Where a lifelong dream found its place

Some dreams don't announce themselves suddenly, they simmer quietly for years, waiting for the right moment to become real.

For Julien and Céline, the idea of creating or running a hotel had been living in the background for more than a decade. Not as a fantasy, but as something they kept returning to, turning over in conversations, imagining in different forms. They knew their skills were complementary: Julien had worked in restaurants and hotels since he was 15, had run his own restaurant, and carried a deep passion for natural wine, hospitality was in his DNA. Céline had discovered cooking as a revelation seven or eight years earlier and had launched a local products and takeaway food shop that people couldn't stop talking about. Her food was healthy, plant-forward and deeply nourishing in a way that felt both indulgent and intentional.

But alongside their professional experience, there was another layer to their dream—one that had been quietly shaping for just as long. Over the ten years before moving to Spain, they had trained extensively in reiki, energy work and aromatherapy. They didn't just want to open a hotel. They wanted to create a place where people could disconnect completely, where wellness wasn't an add-on but woven into the fabric of the experience, where food, nature, yoga, energy treatments and calm formed a coherent whole.

The question was never if they would do it. It was when.

The —— momentum

The moment arrived when Julien found himself in a professional transition—a shift that created the space and urgency to finally act. They looked at their lives and realized: if they were going to do this, it had to be now. Their eldest son was 11. If they waited much longer, uprooting the family would become harder, maybe impossible. They had the dream, the skills, the training, and now the timing. Everything aligned.

Initially, they thought they might work in someone else's hotel first to gain experience before opening their own. But when they looked at what they each brought—Julien's hospitality background, Céline's successful food business, their combined wellness training—they realized they could skip that step and open a smaller place directly. They didn't need to prove themselves to someone else first. They were ready to build it themselves.

So they moved to Spain, found a 15th-century farmhouse lost in the Catalan countryside between Girona and the Costa Brava, and spent a year transforming it into Mas Oms: a six-room boutique hotel that would become the physical expression of everything they'd been dreaming about for over a decade.

The —— vision

At the beginning, Julien and Céline imagined Mas Oms as something close to a permanent retreat : a place where guests would come explicitly for wellness, transformation, and deep rest. But they quickly realized that model wouldn't be economically sustainable yet. So they launched the hotel in a more classic format first: beautiful rooms, healthy breakfasts, wellness options available, but run like a small boutique hotel where people could simply come, relax, and enjoy the calm without any obligation to engage in yoga or energy work.

Over time, though, they've been able to bring the retreat side back to the center. Now, during the winter months when the hotel closes, they run four-to-five-day energetic retreats—immersive experiences they lead themselves, often with carefully chosen external partners. These aren't just yoga retreats; they're built around energy, transformation, deep sharing and the kind of inner work that becomes possible when you spend several days together in a quiet, held space. The exchanges that happen during those days are, in their words, what nourishes them most.

That's the heart of what they wanted to create: not just a place to stay, but a place where you can actually shift in your body, your energy, your relationship to rest and nourishment.

The —— design

Everything at Mas Oms is built around one idea: coherence. The experience shouldn't feel fragmented or contradictory. It should feel like all the pieces - food, space, activity, rhythm - are pointing in the same direction.

The setting itself supports this. The farmhouse sits in a quiet valley with views stretching between mountains and coast, surrounded by nature with no one around. Guests describe feeling like they've stepped out of time. The rooms are comfortable without being showy. The spaces are designed so people feel at home: they have access to the kitchen, there are reading nooks, areas in the garden made for meditation, a beautiful terrace, a pool that feels like it's floating in the landscape.

The food is central to the experience. Breakfast is their signature: healthy, protein-rich, à-la-carte, brunch-style, and generous in a way that feels indulgent even though it's nourishing. Historically, Julien and Céline prepared dinners themselves; now evenings are run by a partner couple who share the same food philosophy. The cuisine is largely plant-based, health-focused but never austere - guests often arrive with no intention of changing how they eat and leave having discovered they actually enjoy and feel better with more vegetables, less heaviness.

Wellness isn't pushed, but it's present. Guests can book massages, take yoga classes, receive energy treatments or they can simply sit by the pool, walk in nature and enjoy the art of resting. Many people arrive with no wellness plan and end up trying a session out of curiosity, sometimes leaving with a completely different understanding of what travel and rest can feel like.

The —— difference

Mas Oms doesn't announce itself as a wellness retreat or a spiritual destination. It's quieter than that. It's a farmhouse hotel where the food happens to be incredibly nourishing, where yoga and energy work are available if you want them, where the space feels designed to hold you rather than impress you.

But underneath that simplicity is something deliberate: ten years of training in reiki, energy work, and aromatherapy. A belief that food is medicine. A conviction that how you feel in a space matters as much as how it looks. A recognition that true rest requires more than a comfortable bed, it requires an environment where every element supports your ability to slow down, breathe, and reconnect with yourself.

Julien and Céline didn't build Mas Oms to be trendy or Instagrammable. They built it because they genuinely believe in this way of living and hosting. The retreats they run in winter—the energetic, immersive, transformative experiences they lead themselves—are what they want to develop more of. That's what feeds them. That's the purest expression of their vision.

And even when the hotel is running in its more "classic" mode, that vision is still present in every meal, every space, every conversation. You feel it without it being explained. That's what coherence actually looks like.