Beyond the Architecture: What Aman's Next Chapter Really Needs
Beyond the Architecture: What Aman's Next Chapter Really Needs
Aman did something almost no luxury hospitality group has attempted: it built an empire on scarcity, restraint, and silence. No loud branding, no crowded lobbies, no performance of luxury — just space, stillness, and staff who seemed to know what a guest needed before the guest did. That formula didn’t just build a hotel company. It built a devotion. “Amanjunkies” is not a marketing term; it’s a description of what happens when hospitality stops feeling transactional and starts feeling like being received.
Twenty-plus years on, Aman is in the middle of the hardest transition a founder-era luxury brand can face: scaling a feeling. Urban towers in New York and Tokyo, private residences, members’ clubs, a fast-growing sister brand in Janu — all commercially sound moves, and all of them place the brand’s original DNA under a kind of pressure it was never designed for. The architecture is still extraordinary. The question the industry keeps circling, gently but persistently, is whether the soul is scaling at the same rate as the square footage.
That question is not really about design. It’s about people — and it’s where Heart-Based Hospitality with Spiritual Intelligence (HBH/SQ) has something concrete to offer.
1. The Diagnosis Aman Already Knows
Strip away the analysis and the pattern is simple: Aman’s original service model was never built on Standard Operating Procedures. It was built on staff who stayed for years, who were trusted to read a room rather than follow a script, and who related to guests as a host relates to a welcomed friend rather than as an employee executes a checklist. That kind of service cannot be written down. It has to be held — by people who are, in that moment, genuinely present.
Scale strains exactly that. Faster openings compress the runway staff need to absorb a property’s unspoken rhythms. Competitive labour markets mean less tenure, more turnover, and less accumulated intuition passed from senior staff to new hires. And at US$2,000–US$4,000+ a night, the commercial pressure to formalize — to make service auditable, consistent, defensible — pulls naturally toward protocol. None of this is a failure of standards. It’s what happens when an intangible, human quality is asked to scale through conventional hospitality-management tools that were built for consistency, not presence.
The result, as guests increasingly describe it, is a widening gap between the physical experience and the emotional one: architecture that still produces awe, service that is technically excellent, and yet fewer of the unscripted, effortless moments that made Aman feel like sanctuary rather than accommodation.
This is not a training gap. It’s a capacity gap, in particular, a spiritual capacity gap, and training, in the conventional sense, cannot close it.
2. Why SOPs Can Standardize Behaviour But Not Warmth
2.1 The Limit of SOPs: Every luxury operator has SOPs, and Aman’s are presumably excellent. But an SOP governs behaviour: what to say at check-in, how to fold a towel, when to offer a chilled drink. It cannot govern the quality and feeling of attention behind the behaviour — whether a staff member is genuinely tracking the guest in front of them, or executing a well-rehearsed sequence while mentally elsewhere. Guests feel this difference instantly, even if they can’t name it. It’s the difference between being served and being seen.
This is the exact distinction Heart-Based Hospitality with Spiritual Intelligence is built around. HBH/SQ starts from a premise that runs counter to most hospitality training: warmth is not a skill you teach, it’s an inner state, a range of capacities – spiritual capacities – that you cultivate — and once cultivated, the right behaviour arises on its own, without a script. Developing spiritual capacities in a heart-based hospitality environment is the solution Aman needs.
Where conventional service design asks “What should staff do in this situation?” HBH/SQ asks “What state does a staff member need to be in for the right response to emerge naturally, gently, and lovingly, even in situations no SOP anticipated?” It treats presence, compassion, loving-kindness, and genuine care not as soft add-ons to operations, but as developable, sustainable capacities — the same way an elite athlete develops focus, or a surgeon develops calm under pressure.
Practically, this means building rhythms and developing capacities that include the spiritual essence of hospitality into a property’s culture that most hotel groups never touch: brief pre-shift moments of grounding rather than only briefings, a shared language among staff for recognizing when they’re operating from genuine presence versus autopilot, and leadership practices that model heart-based engagement and Spiritual Intelligence rather than only enforcing compliance. None of it replaces SOPs. It sits underneath them, as the interior condition that determines whether the SOP is executed as choreography or as heart-based care.
2.2 Examples of Spiritual Capacities in HBH with SQ
When applying Spiritual Intelligence to hospitality—especially the deeply energetic, heart-centered approach focused on unconditional love and compassion—leaders and staff tap into what are widely recognized as the Seven Capacities (or Dimensions) of Spiritual Intelligence. Developed through ecumenical and grounded research by scholars like Yosi Amram, these seven capacities directly fuel the ability to break past the traditional “5-Star SOP ceiling” and create an environment of limitless, genuine, loving warmth.
Consciousness: The capacity for deep, refined self-awareness, mindfulness, and presence. In a hospitality setting, this means being completely anchored in the present moment with a guest, operating with intuitive awareness rather than just running through a robotic script.
