Sabrina Piccinin, Founder and CEO of Haute Retreats, shares how decades of experience across hospitality, villa operations, and private aviation shaped her approach to luxury travel. In conversation with the World Luxury Chamber of Commerce, she discusses personalization, cultural understanding, and why true luxury is built on trust, discretion, and genuine care.
World Luxury Chamber of Commerce: You have worked across multiple roles in hospitality, from hotel management to villa operations and even aviation. How have these experiences influenced the way you design and deliver a luxury villa experience today?
Sabrina Piccinin: Every role I’ve held has been a masterclass in a different dimension of service. Hotel management taught me the operational backbone — the unseen choreography that makes a guest feel effortlessly cared for. Villa operations then showed me the intimacy of private travel: the way a family settles into a space, the rhythms of a household, the subtle art of being present without being intrusive. And aviation — particularly private aviation — gave me an understanding of the ultra-high-net-worth traveler’s mindset at its most distilled. These clients aren’t just buying a seat or a bed; they are buying time, privacy, and the certainty that every detail has been thought of before they even think to ask.
What ties all of these together is that luxury, at its highest level, is invisible. When something is done truly well, the client never notices the effort — they simply feel at ease. That is the philosophy I have brought to Haute Retreats. We are not in the business of impressive brochures. We are in the business of flawless experiences, and that requires a team with genuine hospitality DNA, not just a beautiful website.
WLCC: Haute Retreats emphasizes personalization over instant booking. In a market that often prioritizes speed and scale, how do you maintain that level of human connection while growing the business?
SP: This is perhaps the central tension of what we do, and I think about it constantly. The temptation in this industry is to automate, to streamline, to build systems that scale efficiently. And to a point, technology is a wonderful enabler — it frees our specialists to focus on the conversations that truly matter. But the moment you replace a human being with an algorithm at the point of discovery, when a client is telling you about their anniversary, or their child’s milestone birthday, or the fact that their elderly mother has mobility considerations, you have lost something irreplaceable.
My answer has always been: grow the team before you grow the portfolio. We will never onboard more villas than our people can genuinely know. When one of my villa specialists recommends a property in Mykonos or the Amalfi Coast, it is because they have been there, they have met the household staff, they know which bedroom catches the best morning light. That knowledge cannot be manufactured, and it is precisely what our clients are paying for. Scale, for us, means deepening our expertise — not diluting it.
WLCC: You have lived and worked in several countries and cultures. How does this global perspective shape the way you select villas and craft experiences for an international clientele?
SP: It has given me a kind of cultural empathy that I believe is fundamental to doing this work well. When you have actually lived somewhere — not visited, but lived — you understand the difference between what a destination presents to tourists and what it genuinely offers to someone who knows it from the inside. That is a distinction our clients feel immediately, even if they cannot articulate why.
For villa selection, it means I am looking beyond aesthetics. A property can be architecturally breathtaking and still be the wrong fit for a particular client because the local infrastructure cannot support their expectations, or because the household staff does not have the language or cultural fluency to serve an international family gracefully. My global background means I ask those questions instinctively, because I have experienced those friction points firsthand.
And for crafting experiences, I think it makes me a better listener. When a Brazilian family arrives in Tuscany, or a Japanese couple retreats to the Maldives, or an American family explores the South of France for the first time, they each bring their own cultural relationship with leisure, with privacy, with food, with time. Understanding those nuances allows us to create something that feels genuinely tailored rather than generically luxurious.
WLCC: Many luxury travelers today expect more than just a beautiful property. What specific elements or services do you believe truly define a five-star villa stay in today’s market?
SP: The beautiful property is table stakes. If the pool is stunning and the view is spectacular, that is simply the entry ticket. What elevates a stay from remarkable to truly unforgettable — and what brings clients back year after year — lives in the layers beneath the aesthetics.
The first is the quality of the local team. A villa is only as good as the people who run it. A chef who cooks with market-fresh ingredients and adjusts their menu the moment a child declares they do not like coriander — that is luxury. A house manager who anticipates that after a long transatlantic flight, the family will want a light meal ready and the beds turned down without being asked — that is luxury. Training and cultivating local staff is something we invest in enormously.
The second is seamless access to experiences. Our clients are not looking for what they can find on TripAdvisor. They want the private winemaker’s dinner at a Barolo estate that is not open to the public. They want the boat captain who knows every hidden cove. They want the museum director who will open the doors an hour early. That level of access requires relationships built over years, and it is one of the most meaningful differentiators we offer.
And finally — and this has become increasingly important — it is the sense of genuine wellbeing. Rest, reconnection, digital detox, privacy. The most sophisticated luxury travelers today are not chasing stimulation. They are protecting their inner lives. A villa that provides a genuine sanctuary, where they feel safe and unhurried and completely themselves, is worth more to them than any amenity list.
WLCC: Looking ahead, where do you see the luxury villa and private travel sector heading over the next five to ten years, and what will clients value most in that future?
SP: I see several converging forces that will reshape the sector in profound ways. The first is the continued migration from hotel stays to private residences for longer, more immersive travel. Post-pandemic, something shifted permanently in how people think about travel. They want depth over breadth. They want to inhabit a place, not just visit it. That shift plays directly to everything Haute Retreats has always stood for, and I believe it will only accelerate.
The second is a heightened sensitivity to authenticity and sustainability. Our clients are increasingly asking not just whether a property is beautiful, but whether it is responsibly managed. Are the staff paid fairly and treated with dignity? Is the architecture sympathetic to its landscape? Is the food sourced locally? These are no longer fringe concerns — they are becoming central to the purchasing decision of the discerning traveler. We are building frameworks to assess and communicate this across our entire portfolio.
The third, and perhaps the most fascinating to me, is the rise of truly multigenerational travel. As wealth transfers across generations and as families increasingly prize time together over material acquisitions, we are seeing bookings that bring together grandparents, parents, and grandchildren under one roof for two or three weeks at a time. Designing experiences that speak meaningfully to a six-year-old, a forty-year-old, and an eighty-year-old simultaneously — that is a wonderful creative challenge, and it is one I believe will define the next era of luxury villa travel.
What clients will value most, ultimately, is the same thing they have always valued at the deepest level: feeling truly known and genuinely cared for. That will never go out of fashion.
Discover more about Haute Retreats and its collection of luxury villa experiences at HauteRetreats.com or connect with Sabrina Piccinin on LinkedIn for insights into the future of private travel.
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