What The Luxe

Gilda Perez-Alvarado spent nearly two decades at JLL, ultimately as Global CEO of its Hotels & Hospitality group, advising the sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms behind some of the world's most significant hotels. She then crossed to the operator's side at Accor, where she went on to lead Orient Express.

In this episode, Fred Moore sits down with Gilda to trace how a brand born in 1883 is being rebuilt as an ecosystem of trains, hotels and yachts. They get into why every property celebrates its own era while carrying Orient Express as its surname, and why the newest chapter is a sailing yacht with 54 suites built to be chartered whole.

They also discuss what LVMH brings to the partnership and a service culture where the crew have no backstage to retreat to. Gilda also tells the story of the original 1929 carriages, spotted on Google satellite imagery near the border between Poland and Belarus and brought back to France in convoy.

Caroline Smith cut her teeth on brands from Glenfiddich and Sailor Jerry to Hendrick's and Balvenie, followed by a stint in brand licensing for character brands, before finding herself in the cruise category. A coffee her husband talked her into with Regent Seven Seas Cruises turned into more than a decade at the company, where she rose from EMEA lead to Chief Marketing Officer and has just taken on group responsibility for Oceania as well.

In this episode, Anant sits down with Caroline to unpack the business of selling luxury at sea. They discuss what it means to market a perishable product, where every unsold sailing is gone for good, and how that shapes a role split between building brand demand ten years out and spinning up campaigns in a matter of days. Caroline explains why discounting is a trap for an ultra-luxury brand, and why Regent spent years avoiding the word "all-inclusive" before leaning into it.

They also get into the Seven Seas Prestige, a ship 40% larger than its predecessors carrying only 10% more guests, its 9,000-square-foot Skyview Regent Suite, and the moment former Formula One driver Pedro de la Rosa looked out from his balcony at the old Valencia circuit and was visibly moved.

Dimitris Memos built MarineTraffic into the world's leading maritime intelligence platform before turning to the sky. Dimitris Kossyfas brought deep knowledge of the Greek islands and a storyteller's instinct for the brand. Together they co-founded Hoper after Memos nearly missed a friend's wedding on Patmos and realised Greece needed a faster way to connect its islands.

In this episode, Fred Moore speaks to the duo about building Greece's first helicopter airline: scheduled routes, bookable seats, 40+ connections across Athens and 14 islands. They discuss why the idea took 50 years to work, what it takes to run a fleet of helicopters day to day, how they think about luxury versus accessibility, and where vertical mobility goes next as flying taxis move from demonstration flights to reality.

Aja Raden began her career designing engagement rings before turning to writing, using books like Stoned and The Truth About Lies to trace how objects come to be considered valuable, and what happens when that agreement breaks down. In this episode, Anant Sharma sits down with Aja to unpack the myth-making behind the modern diamond industry, how De Beers and N.W. Ayer engineered scarcity where none existed and tied it so tightly to love that "diamonds are forever" became gospel. They also discuss the panic now gripping the Natural Diamond Council as lab-grown diamonds undercut the very story the industry built itself on and the origin story of the beads that bought Manhattan. A conversation about scarcity, storytelling, and what happens when an industry gets trapped by the mythology it invented.

Barbara Muckermann has led at nearly every altitude of the travel industry, from PR and trade through Silversea Cruises, MSC, and Loro Piana, to her current role as CEO of Kempinski Hotels, one of the oldest independent hotel groups in Europe.

In this episode, Anant sits down with Barbara to unpack the operational complexity behind luxury hospitality, comparing the economics of running a cruise ship against running a hotel, the wildly different booking cycles for each, and how metrics like ADR and TREVPAR actually shape the business.

They also discuss the shift toward brand-led leadership in hospitality, why so few luxury hotel CEOs still come up through pure hotel operations, and the origin story of Kempinski itself, a brand built on the idea that life is simply better lived well.

A conversation about scale, judgment, and what it takes to run luxury at every size.

Pär Heyden has spent his career at the intersection of precision design and brand building, from the tactile engineering of Hasselblad cameras to the industrial heritage of Volvo, and now as Head of Brand and Executive Creative Director at Polestar. In this conversation, Anant sits down with Pär to explore what it really means to build a considered brand from the ground up. They discuss why restraint is a competitive strategy in a sector defined by feature escalation, how Polestar approached the redesign of the in-car interface with the same craft typically reserved for physical materials, and why the automotive industry has consistently underestimated the intelligence of its customers. Pär also reflects on the role of retail space in shaping perception, the thinking behind some of Polestar's most distinctive brand moments, and where enduring value sits as mobility becomes increasingly software-defined.