Grace: Living in alignment with a higher or sacred sense of purpose, which manifests as an organic love of life, gratitude, and trust. This is the capacity that allows staff to project authentic joy and energetic warmth that guests can instantly feel.
Meaning: Finding profound significance and a “call to service” in daily activities, even during difficult or stressful shifts. It shifts the mindset of the staff from “I am just doing a job” to “I am actively uplifting another human being’s day.”
Transcendence: Moving beyond the egoic self (the “me vs. you” mentality) into a state of interconnected wholeness. This capacity is what unlocks the ultimate “I-Thou” relationship with a guest, allowing for deep empathy, unconditional loving-kindness, and true compassion.
Truth: Living with an open heart, open curiosity, and acceptance of all people. It removes judgment and allows hotel staff to embrace diverse guests with genuine, non-judgmental care and open-minded hospitality.
Peaceful Surrender (Serenity): The ability to maintain inner peacefulness, centeredness, and equanimity. When an operation gets chaotic, this capacity allows staff to let go of defensive ego reactions, remaining soft, gentle, and calm under pressure.
Inner-Directedness: Possessing the inner freedom and moral compass to act out of pure wisdom and love, rather than being strictly bound by rigid external rules or fear of reprimand. It gives staff the courage and autonomy to make heart-centered decisions on the spot to delight a guest.
These 7 capacities shift hospitality from being a series of physical checklists (the “what”) to an energetic and spiritual standard of care (the “who we are being”). The capacities form the structural scaffolding of the Integrated Spiritual Intelligence Scale framework. However, underneath those seven overarching categories sits a rich map of 22 distinct, granular sub-capacities (or sub-scales).
When looking beneath the surface of the core dimensions, the remaining capacities show exactly how spiritual intelligence manifests in daily interactions and high-vibration service.
3. How This Maps onto Aman’s Specific Pressure Points
3.1 Urban expansion and brand dilution. Aman’s identity was built on remoteness and low density — qualities a tower in Manhattan or Tokyo cannot replicate architecturally. This is the crux of Aman’s urban problem: the brand is expanding into cities that structurally cannot deliver the thing the brand promises.
HBH/SQ offers Aman a way out of that trap. The premise is simple: a guest’s sense of sanctuary was never really about the number of neighbouring rooms — it was about the quality of attention they received and the feeling that attention created. Density and remoteness were only ever the delivery mechanism for that feeling, not the feeling itself. Which means the feeling can, in principle, be delivered by a different mechanism.
That’s the opening HBH/SQ exploits. Instead of trying to manufacture seclusion in a city — an unwinnable fight against geography — Aman can cultivate in its staff the same interior stillness that seclusion used to produce externally. Heart-based attention, grounded in the developed spiritual capacities of SQ, becomes a portable substitute for physical distance. It travels to a city tower in a way low density never could.
For Aman specifically, this reframes the urban expansion problem from a liability into an opportunity:
It protects the brand promise instead of quietly diluting it. Aman doesn’t have to market a compromised version of sanctuary in its cities — it can deliver the real thing through a different channel, keeping “Aman” meaning the same thing everywhere.
It’s a capacity, not a location, so it scales. Remote sites are inherently limited — there are only so many untouched landscapes left to build on. A developed interior quality in staff has no such ceiling; it can be developed and deployed anywhere Aman opens next.
It’s harder to copy than architecture. Any competitor with capital can buy a remote plot and build low-density rooms. Deliberately cultivated staff presence, developed over time through SQ practice, is a much deeper moat.
It compounds. As the text notes, this isn’t a fixed quality to install once — the capacities can be developed further, meaning the guest experience keeps deepening rather than plateauing, unlike a location’s remoteness, which is fixed the day the site is chosen.
HBH with SQ buys Aman brand consistency across a geographically incompatible portfolio, a scalable and defensible differentiator, and a growth path that doesn’t cannibalize the very asset (sanctuary) the brand is built on.
3.2 High turnover and uneven execution in rapidly launched properties. Conventional onboarding transfers information; it does not transfer presence, and presence is exactly what takes years to develop the traditional way — which is why long-tenured staff felt irreplaceable. HBH/SQ shortens that runway by developing the underlying capacities directly and explicitly, rather than hoping it accumulates as a byproduct of tenure. It also tends to have a retention effect of its own. Staff who feel their work has genuine meaning, and who are given real tools for sustaining themselves emotionally in a demanding role, do not burn out and they leave less often. That’s a direct answer to the labour-market pressure Aman is facing, not just a service-quality initiative.
3.3 The shift from intuitive care to protocol-driven service. This is the heart of the “Amanjunkie” complaint, and it’s the one architecture and capital genuinely cannot fix. It requires staff who are not just permitted to act intuitively, but who have developed the actual inner capacities to do so reliably, under commercial pressure, at scale. This is precisely what HBH/SQ develops — not as a one-time workshop, but as an ongoing cultural practice embedded in daily operations with support of a deepening programme.
