The fledgling Patina offshoot of Capella Hotels and Resorts will be the first hotel brand to successfully bridge the worlds of luxury and lifestyle, according to hospitality leader Neil Jacobs.
The Wild Origins Founder and former boss of Six Senses took an advisory role with Capella in July this year.
Speaking at Further East in Bali last week, Jacobs described Patina as a “brand with legs”, that captures the sophistication of high-end hospitality while embracing the energy of modern lifestyle brands.
“I think the gap that Patina is going to fill is, everyone talks about lifestyle, and you have a perception of what a lifestyle hotel is which generally is not super high end, and then you have a luxury hotel, which is a luxury hotel,” Jacobs said.
“We believe that the space for Patina is that intersection between the two and that you can have a luxury lifestyle hotel, just that nobody really has done that yet.”
Currently, Patina operates in two locations – the flagship Patina Maldives, Fari Islands and Patina Osaka which opened in May this year. But the momentum is growing: Jacobs confirmed that four to five more Patina projects are now under development across Asia and Europe.
In conversation with Jacobs, Capella Vice President Lifestyle Lexie Rodriguez highlighted brand clarity as the cornerstone of Patina’s strategy.
“We clearly have different points of view for both Capella and Patina,” she stressed, specifying that the “more progressive” Patina brand invites guests to “participate in the now”. “It allows the brands to complement each other in a group rather than compete.”
Both speakers underscored that Patina’s success will depend on maintaining a disciplined sense of purpose while adapting locally to each destination. “What a Patina is going to look like in Osaka is going to be very different than what another Patina will look like in a city in Europe,” she explained.
Ensuring the market is aware of these differences within each brand portfolio is crucial, but so too is getting across the differentiation between Capella and Patina, according to Jacobs. “We are trying to do a better job at is to absolutely communicate the differentiation between Capella and Patina,” he said. “They stand on their own.”
