It’s impossible to ignore Sir Richard Branson. He whizzes past me rocking his signature blond mane on his way back down the ferrous Atlas Mountains—and I’m still wheezing up to the turnaround, wishing I’d chosen an e-bike on our 30-mile ride.
The 74-year-old billionaire moves quickly. He’s here in Morocco for the opening party of his 20-year-old, 42-room Kasbah Tamadot resort, about an hour south of Marrakech, which has been rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of Sept. 2023. But for a guy who lives on a private island, kitesurfs with Barack Obama, and unearths new properties primarily by circumnavigating the planet via hot-air balloon, Sir Richard is surprisingly egalitarian.
“I love people,” he says over lunch, before asking the guy next to me if he’s going to finish his branzino. No? Okay. “Move that plate over here,” he says before scarfing the filet down. “Wonderful.”
During the meal, the sun is high over the Atlas, the sounds of Berber music echoes across the valley, and Branson has some big ideas. The conversation floats from the war in Ukraine (he’s working with Zelenskyy on permanent funding) to the Hamas-Israel War (“I have an organization with an idea for a two-state solution, but with a twist,” he reveals). He talks about his son’s band, his sister’s chic kasbah, the historic Caïd’s palace El Fenn in Marrakech, his beloved mother’s philanthropy and the lessons she passed on to him before passing in 2021.
Kasbah Tamadot has been fully reimagined since the devastating earthquake.
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“We’re just trying to be proper citizens in the places where we own property,” Branson says between bites.
At the Kasbah, that means hiring only Moroccans, from the manager down, and keeping them all employed during the pandemic and the earthquake and its aftermath. Through his Eve Branson Foundation (EBF), created by and named for his late mother, he and his family built a new primary school in the village of Imi Oughlad, which now seats 140 students. A textile shop sells rugs made on-site by female villagers and a woodshop supports young men, all learning and practicing ancient skills. From the town of Asni up to the Kasbah, the road is now littered with EBF trash cans, their mere presence instilling a newfound cleanliness and pride of place in the Tamadot area.
“I was thinking how my mum is now a rubbish bin, and that she’d smile at that,” he says with a cheshire grin.
He’s got a soft spot for family: this dyslexic kid from London turned self-made billionaire is still married to Joan, whom he met when he was just 25. His daughter, Holly, a trained medical doctor, recently took a leadership position atop Virgin’s philanthropic endeavors, while his son, Sam, is on the hunt for new properties to add to the Virgin portfolio when he’s not gigging with his band.
The Berber tents and the revamped Kasbah Tamadot resort are spectacular.
Matt Livey
But, now in his later years, he’s thinking about legacy, and the future of his sprawling privately held business, Virgin Group—which now includes an airline, a fitness center, a space exploration company, a cellular provider, trains, cruise ships, wines, music, nonprofits, and of course hotels.
“We’ll keep the business in the family, but the money that comes out of it will go toward other stuff,” he says.
By “other stuff” he means the Branson family’s catchall nonprofit, Virgin Unite, which works with partners around the world to tackle seemingly impossible problems—from climate change to ocean health to criminal justice reform. Groups like The Elders, the Carbon War Room, Human at Work, Audacious Ideas, and his mother’s EBF deploy Virgin money and human capital to make meaningful change locally and globally.
“If you lose your reputation, you lose all you’ve got,” he declares.
In Branson’s telling, his job is to create and grow companies that provide a net benefit to the world we inhabit. It’s why he rebuilt Kasbah Tamadot to be better (the new tents are stunning) without prohibitively raising rates, while expanding the pre-school across the ravine from the Kasbah after the earthquake. It’s why he doesn’t view his Virgin Limited Edition (VLE) group of experiential retreats as “luxury” properties, but as experiences to enhance a life well lived.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t think about ‘luxury,’” he says. “We just look for places in the world that are completely unspoiled and completely unique and completely special. And they are rare.”
In 2023, VLE welcomed Mallorca’s Son Bunyola into the portfolio of nine distinctive properties (Finch Hattons in Kenya, was added last year). For two decades, Branson had been dead set on restoring the 16th-century finca that sits on the historic 810-acre estate set along three miles of untouched coastline and backdropped by the vast Tramuntana mountain range. He’d acquired the land in the mid-1990s, sold it in 2002, bought it back in 2015, and finally—when the bureaucrat who stood in his way retired—he used his signature speed to rebuild the 27-bedroom retreat.
“There aren’t many places in the world that you can go where there is no light pollution, where you can sit looking at the stars, where there are not a lot of people, where the food is exquisite,” he says.
It took Branson two decades to repurchase Spain‘s Son Bunyola.
In that way, it shares many characteristics with Necker Island, Branson’s official residence in the British Virgin Islands. He purchased the 74-acre private island in 1978 for less than $1 million in today’s money, transforming it into one of the first VLE properties when he opened his home to buyout visitors in 2000. More recently, he’s allowed for individual room rentals during peak seasons, thus welcoming almost-regular folks to that pristine Caribbean escape, which also happens to be a successful lemur refuge.
But, perhaps ironically, VLE’s growth has been purposefully slow. The collection encompasses five properties on the African continent (including Ulusaba in Sabi Sands), another in the BVIs, a chalet in Verbier, and now Son Bunyola.
“The way I look at is Virgin Hotels is a hard brand. Each one’s design is inspired by each destination, but you know you’re in a Virgin Hotel,” says James Bermingham as CEO of the Virgin Hotels Collection, which includes eight properties in America and the U.K. “VLE, on the other hand, is a house of brands, where you have nine extraordinary retreats that are uniquely different from each other but brought together through what we call the ‘red thread:’ a focus on sustainability, community engagement, giving guests the opportunity to enjoy the best of the location, heartfelt service, and super luxury but delivered in a very comfortable way.”
That seems less like a marketing plan, and more of a reflection of the way Branson lives his life. Like when he says that he’ll stay “wherever” when he goes to the Serengeti next week with his son and nephew to check out a potential new property, somehow, I believe him.
“We are trying to create the absolute best in everything we do and if people think it’s luxurious, then that’s fine,” Branson says. “But we would not do the sort of pretentious luxury that some hotels do, which is superficial luxury, in my opinion.”
