You know that time is precious to me, which is why I decided to structure this monthly letter as follows: a retrospective on the past month, an encounter with a creative mind, a taste sensation, a reflection to open up new horizons, an enlightening read, and a place where the values of hospitality are those that I love and cherish. TOMO is not just a newsletter. It is a companion that transforms readers’ time into something precious and unexpected.
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#9
Pioneer of time,
sower of emotions
December 11, 2025
For years, I stood firmly against anyone who wasn’t aligned with my vision. On principle, they were wrong. I later realised that, in fact, they were not wrong. And while I personally regret that hospitality has become so uniform, some travellers may find comfort in it and genuinely enjoy a beach club decorated by a major luxury brand or pool loungers emblazoned with logos. Having eventually accepted that there is room for every taste, my determination to champion a more meaningful and more authentic form of hospitality has only grown stronger. More than ever, I want to embrace this role as an activist for beauty and poetry, a guardian of the local spirit.
I did not always take the right approach when I founded Dar Ahlam, twenty-five years ago. It was a learning process, and at the time only a handful of us were willing to play by new rules. Today, creating micro-hospitality and developing satellites that move things in the right direction has never been easier. The challenge now is to bring together hoteliers who develop human-scale projects and place regeneration at their core. I have already begun, through the Considerate Collection of Small Luxury Hotels, of which I am a member, and through a series of seminars planned for 2026 to foster a more creative and more humane hospitality. I can share this with you ahead of time: my next Creative Lab will take place from 26 to 30 January at Dar Ahlam, and I have included all the details at the end of this newsletter should you wish to join.
Until then, the festive season will be an opportunity to reflect on the year drawing to a close. Focus on your learnings, your moments of wonder, your discoveries. On all the positive energies that surrounded you and all the opportunities you seized. For this final letter of the calendar, I wanted to highlight women, men and projects that carry meaning, beauty and truth. If any of these initiatives resonate with you, feel free to support them in whatever way you can.
Warmly,
Thierry
The person I want to tell you about today is Petit Miribel. Thirty years ago, this French woman moved with her husband to Peru’s Sacred Valley of the Incas. She quickly realised that disabled children in the region were being kept in stables among the animals. Together, they decided to create a foundation and a school to welcome all those rejected for not fitting into the norm. But for projects as ambitious as this one, the challenge is always the same: securing funding. This is how Petit came up with the idea of building a hotel near Urubamba, Sol y Luna. That is where I met her; we were both part of the Relais & Châteaux network. Since then, she has expanded her mission and opened a boarding school for abused and mistreated children. To me, the model is exemplary: the hotel exists to finance a local regeneration project. It is not a property carrying out actions simply to follow a current trend. It is a profound commitment, and this family’s work is truly remarkable.
Teaching children to eat better is also teaching them to take care of themselves, of others, and of their environment. This is the guiding principle of L’École Comestible, an association founded by food journalist Camille Labro, whose work I greatly admire. Through educational workshops in schools, she introduces future generations to the foundations of good eating and awakens their curiosity for simple, balanced food.
Personally, I had a deeply gourmand childhood, shaped by two major influences. On one side, my mother, who approached cooking by asking how she could make her guests happier. On the other, my late sister, who had left behind recipe cards I would pore over with the determination to live for both of us. When I had children, I asked myself how I would pass on this pleasure. I would make French toast at dawn so they’d wake up to the smell, organise picnics in the middle of the living room, dinner-party-style aperitifs, tasting menus based on an ingredient of their choice, flavour Olympics…
Today, I have four children who love to eat and cook, and I consider that a success. But globally, there is still a long way to go. What astonishes me today is the number of kilometres travelled by food before it reaches our plates. In the United States, we speak of an average of 2,400 km between production and consumption. Norwegian salmon is frozen on the boat before being shipped to China to be sliced and packaged, only to be sent back to Europe. In the Skoura palm grove, a family can no longer find seeds that are not hybrid. This is why our Food Lab, an experimental space open to the community and located five minutes’ walk from Dar Ahlam, is so important. What better way to access a culture than by eating its territory?
