, especially in France.

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your business? On the one hand, it makes us all focus more on wellbeing, but on the other it must make things very hard for the hospitality sector...

This is an unprecedented crisis. All destinations and all markets were impacted, some more strongly than others. Travel and hospitality were really damaged, but this “reset” confirms that mass tourism is unbearable for our planet and not a strategy to follow.

On one hand we think individual travel for leisure will come back as soon as allowed, but on the other, corporate travel could be strongly impacted. Mass tourism may also face price increases as airlines will fly less, but become more expensive. Experiential and wellbeing hospitality could come out victorious from such a shock.

You have a young family. Has that inspired your business decisions at all, and have you thought about whether your children might like to carry on the family business one day?

From our observations, well brought up kids want to make their own choices. We are trying to raise our two children to be able to make the best choices for themselves. In terms of the business, we think that you should find a balance between not forcing anyone to take over and letting the door stay open.

It’s also a question of timing. Too early is a mistake, but so is too late. Personally, we develop our company without considering this family aspect. Getting interest from the next generation would be a bonus, but it’s not compulsory.

What plans do you have for the future? Are any hotels or enterprises outside of France a possibility?

Our strategy remains the same – to build a hotel collection in the vineyards. We have already Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. We will have to go around Champagne, Burgundy, Alsace and Provence. We would love to develop projects abroad in Tuscany and California, but our focus is currently on France.