Imagine checking into a hotel where yoga mats and circadian lighting are part of the room, 40% of a resort’s menu is vegan, and a plant-based butter candle melts at the table. This is the evolving world of vegan luxury travel—and Kim Kessler has helped shape it from behind the scenes.
This is also a very special milestone for The World Vegan Travel Podcast: our 250th episode! To celebrate, Brighde talks with Kim about the meeting point between luxury hospitality, vegan food and wellness travel. Kim shares how she encourages hotels to improve their plant-based offerings, the destinations she finds easiest to navigate as a vegan, and the memorable hotels and restaurants she has discovered around the world.
Meet Kim Kessler: Luxury PR Specialist and Lifelong Vegan
Kim Kessler has been vegan since she was 15 years old. She is the founder of KIPR Global, a public relations and wellness consulting agency specialising in luxury hotels, villas and travel destinations.
Kim has more than 20 years of experience in luxury hotel PR. Her career began with a boutique agency representing properties such as Hotel Bel-Air, Le Bristol Paris and The Merrion in Dublin. She later spent 14 years leading public relations for Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills.
Her work now sits at the intersection of luxury travel, wellness and vegan hospitality PR. Alongside running KIPR Global, Kim teaches yoga, has trained as a plant-based health coach and organises vegan yoga retreats.
From Four Seasons to Vegan Hotels: A Career Evolution
Kim’s role goes far beyond sending out press releases. She arranges carefully planned press trips that allow journalists from publications such as Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler and Forbes to experience a property firsthand.
This type of editorial coverage can be particularly powerful. Instead of a hotel telling travelers that it offers an exceptional experience, an independent journalist shares that story with readers.
Kim is especially drawn to vegan properties and wellness destinations. However, she also works with hotels that share her values around sustainability, organic farming and environmental protection. These include Playa Cativo Lodge on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula and ORIGINS Lodge in northern Costa Rica.
Even when a client is not vegan, Kim looks for opportunities to encourage better plant-based choices. This might mean suggesting a collaboration with a vegan chef, helping a hotel develop more thoughtful dishes or showing the team why vegan food makes sense for both guests and the business.
Why Hotels Are Making Room for Vegan Cuisine
The ethical reasons for serving vegan food matter deeply to Kim. However, she also understands that hotel owners and restaurateurs sometimes need a strong commercial reason to change.
Cauliflower Steak vs. Beef: The Business Case
One of Kim’s most practical arguments is that a beautifully prepared plant-based dish can offer an attractive profit margin. A hotel may be able to charge a similar price for an imaginative cauliflower steak and a traditional steak, while the plant-based dish may cost less to produce.
Vegan dishes can therefore help a hotel meet changing guest expectations while also making financial sense. The key is to give them the same care, creativity and presentation as every other item on the menu.
Leslie Durso and Four Seasons Punta Mita
Kim gives Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita as an example of what can happen when a hotel makes a genuine commitment to vegan dining.
She introduced the resort to vegan chef Leslie Durso, who has returned several times a year to work with its culinary teams. According to Kim, that long-term collaboration has helped the resort reach the point where approximately 40% of the dishes across its five restaurants are vegan.
Rather than treating vegan food as a token addition, the hotel has continued developing its offering over time. It is a useful model for other luxury properties: bring in an experienced vegan chef, train the existing team and build plant-based cuisine into the wider dining experience.
Wellness Floors, Yoga Mats and Circadian Lighting
During Kim’s years at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, she helped develop an entire wellness floor. Its rooms and suites included thoughtful features such as Alo Yoga mats and blocks, air-purification systems and circadian lighting. Some suites even featured Peloton bikes.
The wellness experience extended beyond the guestrooms. The floor was located alongside the spa, and plant-based food became part of the concept. The hotel first introduced a vegan menu and later hosted Matthew Kenney’s Plant Food + Wine restaurant for around a year and a half.
The project illustrates an important shift in luxury hospitality. Wellness is no longer limited to booking a massage during a hotel stay. It can influence the room design, lighting, air quality, movement, food and overall rhythm of the guest experience.
Kim has also organised events at Four Seasons Hotel Madrid that combined yoga with a completely plant-based brunch. On another occasion, sound healing was added to the programme. These experiences show how naturally vegan cuisine can sit alongside the wider wellness offering of a luxury hotel.
SHA Mexico: Longevity with a Plant-Based Foundation
Another property that impressed Kim is SHA Mexico, a health and longevity destination in Costa Mujeres.
Kim describes its menu as vegan at its foundation, with fish available as an optional addition. At the time of her visit, the food contained no eggs, dairy, butter or refined sugar. What stood out was the care given to each dish—not only its nutritional value, but also its flavour, presentation and creativity.
For Kim, SHA demonstrates how plant-based food can become an integral part of a sophisticated wellness programme rather than an afterthought or dietary substitute.
Three Vegan Italian Hotels You Need to Know
Kim and Brighde met by chance at LA VIMEA while Brighde was leading a World Vegan Travel trip through northern Italy. That serendipitous meeting eventually led to this episode.
Their conversation highlights three plant-based luxury hotels in Italy, each with its own distinctive character.
LA VIMEA
Located in Naturno in South Tyrol, LA VIMEA describes itself as Italy’s first purely vegan hotel. It combines organic plant-based cuisine with yoga, meditation, nature and an adults-only atmosphere designed around peace and wellbeing.
Paradiso Pure.Living
Paradiso Pure.Living is a vegan hotel high in the Italian Dolomites. Its combination of dramatic mountain scenery, an active lifestyle and creative plant-based food makes it much more than somewhere to sleep between excursions.
