I'm Sebastian Swire

Welcome

I am now largely retired from professional life. I advise very selectively on questions of service, operations, and identity, most often in environments where reputation, standards, and long-term trust matter more than short-term performance. I take on only a small number of engagements each year, choosing those in which clarity, character, and coherence are genuinely at stake.

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Alongside this, I remain an active but discreet investor, with interests shaped by the same principles that inform my advisory work: judgement over haste, continuity over novelty, and substance over superficial appeal, even if, like most people, I have occasionally found myself persuaded by conviction rather than perfect foresight.

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Much of my professional experience has been shaped by the worlds of luxury hospitality, travel, and technology. I have worked with organisations represented on the TechTrak 1000 and within the Fortune 500, supporting leadership teams to act with foresight and integrity at the point where brand, culture, and guest experiences converge. The evolution of service under pressure and the enduring reality of refinement without substance continue to deeply engage me.
 

My perspective is grounded in Asia, yet the questions that preoccupy me are universal. They concern how organisations preserve character while scaling, how systems may be designed without sacrificing humanity, and how space, time, and trust, now among the rarest of luxuries, can be defended with intention.
 

The essays that appear here explore culture, service, and the shifting meaning of luxury. They are not written for fashion or the moment, but from a conviction that ideas shape practice and that practice, in turn, shapes reputation.