Investors are showing stronger interest in experience-led hotel concepts that blend wellness, community and longer-stay engagement. Rather than focusing purely on room inventory, capital is increasingly evaluating how deeply a property connects with guests — and how reliably that connection converts into revenue.
That shift was examined during the panel Exploring Emerging Classes of Experiential and Leisure-Oriented Holdings at the Hospitality Indonesia Conference in Jakarta.
Moderated by Charles Cheong, CEO of Asia ESG Development Pte. Ltd., the session brought together Gonzalo Maceda Arranz, Director of Development Southeast Asia at Meliá Hotels International; Florian Holm, CEO & Founder of Grün Resort; and Rosmalia Hardman, Director of Operations and Development at MJB Hoteliers.
For Florian, the shift begins with demand.
“Guests are searching for an emotion,” he said, arguing that experience is no longer an add-on but the core product.
He rejected the idea that experiential operations automatically increase costs. At one of his Bali properties, a Pilates studio was introduced as a paid offering priced at IDR350,000 per session. Classes expanded from two participants to as many as eight per session.
“The experience profit in our property is adding to our bottom line. It’s not subtracting,” he said.
The example underscored a broader point: when properly engineered and priced, experiences can function as revenue drivers rather than cost centres.
From a large-scale operator’s perspective, Gonzalo said the same trend is visible across mainstream properties.
“We can see the shift of clients looking for something personalised,” he said.
Even within 500-room hotels, segmentation is becoming more deliberate — family-focused zones, adults-only areas, curated excursions with local communities — reflecting a growing expectation that hotels facilitate deeper engagement with the destination.
But experiential hospitality also depends on destination management, an area where Gonzalo suggested Indonesia still has room to improve.
“Destination management is something that Asian countries are not really top performers in the world,” he said.
He cited Bali’s largely organic growth and contrasted it with more structured approaches in places like Koh Samui in Thailand and Phu Quoc in Vietnam, where infrastructure development, airport control and investor coordination were more tightly aligned.
“Something that we are missing sometimes in certain places in Indonesia,” he said, referring to the need for clearer long-term strategy and infrastructure planning.
Rosmalia shifted the discussion to traveller demographics. Post-pandemic assumptions that millennials would dominate travel demand have not fully materialised, she said.
“The people who come to stay increasingly are the baby boomers,” she noted.
Guests aged 45 and above — including travellers in their 70s and 80s — are staying longer, often seven nights or more, and paying premium rates for purpose-driven stays. Some visits are tied to life transitions: recovery, personal reflection or milestone events.
“They want to be transformed,” she said. “They will pay.”
She cited rates of around IDR4.5 million per night for experiential properties that deliver emotional connection and a sense of belonging rather than formality.
At the same time, younger travellers are highly selective. Sustainability credentials, local integration and purposeful programming are increasingly prerequisites rather than differentiators.
From an investment standpoint, experiential hotels are attractive only if they demonstrate resilience and recurring income. The panel repeatedly returned to the idea of shifting from transactional revenue — one-off room nights — to relationship-based models built around longer engagement.
Wellness residencies, retreats and longevity-focused stays create extended occupancy cycles that can reduce seasonality risk. Structured programmes and repeat communities help stabilise cash flow.
“You don’t have high season, low season,” Charles said in closing. “You have high season 365 days a year if you have a captive customer.”
Domestic demand was also highlighted as underleveraged. Indonesia’s large and relatively young population presents opportunities beyond inbound tourism. Affluent domestic segments — from motorcycle communities to yoga teacher groups — are increasingly mobile but underserved in certain destinations.
The panel’s conclusion was pragmatic rather than promotional. Experience-led hotels are not replacing traditional hospitality, but they are expanding the definition of investable assets. Capital is moving toward properties that can monetise engagement, extend length of stay and build repeat communities.
Room count still matters. But for a growing share of investors, emotional connection and recurring revenue now matter more.
