Hospitality

Here are three ways to experience Sri Lanka:

1. Join a tour that packs in as many temples and ruins as possible. Be sure to ride the famous Kandy-Ella train, pushing other tourists out of the way so you can get cute Instagram pics.
2. Spend three weeks walking the newly created Pekoe Trail, a 186-mile (300 km) trail through the central highlands that visits tea plantations, wild parks, and remote villages.
3. Check into a beach resort in Unawatuna. Wake up, surf, hang with the locals. Repeat.

More and more people are choosing options like B or C for their vacations — opportunities to step out of life’s hectic current and live in the moment. It’s all part of the slow travel trend.

We’re a little weary of the word “curated.” Maybe you are, too. But hotel guests have come to appreciate — even expect — a thoughtfully personalized experience when they stay at a finer hotel.

Hotels have deployed all kinds of tech to meet this demand, including guestroom AI (like Alexa for Hospitality), apps to control room preferences, and the Internet of Things. But guests want more — especially when they stay in luxury hotels, says Wouter Geerts, a travel industry consultant for Euromonitor International: “The understanding of what luxury is has totally changed. We live in a very individualistic world, but people are seeking ways to be part of something.”

Here are three ways that hotels around the world are shaping the guest experience to be more personal, more memorable and more transformative than ever.