Inside TemptingPlaces Collection: The Rise of Emotional Luxury
Frederick
Yannick Gavelle doesn’t speak about luxury as an achievement. He speaks about it as a sensation. After more than twenty-five years shaping high-end hospitality alongside Nicolas Dubois, he has reached a simple conviction: luxury no longer needs to prove itself, it needs to be felt.
Co-founder of Hôtels & Préférence in 2000, Gavelle helped redefine the landscape of independent 4- and 5-star hotels in France, favoring character over uniformity and experience over rigid codes. In 2017, the brand’s success attracted the Louvre Hotels Group. But rather than settling into an established model, Gavelle chose to open a new chapter. TemptingPlaces Collection was born from that desire to go further and deeper.
“Today, luxury is no longer merely a matter of status or social recognition; it has become a matter of feeling.”
This shift from status to sensation lies at the heart of the collection. TemptingPlaces doesn’t chase destinations or trends; it curates encounters. Each property is designed as a lived experience, where heritage and modernity coexist naturally, and where luxury reveals itself through emotion rather than display.
“The luxury we stand for is a form of connection, a link between people, between brands, between worlds.”
That link is felt in the quality of service, in the personalization of each stay, and in the care devoted to every moment. Here, refinement is quiet. Service is attentive rather than theatrical. The ambition is not to impress instantly, but to leave what Gavelle calls “a lasting inner imprint long after the stay.”
The French Touch, Reinterpreted
TemptingPlaces Collection is rooted in the French art de vivre, yet never confined by it. For Gavelle, the French Touch is not a formula to export, but a mindset.
“It is above all a way of being: a taste for detail, a sense of balance, a natural elegance that is never ostentatious.”
This identity provides a foundation, not a boundary. Each hotel enters into a dialogue with its territory, its architecture, its light, its materials, and the people who bring it to life. The collection doesn’t aim for sameness, but for coherence.
“Each property has its own soul and story,” Gavelle insists. “The balance lies in this carefully mastered tension between a shared signature and a great freedom of expression.”
That balance is what allows TemptingPlaces Collection to resonate with an international clientele: curious, cultivated, and increasingly drawn to places with meaning.
When Talent Listens First
Chefs, designers, mixologists, artisans… Collaborations play a central role in shaping the atmosphere of each address. But here again, restraint is key.
“We partner with talents because they share a sensibility and an ability to listen to a place before expressing themselves within it.”
The goal is never to overshadow the location, but to amplify it. A cocktail becomes a landscape, a pastry evokes memory, a design gesture reveals the soul of a space.
“A successful collaboration is one that is felt rather than named,” Gavelle says, because it integrates so naturally into the experience.
Excellence, boldness, and French savoir-faire act as quiet markers, present, but never dominant.
Instinct Over Expansion
As TemptingPlaces Collection expands – from Augerville near Paris to the Swiss Alps, and soon to Africa and beyond – growth is guided by intuition rather than strategy.
“Emotion always comes before strategy.”
A property joins the collection when it tells a distinctive story and carries an immediately perceptible soul.
Equally important is the human dimension. There must be alignment with the owner’s vision, a shared understanding of sincere hospitality and non-ostentatious luxury. The ultimate test remains deeply personal:
“Is this a place where we would genuinely like to stay ourselves, without artifice or rhetoric?”
A Human Thread
At the heart of TemptingPlaces Collection lies a long-standing partnership.
“Nicolas Dubois and I have known each other for over 25 years,” Gavelle recalls. What binds them is a shared belief in “a sincere, living, and embodied luxury where service is not measured in stars, but in emotions.”
Today, TemptingPlaces Collection is less a hotel brand than a promise: to delight hedonistic travelers with distinctive high-end addresses where every detail carries meaning. For the modern, open-minded traveler, this is luxury redefined – not louder, not flashier, but deeper.
A luxury that doesn’t show off.
A luxury that stays.