4. What This Could Look Like in Practice
None of this requires dismantling what Aman has built. Aman’s challenge was never really about capital, aesthetics, or execution — those remain world-class. It’s about re-anchoring the one thing that made Aman Aman in the first place: hospitality that feels like it’s coming from a person who is genuinely, fully there. That quality can scale. It just requires treating it as what it actually is — a cultivated human capacity — rather than something that will simply survive growth on its own.
4.1 Ultra-Exclusive DNA vs. Mass-Market Scaling
The Challenge: Aman built its legendary reputation on being an ultra-exclusive, low-key sanctuary (“Aman” means peace). Properties historically averaged just 30 to 40 villas, fostering a deeply intimate, unscripted environment where staff treated guests like family.
The Failure Mode: Under aggressive private equity ownership and global expansion, Aman is rapidly scaling into massive urban properties (like Aman New York and Aman Bangkok) and launching mega-projects with hundreds of residential units.
Culture Disconnect: As guest and resident foot traffic multiplies, the quiet, soulful intimacy that defined the original brand is easily lost. Frontline employees, who once provided deeply personalized care, are forced into highly structured, high-volume operational systems, making the service feel increasingly corporate and detached.
How HBH with SQ Could Help: HBH with SQ shifts the anchor of sanctuary from physical seclusion to the internal energetic state of the staff. In high-density urban towers and residential developments where, architectural quietude cannot be duplicated, staff trained in spiritual intelligence cultivate an interior stillness and deep presence. By mastering heart-centered grounding, employees create micro-sanctuaries of genuine connection amidst high foot traffic, ensuring every guest feels individually seen, held, and enveloped in peaceful loving-kindness rather than processed through a high-volume system.
4.2 High-Net-Worth Commercialization vs. Pure Hospitality (SQ)
The Challenge: Aman historically attracted “Amanjunkies”—discreet, ultra-high-net-worth individuals who valued privacy, understated luxury, and a spiritual connection to nature and local cultures.
The Failure Mode: Recent hyper-commercialization, massive price hikes, and a heavy pivot toward real estate sales have shifted the brand’s demographic. The resorts now increasingly attract highly demanding, transactional consumers focused on status, social media visibility, and material luxury.
Culture Disconnect: This shift strains the staff’s Spiritual Quotient (SQ). It is incredibly difficult for employees to deliver authentic, heart-centered care when the underlying brand culture feels less like a peaceful sanctuary and more like a high-transaction luxury club. The service risks shifting from intuitive hospitality to rigid, transactional boundary management.
How HBH with SQ Could Help: HBH with SQ equips staff with the energetic resilience and spiritual capacity needed to handle demanding, transactional interactions without becoming defensive, robotic, or burnt out. Grounded in unconditional love and compassion, staff do not mirror a guest’s transactional energy; instead, their heart-warming care actively de-escalates tension and elevates the emotional atmosphere. This transforms service into an intentional practice of energetic elevation, softening status-driven encounters and protecting frontline teams from emotional depletion.
4.3 Rigid Standardization vs. Intimate Property Autonomy
The Challenge: Original Aman resorts operated almost like independent, boutique estates. Property General Managers had total freedom to craft bespoke, hyper-localized guest experiences on the fly.
The Failure Mode: To support its massive global pipeline, the corporate office has introduced centralized structures, standardized operational procedures, and unified brand guidelines to ensure consistency.
Culture Disconnect: Imposing rigid corporate handbooks suppresses the spontaneous, heart-centered generosity (HBH) of the staff. When employees are restricted by strict corporate protocols, they lose the creative autonomy needed to deliver those unexpected, highly personalized magical moments that original Aman guests expect.
How HBH with SQ Could Help: HBH with SQ establishes shared spiritual values—compassion, unconditional love, presence, and loving-kindness—as the operational foundation underneath traditional SOPs. Rather than relying on rigid behavioural scripts to guarantee standards, leadership develops the inner faculties (the spiritual capacities) of the staff so that authentic, intuitive responses arise naturally. This protects brand consistency across a growing pipeline while granting employees the energetic confidence and creative freedom to deliver unscripted, deeply personalized moments of magic.
4.4 Brand Dilution via Sub-Branding (The Janu Effect)
The Challenge: Aman launched its sister brand, Janu (meaning “soul”), specifically to capture a younger, more social, and high-energy demographic through larger, trendier properties.
The Failure Mode: Managing two distinctly different hospitality philosophies under the same corporate umbrella stretches cultural and training resources thin.