Two years ago, a friend told me about a golden opportunity: a certain Michael Lutzeyer was offering the chance to buy a beach hut in South Africa, right on the ocean, for a derisory sum. Everyone was interested. In reality, it was to help fund a shelter for penguins. I loved this way of capturing attention, and it made me want to learn more about his original project, the Grootbos Nature Reserve. Unlike the owners of the region’s spectacular lodges, he wanted to reveal hidden beauties—the ones concealed in small details rather than in the obvious. The premise is simple: when booking a safari to see the Big Five, one overlooks the invisible life at one’s feet. This gentle, poetic man therefore decided to make flower safaris his signature: guided walks inviting us to look more closely at the infinitely small and to reflect on what truly matters.
In the summer of 2017, I was scouting in Cambodia for 700,000 Heures. I initially planned a stay centred on the temples of Angkor and the Tonle Sap with its floating houses, but my plans changed when I encountered the Phare Circus, a troupe known for its performances in Siem Reap. Speaking with the founders of this project—blending circus, theatre and Khmer culture—I discovered they were single-handedly funding a school for 1,200 children in Battambang. The road to get there was under construction, the landscape was uninspiring, and yet I knew I had to do something within that circus. We restored the home of one of the founders and set up our trunks to host our first guests. The atmosphere was extraordinary: our clients could take part in creative workshops at the school, watch rehearsals, and experience life inside a troupe. After each performance, we hosted a dinner in the house’s gardens with all the artists. Everyone brought their own energy, and I will never forget those moments of joy, music, and dance. I was in Cambodia last month to continue the celebrations of my birthday (the famous Red60). I reconnected with some of the Phare Circus members, still with the same emotion.
In the second edition of TOMO, I told you about my unwavering admiration for the work of Françoise Nyssen and Jean-Paul Capitani through L’École Domaine du possible. A way of showing that difference is not a handicap and that having less always creates space for something more. For those who may not have the chance to visit the school in Arles, the eponymous book collection at Actes Sud was founded on the same values: highlighting original and innovative initiatives aimed at offering positive perspectives for the future. What I love about this collection is its scope: from education to agriculture, via architecture, energy and consumption, bridges are built between thinkers and practitioners so that everyone can use the tools they need. It is not utopian; it is a positive way of looking at what is happening in the world. Even if the sensational and the negative sell, I believe in the importance of focusing on the good and the beautiful in everyday life.
We are 1.4 billion people travelling across less than 5% of the planet. I repeat this figure often to show how necessary it is to give back more than we take from the Earth. The issue behind this is simple: people do not travel to remote areas because there is no hotel infrastructure. And this is precisely why micro-hospitality is the obvious answer to overtourism, wealth distribution, and the preservation of local life. The Tizkmoudine project, on the Memory Road, was born at the request of the community. The Global Heritage Fund had financed the restoration of collective granaries in southern Morocco, creating hopes for development. But no travellers came, and the NGO approached me to set up a hospitality project. From the moment I set foot in this ruined village, I fell in love.
We held numerous meetings with the men and women of the village to establish their list of priorities: structuring a weaving association, beginning memory-keeping work to safeguard oral tradition… We acted as their support system, purchasing equipment and organising training so the community could move towards autonomy rather than dependency. Today, residents are organising themselves into service cooperatives to meet the needs of the activity. No one is employed by us, and hospitality remains only a tool at the service of their development. I am convinced this is the only way to avoid creating dependency and to ensure that local life remains genuine.
> A column in Le Point (2025 gift supplement) in which I explore the notion of surprise. The richest experiences are born in moments of vertigo, and I have always viewed the unexpected not as a threat but as an opportunity.
> A creative seminar in collaboration with the consulting agency Zero, taking place from 26 to 30 January 2026 at Dar Ahlam. The Shift is a Creative Lab for hoteliers wishing to strengthen their positioning and create sincere, singular experiences. The workshop will be infused with the spirit of the House of Dreams, with excursions, staged meals and encounters with fellow visionaries who share the same mindset. If you would like to know more, the full programme is available here.
Photo credits : Eric Martin and 700’000 heures Impact