Sound advice

“Anti-ageing is not about botox – it’s about taking a look at what’s inside you and changing your lifestyle and routine. If you love yourself and have a better mental picture of your lifestyle, it makes a big difference. You can even reverse ageing,” says Jacobs.

His own health has even improved thanks to changing his diet. “I had a nagging cough for around 20 years and no-one could really tell me why,” he muses.

But after listening to Dr Steven Gundry and removing most fruit, carbohydrates and food with high levels of lectins - found in grains, beans, some vegetables, and plants belonging to the "nightshade" family, such as tomatoes – the cough has virtually gone. Plus he lost about 20lbs in six months.

“Honestly, weightloss was never my aim, but health is,” he says.

And what is health without sleep – helping guests get the zzzzz they need is a big focus, with Six Senses working with experts such as with Gundry on how to improve sleep and how certain foods help you sleep better, as well as specialists in jet lag.

“Nutrition really is everything, so we are focusing on the dietary offering at the hotels so it is nutritionally sound,” he explains.

With the belief that sleep is also integral to health and guest comfort, Jacobs says Six Senses has also spent the past year researching the perfect bed.

“You have to have the right materials to allow the heat to move and flow freely and be released from the bed and through the bedding,” says Jacobs.

“We’ve found someone who can do it for us - he’s in Devon!” laughs Jacobs, talking about Naturalmat, which hand makes the beds using only natural materials.

European expansion

All guests in the latest addition to the group, the 57-room Six Senses Douro Valley hotel in Portugal, will be sleeping on these beds and Jacobs plans to roll them out to the other nine hotels in the group.

Douro is the group’s first hotel in Europe and Jacobs calls it “extraordinarily beautiful, real postcard stuff”. The company inherited an old country house with a Balinese-style interior which he says “just didn’t work”.

“We’ve brought it on brand and it was one of the first times we had to create something that wasn’t on a gorgeous beach somewhere in Asia,” he says.

Jacobs worked with Clodagh (like Madonna, she goes only by one name), an Irish-born, New York-based designer, who calls her style “life-enhancing minimalism”.

Jacobs describes the hotel as very organic, with natural design and boasting very comfortable rooms with incredible views. Given its location in Portugal’s Unesco protected World Heritage area of the Douro Valley, The Wine Library seems a fitting addition, with an array of ways guests can learn more about and enjoy wine.

They can also try tapas, cheese, smoked hams and local sausage while in there. Jacobs says the resort features 730 wines, most of them from the valley. There are nightly tastings and many hosted by winemakers who come into the hotel.

“They are not snobbish like some nationalities of winemakers we could mention,” he jokes. “It’s a very interactive hotel.”

In the wild

One of the other quirks is “forest bathing” – no, not sitting in a vat of water among the branches, more contemplating life while suspended in a “meditation nest” in the forest, or taking a stroll. This Japanese term has been used to describe a gentle and quiet walk in the woods “with all the senses open to every sound, smell, colour and feel of the forest”.

The hotel also offers a “tree climbing programme” to get guests engaged with nature; guests can also take advantage of Six Senses’ visiting practitioner programme which features more than 100 of the “world’s best wellness healers, practitioners and experts".

“I like to think we offer a very layered experience – it’s about being contextual and remembering that we are care givers when guests are with us too,” Jacobs adds.

Coming soon on the radar is Bhutan, where Six Senses expects to have a circuit of five lodges, but before that, Six Senses Zil Pasyon, due in 2016 in Seychelles – ironically, Jacobs’ first ever general manager role was Fishermans Cove in Seychelles, aged 29.

And then? Simple - double the group’s size in three years.

He’s also keen to give spas the space they need and deserve within hotels. And he can speak from both sides of the fence now – as someone with a spa focus and someone having funded hotels in the past.

Prior to joining Six Senses, Jacobs was president of global hotel operations for private investment firm Starwood Capital and for the development of Baccarat and 1 Hotels – two brands that launched in 2014, but couldn’t be more different to each other.

Previous to Starwood Capital, he was vice president of operations Asia Pacific for Four Seasons, where his role also included being head of the hotel group’s spa task force when it launched in 2003.

“Hotel owners are always looking for return on every square inch of a hotel of course,” he says. “But we have to keep proving to them that spa guests actually spend more time at the hotel and spend more money during the stay overall.”

The average stay with Six Senses is five nights, he says, which would presumably be shorter if he got more of the city hotels he says the group is keen to find.

“London, New York, LA – Six Senses is very focused on a city hotel,” he says.

He says there is a possible hotel in Bali on the way and maybe event a project in Bora Bora, but adds that he would particularly love to “push the European agenda”.

“There seems to be a lot of distressed stock in Europe at the moment; having hotels in Spain, Portugal and Italy would be very attractive for us. I really believe Europe is where our opportunity is.”

A Brit himself, Jacobs went to Westminster Hotel School in London and received a diploma in French Civilization from La Sorbonne University in Paris then started his hospitality career in F&B with Trusthouse Forte.

And now it seems things have come full circle – his daughter is back in London with a career in hotels herself.

“She’s done plenty of other things, and we never really spoke about her working in hotels – she was in fashion but just had to get out, and this is where she has ended up,” he says.