Culture Disconnect: Because the corporate talent pool is shared, the high-energy, fast-paced mindset of Janu can easily bleed into Aman’s sacred, slow-paced sanctuaries. Without a hyper-clear framework rooted in SQ, the internal corporate culture becomes confused, leading to inconsistent guest experiences across both portfolios.
How HBH with SQ Could Help: HBH with SQ provides a unified energetic language that clarifies the distinct expressions of “soul” across both brand identities. While Aman requires a quiet, contemplative, and grounding heart energy (the stillness of peace), Janu channels an uplifting, playful, and dynamic heart energy (the vitality of social connection). Developing staff in SQ enables them to consciously modulate their energetic output to match each brand’s specific emotional rhythm, preventing cultural bleed and ensuring that both peace and playfulness are delivered with profound authenticity.
5. Criticism of the New Aman Online Across Luxury Travel Communities
This is most notably on forums like FlyerTalk’s Luxury Hotels Forum, Reddit’s r/FATTravel, and luxury travel blogs (such as TravelSort). Veteran “Amanjunkies” frequently debate how the brand has shifted under Vladislav Doronin’s ownership and aggressive global expansion. The commentary revolves around several recurring themes:
5.1 The Loss of the “Adrian Zecha Era” Soul
Then vs. Now: Longtime junkies draw a sharp line between the original era of founder Adrian Zecha and the modern corporate era. In the past, Aman was run like a collection of intimate, private estates where General Managers had total autonomy and staff treated guests like personal houseguests.
The Critique: Forum members often lament that the resorts feel increasingly “commercialized,” “corporate,” and managed by institutional balance sheets rather than pure hospitality passion.
5.2 Transactional & Scripted Service
Mind-Reading vs. Checklist: A hallmark of the original Amanjunkie experience was the “invisible, mind-reading staff” who knew preferences without asking and never presented a bill to sign.
The Critique: Reviewers note that newer properties (and even some legacy ones) exhibit standard corporate hotel behavior—staff asking for room numbers, signing checks, reading scripted greetings, or failing to anticipate basic needs. On FlyerTalk, this is frequently described as “Four Seasons service at triple the Four Seasons price.”
5.3 “Vertical Amans” & Urban Over-Expansion
Seclusion vs. Urban High-Rises: Aman’s identity was historically rooted in remote, low-density sanctuaries (Amanpulo, Amanjiwo, Amankila).
The Critique: The rollout of urban towers (Tokyo, New York, Bangkok) and residential developments has sparked substantial debate. While the architecture is widely praised, guests frequently complain that urban properties bring crowd density, street noise, and an influx of non-staying restaurant/bar patrons that completely destroys the feeling of a private sanctuary.
5.4 Shifting Demographics (“Seen and Be Seen”)
Understated Discretion vs. Status Display: Traditional Amanjunkies valued extreme discretion, privacy, and understated simplicity.
The Critique: Many loyalists complain about the crowd at newer properties like Aman New York, Amangiri, or Aman Venice, noting a shift toward “influencers,” high-net-worth status seekers, and an atmosphere geared toward nightlife, social clubs, and merchandise rather than restorative peace.
5.5 Skyrocketing Rates vs. Diminishing Value Price Gouging Concerns: With room rates starting at US$2,000 to US$4,000+ per night at marquee properties, online reviewers frequently point out that service execution no longer matches the price point.
The Critique: Discerning travellers voice frustration when paying record-setting luxury prices only to experience staffing shortages, rushed service, high staff turnover, or pre-opening operational glitches.
These online critiques highlight that Aman’s struggle is not about physical aesthetics or architectural talent, but an emotional and energetic spiritual capacity gap created by scaling faster than traditional intuition can be passed down.
6. Conclusion
What HBH with SQ offers Aman, in the end, is not a rebranding exercise but a way of carrying its core promise into terrain its original architecture cannot reach. Sanctuary was never really made of distance and density — it was made of the quality of attention a guest received, and that quality can be cultivated in people as reliably as it was once engineered into a landscape.
Developed this way, Aman’s spirit of hospitality becomes portable, scalable, and genuinely difficult to imitate: portable, because it travels into a Manhattan tower as readily as it lived on a private island; scalable, because human capacity has no ceiling the way remote real estate does; and inimitable, because any competitor can buy seclusion, but few will do the deep, patient work of cultivating heart-based presence at scale.
Most importantly, it compounds — the interior capacities at the centre of SQ are not a fixed asset installed once, but a practice that deepens over time, so the guest experience keeps growing richer even as the brand keeps growing larger. For Aman, that is the real opportunity in HBH with SQ: a way to expand without diluting the very thing that made expansion worth pursuing in the first place.
Peter McAlpine is the creator of Heart-Based Hospitality with Spiritual Intelligence (HBH/SQ), a guest-experience methodology and direction focused on cultivating the capacities of genuine presence and care as the foundation of luxury service. Learn more at heartbasedhospitality.com
