InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG®) has announced the acquisition of Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas. The $300 million cash acquisition from Pegasus Capital Advisors includes all of Six Senses’ brands and operating assets.
Six Senses currently manages 16 hotels and resorts, with 18 management contracts signed into its pipeline, and more than 50 further deals under active discussion. With properties in locations such as the Maldives, the Seychelles, Yao Noi in Thailand, Zighy Bay in Oman, and Portugal’s Douro Valley, the addition of Six Senses’ award-winning properties will further round out IHG’s position in the luxury market.
Bangkok-based Six Senses is expected to expand to 60 properties within the next 10 years. IHG retained the corporate team led by Neil Jacobs to operate Six Senses and Evason brands, as well as 37 spas under the Six Senses and LivNordic brands.
The brand’s first hotel in North America—a contemporary duo of twisting towers designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingles—is near the High Line park in Manhattan’s West Chelsea. Currently rising from a full city block between 18th and 19th Streets, with the Hudson River to the west, and the High Line and the rest of Manhattan unfolding to the east, the experience will energize visitors, said an IHG spokesperson.
Bangkok-based Six Senses is expected to expand to 60 properties within the next 10 years. IHG retained the corporate team led by Neil Jacobs to operate Six Senses and Evason brands, as well as 37 spas under the Six Senses and LivNordic brands.
The Danish designer’s primary concern was that the two towers not block each other’s views. Shaped asymmetrically, they twist dramatically. “It becomes almost like a dance, or a mutual courtesy, between the two towers,” says Ingles, founder of BIG in Copenhagen. “Rather than ignore each other, they almost care for each other and enhance each other’s situations.”
Six Senses Place anchors spa and wellness in a three-floor complex featuring bathouse, gym, and studio, restaurant, and clinics. Created by a trio of Manhattan-based residential architects known as INC Architecture & Design, Six Senses Place adjoins the hotel and has a separate entrance in the west tower condos.
The Six Senses hotel occupies 16 floors of the east tower. Scheduled to open spring 2020, the 137 guestrooms and suites offer expansive river views or the elevated High Line park and city panorama. Guests also can relax at the rooftop aromatherapy garden and glass-walled swimming pool, where wellness options complete their stay.
Founded in 1995, Six Senses brought integrative medicine together with luxury branding of wellness. CEO Jacobs joined the company in 2013, expanding the brand across Asia, Europe, Northern Africa, and the Caribbean. British-born, age 67, he previously headed Asian operations for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts for 14 years, and developed Baccarat Hotels for Starwood Capital.
Recent openings range from a 19th-century wine estate in the Douro Valley of Portugal reimagined by Clodagh Design, to private island resorts in the Seychelles and Cambodia; beach retreats in Bali and Fiji; five stunning lodges in the Kingdom of Bhutan; the group’s first urban escapes in Singapore, which include two hotels; a wellness resort in Kaplankaya, Turkey; and Alpine ski residences in Courchevel, France.
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Bernard Burt
Health challenges led spa historian Bernard Burt to Canyon Ranch in Arizona, inspiring his 1986 book "Fodor's Healthy Escapes" for Random House. The co-author of "100 Best Spas of the World" (Globe Pequot), his byline has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, American Health, Spa Management Journal, and on Examiner.com. Based in Washington, DC, Burt is chairman emeritus of the Washington Spa Alliance and founding director of the International Spa Association.