From Balance To Compounding
For years, corporations have spoken about “work-life balance.” It’s a phrase that sounds reassuring yet to many feels increasingly unattainable. Minet’s sees it as too black or white: “Balance is a very static concept. You are either in balance or you are not. Longevity is more of a pursuit.”
That shift — from static balance to dynamic compounding — reframes the entire wellbeing agenda. Minet uses a simple mathematical metaphor. Improve by 1% each day — 1.01 to the power of 365 — and the compound effect is 37. In theory, you are 37 times improved over the course of a year, just by tweaking the everyday.
To make those numbers come alive, he’s launched The Novotel 37 Collective as a global community of experts, creators, athletes and advocates who “make longevity practical, accessible and relevant to real life.” It’s not about perfection, they will insist, but about consistency.
“The 1% mindset is explicitly not about perfection,” he told me. “It’s consistency and compounding. Small shifts that feel realistic, even on the most hectic travel day.” This may sound like branding rhetoric, but the implications are strategic. Because once you shift from optimising to compounding, you democratise the model.
Longevity stops being about elite protocols and becomes about pragmatic shifts:
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Smarter meeting menus designed to support sustained focus.
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Lobby spaces redesigned to encourage informal connection.
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Sleep environments engineered to reduce friction and cognitive overload.
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Family room configurations and price discounts that support multi-generational travel without constant compromise.
This is longevity translated into everyday systems design.
Democratising A Megatrend
“Longevity is not a niche trend," insists Minet. "Longevity is a megatrend. It’s reshaping our world, and our industry.” That’s the strategic opportunity he is seizing.
By 2035, a growing share of consumers and travellers will be significantly older. Multi-generational travel will increase. Business travellers will increasingly span five decades of age and more. Energy management — not just time management — will become central to productivity.
Yet most industries still treat longevity as a medical issue or an HR issue. The hospitality has the potential to treat it as a product issue. Minet is explicit about the current distortion: “Longevity seems to be a goal of everyone, but a benefit of the happy few.”
Mid-scale brands, in particular, are positioned to democratise what luxury wellness has so far monopolised. Because the real market is not the retreat guest with the 1-week getaway; it is the millions of ordinary travellers moving through airports 52 weeks of the year. If longevity remains exclusive, it will remain marginal. If it becomes embedded in everyday experiences, it becomes structural.
More Than Family-Friendly, Family-Strengthening
Novotel has long positioned itself as family-friendly, since its inception in the 1960s when it built business growth on new national policies for paid vacation. Under a 21st century longevity lens, that experience is feeding innovation in new directions.
“The lens is shifting from being family-friendly to family-strengthening,” Minet explained, a subtle but important increase in ambition. Multi-generational travel — mixing grandparents, teens, and toddlers — requires environments that reduce friction while facilitating autonomy. Better sleep for children. Smarter food for energy. Shared spaces for connection.
Longevity here is not about adding spa treatments. It is about creating the conditions for familial harmony. In an ageing society, that matters.
The Workforce Mirror
The longevity lens also reframes internal workforce strategy. Hotels are powered by people — what Accor has always called its “heartists.” If the guest experience is designed around sustainable energy, health and longevity, the workforce model must reflect the same.
“If there is one industry that is really human and will continue to be human, it’s hospitality,” Minet said. “People need purpose, progression and connection. They need longevity in their career.” Longer careers demand progression across life stages. Retention becomes tied to purpose and wellbeing. Schedules, training and culture compound in the same way habits do. In a global context of ageing workforces, this is not a soft benefit. It is a competitiveness strategy.
CEOs in France seem to be leading the way in integrating longevity into their business and workforce strategies.
Quiet Wellbeing
Perhaps the most intriguing phrase Minet uses is “quiet wellbeing.” It echoes, he notes, the evolution of luxury itself. Two decades ago, status was overt. Logos were loud. Today, quiet luxury emphasises craftsmanship, discretion and authenticity.
Wellbeing is following a similar arc. Yesterday’s performative gym culture, the extreme diets, the public optimisation rituals are giving way to something subtler. Consumers are tired of being shamed into improvement. They want environments that make better choices easier, not more visible.
“There is no shaming. No judging,” Minet said. “If you eat a little bit better today, that’s already achieving longevity.” Quiet wellbeing is not about showcasing virtue. It is about embedding it effortlessly.
This extends to sustainability. Novotel has entered a multi-year global partnership with WWF to protect oceans — an acknowledgment that planetary health and human health are interdependent. Longevity without sustainability is incoherent. Healthspan in a collapsing ecosystem is a senseless contradiction.
Hospitality As Laboratory
Why call hospitality a “laboratory”? Because it is one of the few industries that:
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Shapes daily behaviour.
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Operates across cultures.
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Serves multi-generational customers simultaneously.
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Integrates food, sleep, movement and social interaction in a single ecosystem.
It’s like a life system in miniature. If longevity is about redesigning life across longer horizons, then hotels — especially global ones — become testing grounds for how that redesign might look at scale. The brands that understand this earliest will not simply market longevity. They will operationalise it. And Novotel shows how you can do so quietly, in small 1% efforts.
The longevity economy will not be won by those who shout the loudest about lifespan. It will be shaped by those who embed healthspan into everyday systems — incrementally, consistently, sustainably. From biohacking to business travel, the laboratory has moved. And it may be hiding in plain sight in your next hotel stay.
Check in, and check it out.
By Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
