EQUIPHOTEL Luxury Trail by DELPORTE HOSPITALITY: 4th edition

Imagining the hospitality of tomorrow: a personal, independent selection serving a more responsible, more human and more demanding hotel industry

From 2 to 5 November 2026 at Porte de Versailles, EQUIPHOTEL hosts the 4th edition of the Luxury Trail (after 2018, 2022 and 2024). Laurent Delporte, founder of DELPORTE HOSPITALITY, has personally reviewed every application and selected nearly 130 products and services among the exhibitors of the EQUIPHOTEL show. The Luxury Trail Trophy will be presented on Tuesday 3 November.

Discover and download the selection: delporte-hospitality.com/en/parcours-luxe

A personal selection, to stand for values

The Luxury Trail is not a product ranking. It is a personal selection, signed by Laurent Delporte, that also defends strong values in the face of the hotel industry's challenges:

• Sustainable development and protecting the planet, at the heart of the entry criteria.
• Consistency between intentions and actions, especially in actions that support employees: their health, well-being and working conditions.
• The pursuit of excellence: product quality, personalisation, attention to detail.
• Generous hospitality: a way of welcoming that matters, because the welcome makes the difference between an acceptable stay and a memorable one.

The Luxury Trail Trophy extends this ambition. Presented publicly on Tuesday 3 November from 5:15 pm, during the show, it embodies generosity, generous hospitality and care for others. Above all, it puts one of the selection criteria in the spotlight each year, through a theme, to show the hotel industry how much the subject matters. In 2024 it went to Académie scientifique de beauté.

What is at stake: getting to the essentials, seeing further

Across 90,000 sq m and 1,200 exhibitors, a hotelier, an architect or an investor has only a few hours to find what will make the difference in their property. The Luxury Trail is a visit guide: it points to the solutions that truly serve upscale hospitality, and opens doors for companies that would otherwise remain unseen.

• Reinventing hospitality. Highlighting the products and services that move welcome from standard to tailored attention.
• Putting people first. A product has value only if it improves the guest experience and the daily life of the teams who use it.
• Making responsibility an entry criterion. No one can serve luxury any longer without thinking about their teams and their environmental footprint.
• Bringing worlds together. Large groups, family houses, young start-ups, and companies from other fields that bring fresh ideas to hospitality.

The approach: a selection that cannot be bought

Applying is free and open to EQUIPHOTEL exhibitors only. No place can be bought: only the quality of the application counts, which Laurent Delporte reads himself, product by product. Three criteria, the same for everyone:

• The real benefit of the product, for the guest as well as for the teams who use it.
• References that reveal the company's true positioning: hotels, spas, residences, venues open to the public.
• Concrete actions in social responsibility and environmental protection.

Each laureate receives the official Luxury Trail signage for their stand, a "Luxury Trail by DELPORTE HOSPITALITY" logo to use in all their communications, and exposure in DELPORTE HOSPITALITY Magazine, on Laurent Delporte's social networks, in the newsletter sent to more than 10,000 professionals, and in his talks during the show.

What makes Laurent Delporte the right person to choose?

An international eye and a head start. Laurent Delporte travels the world and analyses magnificent hotels to share these experiences in DELPORTE HOSPITALITY MAGAZINE: this view lets him spot trends and anticipate the hotel industry's needs before they are voiced. His background is unconventional: twenty-five years in luxury hotels, notably with Accor and Sofitel, then expertise in hospitality strategy. He designs hospitality charters for companies and supports them in putting them into practice. He is also an international trainer and keynote speaker, named "Top Luxury Speaker of the World", and ranked among the world's top 100 hotel industry influencers by Global Hospitality Magazine and the International Hospitality Institute.

This year he celebrates 15 years of DELPORTE HOSPITALITY Magazine: one article every five days in French and English, interviews with some of the most respected leaders and chefs in the industry. A partner of the EQUIPHOTEL show for more than ten years, he created the ORIGINE Room in 2016, which gathered some twenty suppliers around a vision of the guest room of tomorrow, and then, with the show, this Luxury Trail, launched in 2018.

The purpose: sharing what I see, what I feel

For Laurent Delporte, each edition means several weeks immersed in hundreds of applications, then three days at the show meeting the people who wrote them. He speaks in the first person:

"Luxury is not a product category. It is a level of exigency around an approach to excellence."

"What moves me is never the product alone. It is the person behind it: a craftsman whose family has carried a house for generations, a young founder who bet everything on one idea, a team that redesigned a tool because a room attendant had a sore back. That is hospitality: care for others, down to the details nobody sees."

"What makes hospitality strong is the generosity and warmth of those who practise it. The Luxury Trail works the same way: we form a community of companies that share the same values of excellence."

"The Luxury Trail is not only a tribute to luxury. It is a commitment to a hospitality that inspires and elevates."

Beyond luxury: the hospitality of tomorrow

The Luxury Trail does not gather luxury players only. It also welcomes companies whose products can serve this market and change it: bio-based materials, new ways of managing energy, AI-assisted tools for food and beverage, habitats for biodiversity, soft mobility, modular outdoor stays. Tomorrow's luxury will be played out as much on sobriety as on rarity, on responsibility as on beauty.

Among the companies selected in 2026: ABSOLIN (bio-based decorative plaster made with French flax), Birdies Villa (an architectural habitat for birds, in partnership with the Ligue pour la protection des oiseaux), Okoto (AI-assisted food and beverage performance management), Le Bon Tuyau (cooling, heating and hot water for hotels), VACAY (exceptional electric bikes and related experiences), LUMIPOD (modular outdoor accommodation), as well as houses well known to palaces such as Duravit, Vista Alegre, Brintons, DUMAS PARIS, Yves Delorme Hôtellerie, Winterhalter or Samsung, and signature workshops and designers.

Practical information

EQUIPHOTEL Paris, 2 to 5 November 2026, Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Luxury Trail Trophy ceremony: Tuesday 3 November. Laurent Delporte is on the DELPORTE HOSPITALITY stand no. B029, hall 7.3.

Full selection and download: delporte-hospitality.com/en/parcours-luxe

Press contact: Laurent Delporte | +33 7 60 69 88 70 | laurent@delporte-hospitality.com | www.delporte-hospitality.com

About DELPORTE HOSPITALITY

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY supports hotels, luxury brands and service companies in creating unique experiences for their guests, employees and partners: hospitality consulting and diagnostics, hospitality strategy and charters, training and coaching, keynotes and leadership seminars. Its founder, Laurent Delporte, speaks at leading schools and trade shows (HEC, EQUIPHOTEL…) and works for hospitality with a positive impact on people and the planet.