Varun Sharma: Looking Inside Luxury Travel

With over 25 years of experience in international travel, including work with the BBC, Travel Channel, and MSNBC, Varun has visited over 100 countries, covering inspiring stories from luxury hospitality. 

What first drew you towards travel journalism, and how did your experiences shape the voice you bring to your work?

Travel is in my genes. My parents, who both suffered from chronic wanderlust, were huge advocates of travel as an extension to my formal education. From the glitz of Monaco to the glamour of Krefeld - we journeyed anywhere and everywhere.

I fell into journalism at University (thank you, David Bowie) and then graduated from the BBC News Trainee Scheme – all the time filling my passport with immigration stamps. 

I visited some pretty insalubrious places – Bosnia, Somalia and Afghanistan for instance – but still managed to record beauty – mainly their peoples who were often so hospitable and kind, despite their own disparity.

Travel journalism was in my karma. I started producing televisions shows in the late 1990s and until a life-changing accident in 2015, spent most of my days on the road, in the air or on the seas. A sometimes lonely but always enriching existence. I have hours of videographic recordings from those years, yet it is the people I met that left the lasting impression. I never forget a face, although as I get older, names not so much!

The BBC taught me honesty in journalism. The people I met on my travels taught me the rest. Hospitality is the greatest and most diverse industry in the world. Millions of people are involved – and each has a story. My job is to listen, to understand, and to tell those stories with care.

Storytelling plays a powerful role in hospitality. How can hotels use storytelling more meaningfully to connect with modern travellers?

Storytelling in hospitality is now more important than ever. The widely cited adage of recent years states that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. With the fortuitous rise of AI-generated images – I can now confidently state: the pen is mightier than the picture!

My three words of advice: honesty, perception, consistency. Housekeepers, chefs, gardeners, guides, long-serving managers, local suppliers, traditions - it is their voices carry more credibility than brand slogans. Modern travellers are sceptical; detail earns belief.

One well-told story, consistently expressed across the website, social, pre-arrival emails and in-room touchpoints, beats dozens of disconnected posts.

Meaningful hotel storytelling is less about marketing and more about observation, restraint, and respect, for the people who work there and the Guests who choose to come. Make a prospective Guest feel comfortable with you. People, not promises is the ticket to success.

What key shifts have you witnessed in how stories are told and consumed in today's travel industry, and did you have to adapt as a journalist?

A.I. - these two letters have taken over journalism and indeed the travel industry. From virtual assistants to chatbots, from content creation to planning tools and in journalism, from idea generation to SEO optimisation and research support to drafting articles.

AI is now churning out “travel articles” every second, most riddled with factual and linguistic errors.

I have visited over 160 countries and hundreds of hotels & resorts – can AI authentically describe the odour of a yak after a Tibetan rainstorm or the difference in the sand texture underfoot on different islands in Maldives? Or indeed the intense feeling of calm when sitting on a rocking chair at midnight on the veranda of a jungle lodge in Costa Rica? I think not …

In good travel journalism, AI supports the work - it does not replace judgement, presence or lived experience. The best stories still come from being there, noticing details, and talking to people.

From your perspective, what are hotels doing well today, and where is there still room to grow?

On every level, competition within the hotel industry is on fire. I have noticed that, with social media especially, hotels can pivot their interactions with a few strokes of a keyboard. For instance, if there was a tiger cub sighting in Ranthambore National Park, an “real” image with on-brand message could appear on the Aman-i-Khás feed within seconds – which could lead to a last minute booking.

Room to grow – oh yes! Stop using AI for social media posts, press releases and emails – it is embarrassing and demeans your brand.

From your years on the road, is there a destination or travel experience that fundamentally changed how you view hospitality today?

Starting up my television travel company at the end of the 1990s was not simple – as my hospitality Rolodex was non-existent. I was taken underwing by the legendary Sally Bulloch – the General Manager of the Athenaeum Hotel in London. In exchange for access to her vast network of contacts, I was required to learn the “art of hospitality” from cleaning toilets, to making beds and from peeling potatoes to serving afternoon tea. 

You can teach anyone to serve a cup of tea – but you can’t teach them to serve it with genuine care, warmth, intent, grace and heart. How a cup of tea is served tells a lot about someone who works in hospitality and indeed the training they have received.

What qualities or mindsets have you noticed in hospitality leaders who are successfully navigating changes?

Throughout my career I have been lucky to work some of the greatest minds in hospitality. From the well-known legends including Horst Schulze, Peter Crome and Joel Robuchon to lesser known, but just as impressive, David Crowl (Four Seasons), Ray Bickson (Taj) and Ramesh Sadwhani (WYNN).

Now I look up, in awe, at Liz Biden (Royal Portfolio), Sandeep Walia (Marriott), Ingo Schweder (GOCO), Sharan Pasricha (Ennismore) and Nitesh Pandey (The Lux Collective) – and thankfully many more - who all share a genuine love of hospitality, look to the future rather than today or tomorrow, believe that service is king … but also embrace changes in technology, tastes and the profile of the modern traveller.

Discover the new Inside Luxury Travel podcast: Genuine Hospitality

The new Inside Luxury Travel podcast series in partnership with Hoteliers Global brings hospitality leaders into conversation. What was the inspiration behind this project, how do you think it can help the industry?

At its heart, hospitality is a people industry. With my twenty-five or so years of experience in both broadcast and travel, it seemed progressive to move into podcasting. It is clearly B2B, but I interview Guests who are truly inspirational – from hoteliers to advocates of wellness and from chefs to academics. Their combined knowledge is encyclopaedic. I still get excited when talking about travel – so why not talk about it with friends!

For emerging hoteliers listening to your podcast, what practical lessons or habits do you hope they take away?

Learn from the best! And the Guests on this podcast are true, recognised leaders in their field. If the listeners can take away one nugget of gold from each Guest – whether it be a practical, how-to or a “think outside the box” – then I have done my job!

Find Episode 1 of Inside Luxury Travel podcast: Genuine Hospitality here

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