Sextantio
Operations Hospitality’s heroes
In a world full of glaring inequality and social injustice, hotels have long allied themselves with just causes. Often these actions take place in the communities where these businesses are situated, or they have been carried out as a reaction to extreme events, such as the homelessness crisis caused by Covid-19. Increasingly, however, certain hotel brands have become charities or foundations, making valuable contributions and forcing structural changes to benefi t those in need. Mae Losasso speaks to Daniele Kihlgren, philanthropist and owner of Sextantio Rwanda from the Capanne Project, and Bruce Poirson, chief sustainability offi cer at Accor, to discover if a hotel can really make a positive difference in a relentlessly business-focused world.
O
ne summer evening, almost three decades ago, Daniele Kihlgren was riding his motorbike through the Italian countryside when he chanced upon Santo Stefano di Sessanio – an abandoned hilltop village in rural Abruzzo. Walking around the medieval town, with its rough stone houses and crenelated towers, the Swedish-Italian philosophy graduate was struck by the extraordinary circumstances that had left the place untouched: “the historical, castellated village and the landscape around it had been preserved by emigration,” he explains, “not by political whim.” After the Second World War great swathes of Santo Stefano’s inhabitants emigrated to Canada, leaving the village largely abandoned and, as a result, architecturally untouched by modernity. “Time here had stopped,” Kihlgren says. So, Kihlgren set about reviving the town: but his mission was one of preservation, not regeneration. “The idea was to preserve this historic heritage and the local identity,” he explains. Founding Sextantio, a limited company dedicated to the rejuvenation of the village, Kihlgren worked closely with the
town’s inhabitants as well as local anthropologists, architects and historians to recover Santo Stefano’s historical heritage.
As much a museum as a hotel – especially in the early phase of the project – Kihlgren was fastidious about the use of local materials and traditional techniques. As it took shape, the project even had the added effect of enforcing new building regulations in the area, strictly in keeping with the existing historic architecture.
From deserted town to top destination Kihlgren is a visionary rather than an entrepreneur, and the idea of transforming the newly restored village into a dispersed hotel – or albergo diffuso in Italian – came about, he says, “by chance”. “I didn’t know anything about economics,” Kihlgren confesses, “and I knew nothing about the hotel business.” So Kihlgren called on a group of experienced hoteliers from Pescara and, with their help, the site was transformed. Today it is among Europe’s most sought-after boutique destinations along with Sextantio’s 2009 project in
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Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
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