Brighde and Kim were both particularly impressed by the hotel’s cuisine. You can also discover more about the property in our earlier episode, Vegan Italy Hotel: Paradiso Pure.Living in the Dolomites.
Il Mansio
Il Mansio is an intimate vegan luxury inn near Lake Garda. Kim praises both its elegant accommodation and the quality of its plant-based dining. Its small scale creates a personal experience, while its location offers a base for exploring Lake Garda and northern Italy.
These properties show that plant-based luxury hotels do not all have to follow the same formula. One may focus on quiet wellness, another on Alpine adventure and fine dining, and another on the intimacy of a contemporary Italian inn.
OMNIA: When Vegan Food Becomes the Experience
For Kim, memorable vegan food is defined by the thought and passion behind it. Few meals illustrate this better than OMNIA, the intimate plant-based fine-dining restaurant at Paradiso Pure.Living.
Kim describes a multi-course tasting experience filled with playful details. A vegan butter candle melted at the table, while another course reimagined an egg in a nest. The dishes were designed to surprise guests rather than merely provide vegan versions of familiar meals.
Some World Vegan Travel guests described their dinner at OMNIA as the best meal of their lives. One guest was moved to tears by the care the chef had put into the experience.
Kim has found that same sense of intention at Aro Ha in New Zealand and at Sayuri Healing Food Academy and Café in Bali, where she completed two vegan chef-training courses.
Other favorites include Trilogy Sanctuary and Peace Pies in San Diego. Trilogy combines a vegan restaurant with yoga, music, dance and community events, while Peace Pies specialises in creative raw vegan food.
How to Navigate Vegan Travel in Mexico and Greece
Kim has spent years living and traveling in Mexico, and she has also explored Greece extensively. Her advice is reassuring: both destinations offer plenty of possibilities once you know what to look for.
Eating Vegan in Mexico
Kim cooks many of her meals at home, but she still finds a rich variety of local foods when eating out. Options may include:
- Guacamole and fresh corn tortillas
- Tacos filled with mushrooms, cauliflower or courgette
- Nopales, or cactus paddles
- Cauliflower ceviche
- Plantains, jicama and black beans
- Fresh coconuts, mangoes, avocados and pineapples
- Mole, provided the restaurant confirms that its particular recipe is vegan
The exact ingredients can vary between restaurants and regions, so it is always worth checking how a dish has been prepared.
Eating Vegan in Greece
Kim considers Greece one of the easiest places she has visited as a vegan. Traditional tavernas often serve naturally plant-based dishes such as horta, fava, boiled vegetables, fresh fruit and Greek salad without cheese.
In Athens, one of her favourite restaurants is Yi, whose name means “earth” in Greek. Its entirely vegan and gluten-free menu makes it especially appealing to Kim, who also avoids gluten.
Her experience is a useful reminder that vegan travel is not only about finding specialist restaurants. Learning which traditional dishes are naturally plant-based can make an entire destination feel more accessible.
Vegan Yoga Retreats in Careyes, Mexico
Kim’s work in luxury hospitality eventually led naturally to hosting her own retreats. After years of organising press trips, teaching yoga and studying plant-based nutrition, she realised that she could bring these skills together.
Her retreats take place in Careyes, the coastal community in Mexico where she lives. They combine yoga, vegan cuisine, swimming, jungle walks, boat trips and time to relax.
For her vegan yoga and cacao retreat with Andrew Sealy, Kim planned accessible yoga sessions, meals by vegan chef Louis Fisher and cacao ceremonies featuring Andrew’s Quantum Cacao. The yoga sessions take place at Casa Corazón, a peaceful open-air studio surrounded by the jungle.
Participants do not need to be experienced yogis. The classes can be adapted for different levels, and anyone who prefers extra rest is free to skip a session. The aim is to create a restorative experience rather than a demanding schedule.
Luxury and Veganism Are a Natural Pairing
Kim’s career challenges the idea that veganism and luxury occupy different worlds. In fact, the two can strengthen one another.
The best vegan luxury travel experiences are not defined only by expensive surroundings. They are memorable because someone has considered every detail: the ingredients, the wellbeing of the guest, the environmental impact, the presentation and the story behind the experience.
Kim’s work also offers a practical lesson for the hospitality industry. Vegan travelers do not simply want a bowl of plain pasta or a plate of grilled vegetables. They are looking for the same creativity, pleasure and sense of occasion as every other guest.
Reaching 250 episodes is an exciting milestone for The World Vegan Travel Podcast, and this conversation captures so much of what the podcast celebrates: passionate people helping to make travel more compassionate, imaginative and welcoming.
Listen to the full episode to hear more of Kim’s insights into vegan hospitality, luxury hotels, wellness travel and the destinations she loves.
Places Mentioned in This Episode
- Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills
- Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita
- LA VIMEA
- Paradiso Pure.Living
- OMNIA Plant-Based Restaurant
- Il Mansio
- SHA Mexico
- Careyes
- Playa Cativo Lodge
- ORIGINS Lodge
- Yi
- Trilogy Sanctuary
- Peace Pies
- Sayuri Healing Food Academy and Café
- Aro Ha
Other World Vegan Travel Content Connected With This Episode
- Vegan Italy Hotel | Paradiso Pure Living in the Dolomites
- Vegan Resort in Mexico | Our Stay at Palmaïa
- Santorini’s First Vegan Boutique Hotel
- Vegan Lake Garda | Discover Il Mansio, a Luxury Vegan Hotel
- Exploring Vegan Travel in Cyprus | Farah Shammas
- Luxury Vegan Hotels | Expert Insider on Transforming Travel
- Giannis Xanthis’ New Eco-Friendly Hotel in Rhodes
