The Story of Our Founder

by azulomo | 4 min read

A Journey, Gently Made

It Started with a Pause: Our Founder's Path

azulomo grew from more than twenty years of experience design, a lifelong fascination with interiors and place, and one increasingly persistent question: why do some experiences stay with us while others simply pass through? Founded by Elke Bretz, it brings those worlds together through Slow Living Hospitality™, a more human and commercially intelligent way of thinking about the places we choose to stay.

You could say it all began with sheep…

Not literally, of course. But growing up in Germany, I had a slightly romantic idea of England: rolling countryside, old houses, stone walls, villages and, inevitably, sheep. I was fascinated by places that felt different from my own and by the idea that where and how we live can change something in us. Eventually curiosity won. I spent time in Cambridge before moving to London to study business and marketing. Architecture had flirted with my heart along the way and, if I'm honest, never really left. Maths simply had other ideas…

I couldn't have known then that the two things I was most curious about, people and place, would eventually become the foundation for almost everything I do now. Much later, azulomo would emerge from the relationship between the two: how deeply understanding people can change the way we design places, experiences and value around them.

Why We Choose What We Choose

For more than two decades, my professional world has centred on experience design and a question I never seem to tire of:

Why do we choose what we choose?

What makes us stop, notice, trust or hesitate? Why does one experience feel instinctively right while another creates friction? What makes something feel valuable before we can necessarily explain why? And how can one seemingly insignificant detail change our perception of the whole?

I co-founded a digital agency and worked across more than 150 projects before moving into increasingly senior roles focused on experience design, behavioural insight and optimisation within global businesses. The environments were often digital, but the work was always much more about people than technology.

I spent years researching behaviour, observing journeys, experimenting with ideas and testing assumptions. It taught me to look beyond what people say they want and become curious about what they actually value. I saw how removing friction could change behaviour, how relevance could increase perceived value and how a seemingly small improvement in an experience could have a measurable commercial effect.

Most importantly, it taught me to look at the whole experience, not isolated moments within it. Once you learn to see experiences that way, it's rather difficult to switch it off. I began noticing it in interiors, in the places we travelled, in the hospitality that stayed with me and, eventually, in the question of why some stays simply mean more to us than others.

From Experience Design to Interiors

I've always been drawn to interiors, architecture and, more than anything, the feeling of a place. But somewhere along the way, I realised I was looking at physical spaces through much the same lens I had spent years applying to experience design.

I wasn't interested in making a room beautiful simply for the sake of it. I wanted to understand why one room made you want to kick off your shoes and stay awhile, while another, equally beautiful, somehow left you cold. Why people naturally gathered in one corner. Why evening light could change the mood completely. Why a view, a material, a scent or even the absence of noise could quietly shape how it felt to be there.

“My path here was never particularly linear. But looking back, the pieces make more sense than I realised at the time: a career spent thinking about experience and human behaviour, a love of interiors and place, and an increasing curiosity about why some places stay with us. azulomo is where those threads finally came together, built around the belief that the most meaningful experiences begin not with adding more, but with understanding what matters.”

That curiosity found its way into interiors and renovation projects of my own, alongside training with Natalie Walton and Three Birds Renovations. I became increasingly interested in natural materials, proportion, light and flow, but also in something my professional life had already taught me: never design the individual parts without thinking about the experience as a whole.

Of course, I had my influences. If interiors had spirit guides, Leanne Ford would probably be mine: effortless, soulful and just the right kind of unruly. Natalie Walton showed me the beauty of restraint and stillness, while The Lifestyled Co fed my love of grounded, earthy spaces and organic desert living.

But over time, I became less interested in recreating a particular look and more interested in understanding what sat beneath it. I started trusting my own rhythm: more mood than rules, more natural light and honest materials, more texture, imperfection and spaces that breathe. It wasn't really about developing a signature aesthetic. It was about creating a particular feeling.

Our converted barn in the English countryside became one of the most personal expressions of that. Craig and I gradually reshaped it around how we wanted to live, not simply how we wanted it to look. It later featured on BBC's Escape to the Country and in Cotswold Life, lovely recognition, but for me the more interesting part was what creating it revealed.

The spaces we loved most weren't necessarily those with the most in them. They were the ones that seemed to understand how we wanted to live.

Somewhere in that process, the connection became obvious. Interiors weren't separate from experience design. They were another expression of it.

Beauty mattered. But how a place made you feel mattered more.

When Life Hits Pause

Then, in 2020, life interrupted rather abruptly. I was diagnosed with cancer as the world was navigating a pandemic, and suddenly there was a great deal of stillness and a lot more time to think. I don't particularly like describing cancer as a gift because it certainly wasn't. But it did make certain things extraordinarily clear. Time stopped feeling abstract.

