For Chinese luxury hotel chain Songtsam’s founder Baima Duoji — who was born in Kena Village, a Tibetan community in the Shangri-La region in Yunnan Province — home is a sacred idea, and one that came to define his luxury hospitality proposition, which now spans 20 properties in Southwestern China.
During a talk at WWD’s Global Fashion & Beauty Summit in Wuhan, Baima shared his journey as an entrepreneur, which sprang from an existential crisis after nearly two decades of making documentary films.
“I spent 20 years engaging in intellectual pursuits, I was exhilarated every day, convinced that I was a miracle of humanity, capable of thinking so many profound and important ideas, I even took my films to Cannes,” recalled Baima.
“The reality check came when I began interviewing people who felt inauthentic, they were pretending to think deeply about things, I felt detached from my work, what I once cared about didn’t really matter anymore,” Baima added.
In 2000, using two plots of land he inherited and with only 60,000 renminbi, or around $9,000, Baima opened his first hotel, Songtsam Green Valley Lodge beside the Songzanlin Monastery in an area named for a mythical place, Shangri-La.
The entrepreneur’s journey quickly expanded along the historic Tea House Road, an ancient route used to transport tea from Yunnan toward Tibet — Baima remembers his grandfather telling him about the journey, which could take months and depended on a brief window between melting snow and winter weather.
Designed to connect travelers with local communities and landscapes, the founder described the company’s mission as “helping more people encounter nature and Tibetan culture,” said Baima.
“I believe my own people’s culture is an exceptionally powerful and great culture,” Baima said.
Out of the company’s 2,000 employees, about 1,800 are locals — for Baima, emphasizing local employment is in pursuit of a larger goal, which is to help employees gain confidence in their own culture and ensuring guests treat it with respect.
During the conversation, Ji Xiao’an, Baima’s longtime friend and the founder of SKP, inquired about how Songtsam could convey his idealistic ethos within a business context.
“Where does this conviction come from? Is it family upbringing, education, or education within the company? How do you help people act with such generosity?” asked Ji.
To answer, Baima shared an anecdote of how he taught employees to take sympathy on city-dwellers.
“I told my employees, people from these big cities are unfortunate, they only understand themselves, they spend all day scheming and don’t realize that so much suffering comes from being constantly guarded and suspicious,” said Baima.
“I also told my team, don’t ever let SOPs [standard operating procedure] erase who our employees are,” said Baima. “Many of our employees didn’t even finish middle school. If you hand them an SOP, they may no longer know how to do their jobs. Do what you can professionally, but as long as the guest is happy, that’s what really matters.”
Baima also invoked the Tibetan story of Shambhala — a place imagined as a source of lasting happiness. “All the joy in the world comes from wishing for others to be happy, all the suffering in the world comes from wishing only for oneself to be well,” Baima recited.
Conservation also informs another part of the company’s purpose. Dubbed “living in harmony with nature,” the project was conceived alongside the hotel business and Baima urges all visitors to foster connections with living creatures big and small.
“If we can build that awareness in people’s hearts, perhaps there is still hope for the world,” Baima said.
To conclude, Baima offered an outlook on artificial intelligence, with his signature humanistic approach.
“Humanity — including what we call AI — is really just capital fighting against capital. What’s so extraordinary about that? The world isn’t as extraordinary as people make it out to be. The culture that has been passed down for thousands of years is the true source of strength,” said Baima.
“A lot of you may travel to outer space one day, if you look down, you will see a big white section that’s my home, it is the highest place on earth, and it’s what I call home,” added Baima.