My husband Craig and I had been talking for years about the life we might create “one day”. Perhaps the pull towards space had always been there in both of us, just for different reasons. I grew up in Germany dreaming of somewhere beyond what I knew; Craig, originally from South Africa, grew up beneath those big, wide African skies. We imagined somewhere warmer, closer to nature, with more of life lived outdoors and the freedom to create something of our own. Portugal kept finding its way into those conversations, but there was always a perfectly sensible reason to wait.

After cancer, “one day” didn't feel quite as convincing.

I didn't want less ambition. Quite the opposite. I became much more particular about what deserved my time and ambition in the first place. For both of us, it wasn't about slowing life down for the sake of it, but living with greater intention: more freedom, more nature, more of what mattered and less of the busyness we'd simply learned to accept.

And somewhere in that shift, I began paying closer attention to the places we chose to stay: not simply how they looked or what they offered, but how they made us feel, and what stayed with us long after we left.

And Then It All Began to Connect

The more closely I looked at hospitality, the more I realised it brought together almost everything I had been interested in for years. Experience design. Human behaviour. Interiors. Place. Choice. Emotion. Perceived value.

“A stay begins long before someone walks through the door. Photography creates desire. Words help someone decide whether a place feels like them. Booking can create confidence or friction. Arrival sets an emotional tone. Interiors influence how we move, rest and connect. Service can make us feel cared for or wonderfully left alone. Place changes what becomes possible. And none of it is experienced separately. The guest experiences the whole.”

I found myself asking familiar questions in a completely new context. Who is this really for? Why would they choose it? What are they hoping to feel when they arrive? What matters to them that perhaps isn't being said? What creates trust? What creates friction? What will they remember? And what makes this particular place feel worth choosing over another?

One distinction became especially important to me: the difference between what a property has and what those things mean to the person experiencing them. A terrace can be an amenity. Or it can mean three-hour breakfasts with nowhere else to be. A rural location can be a postcode. Or it can mean silence, privacy and finally being unreachable. A beautifully designed bedroom can look wonderful in photographs. Or it can create that rare feeling of walking in, dropping your bag and immediately exhaling.

The physical feature and the human value aren't always the same. Once I saw that distinction, I couldn't really unsee it…! And somewhere inside that thinking, azulomo began to take shape.

Why azulomo Exists

I didn't create azulomo because I wanted to leave my previous career behind. Quite the opposite. I wanted to bring the best of it with me: the rigour of behavioural research and experimentation, an understanding of how perception shapes choice and value, and years spent looking at experiences through the eyes of the person actually having them. Then there was everything interiors had taught me about atmosphere, materiality, flow and the emotional power of physical space.

Hospitality gave those worlds somewhere to meet. And that became the territory for azulomo.

“Experience design and interiors. Behaviour and atmosphere. Commercial thinking and human feeling. Property and people. Not as separate disciplines, but as parts of the same experience.”

Over time, that thinking developed into Slow Living Hospitality™, the philosophy and methodology I created through azulomo.

At its heart, Slow Living Hospitality™ is about understanding more deeply: the person behind the booking, what they value, how they want to feel and what they are really seeking from the time they spend away. It brings that understanding into the way a stay is designed, experienced and ultimately valued.

Who is this stay really for? What do they value? What are they trying to escape, find or feel? How should that understanding shape the space, the experience and the way the stay presents itself to the world? And what should perhaps be taken away rather than added?

Because one of the most important things my earlier career taught me is that human experience and commercial performance aren't competing ambitions. When we understand what people genuinely value, we can create something that feels more relevant to them and more valuable because of it.

That belief sits underneath everything we're building at azulomo: Human feeling and commercial intelligence belong in the same conversation.

A New Horizon

Portugal had been sitting in the “one day” category for years. Eventually, one day needed a date.

Craig and I decided to leave England and begin creating our next chapter in Portugal. Certainly not retirement, and not an escape from ambition, but a different way of directing it. We wanted to live closer to nature, create things of our own and have more say over what filled our days. I rather love that azulomo is growing alongside this life rather than waiting for us to have it all figured out first.

We're not presenting a perfectly finished version of slow living from a safe distance. We're living some of the same questions ourselves. What do we really need? What makes somewhere feel like home? What deserves investment? What can be simpler? What should be preserved? What should change? And how do we create something meaningful without automatically assuming meaningful means more?

Perhaps that's why azulomo feels so personal to me.

It isn't simply a business I decided to start. It is where so many parts of my life finally found their place together: experience design and human behaviour, interiors and the emotional power of place, a difficult chapter that changed my relationship with time, and the decision to build what came next a little more deliberately.

There is serious ambition behind what we're creating. There is research, methodology, commercial thinking and a growing body of work behind Slow Living Hospitality™. But I never want azulomo to become so polished that it loses the very human question that started all of this for me:

Why do some places stay with us while others simply pass through?

Perhaps the answer was never about offering more. Perhaps it was always about understanding what matters enough to be remembered. That's where azulomo begins.

Elke Bretz
Founder of azulomo
Creator of Slow Living Hospitality™