Posted on 14 December 2008
Auberge Resorts, whose properties include Auberge du Soleil in Napa and Esperanza Resort in Los Cabos, Mexico, brought its signature quiet luxury to the Southwest when it opened Encantado resort outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, this month. The 57-acre resort is home to 65 casitas, a full-service spa, signature restaurant, and lounge. The 1,125-square-foot one-bedroom casitas, with separate living, dining, and outdoor patio spaces, start at 5 per night. The 10,000-square-foot spa, fitness center, and yoga studio is influenced by the area’s Native American heritage. The signature treatment ―dubbed the Ojo Caliente Purification Ritual―is inspired by the mineral-rich waters from the local Ojo Caliente natural hot springs. Terra, the resort’s restaurant, features seasonal produce and herbs grown in an on-site biodynamic kitchen garden and prepared by chef Charles Dale, whose training includes an apprenticeship at New York’s Le Cirque. (www.encantadoresort.com)
—Alexandra Foster
Posted on 14 December 2008
Get a seat trackside at the world’s first-ever twilight Formula One Grand Prix from the rooftop viewing decks of the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore. Guests staying in suites will have access to the hotel’s rooftop viewing platform, which offers sweeping views of the Singapore River as well as the entire 61-lap F1 circuit. Other extras include a champagne and cocktail reception on the roof on qualifying and race days, access to the hotel’s full-service spa, limo transportation to and from the hotel to Singapore’s Changi Airport, and a daily champagne buffet breakfast at the hotel’s Town restaurant. Packages from September 25 through the 28―race days―require a minimum stay of four nights, inclusive of both dates, and start at ,500 per person, per night. (www.fullertonhotel.com)
—Alexandra Foster
Posted on 14 December 2008
Visitors arrive at the Peninsula Tokyo in green Rolls-Royce Phantoms, the Hong Kong–based hotel group’s signature cars. Managers then usher their guests into the hotel’s cavernous lobby, where Japanese businessmen from the neighboring Marunouchi financial district and women in high heels drink cocktails beneath a transfixing concave light fixture that sparkles with 1,313 bulbs.
Posted on 14 December 2008
It took the Rosso family, the owners of several small, exclusive hotels in Italy, several years to convince Milan’s city government to approve their plans to develop the Town House Galleria. Beyond the usual difficulty in getting past one of Italy’s labyrinthine bureaucracies, the boutique property required special consideration because of its proposed location: inside one of Milan’s most famous landmarks, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a massive, architecturally stunning indoor arcade compl
Posted on 14 December 2008
The St. Regis Singapore is the first major luxury hotel to be built in this tiny island nation in 10 years.
Posted on 14 December 2008
The British monarch who ruled the largest empire in history would no doubt be pleased by the new 2 million ocean liner that the fabled Cunard Line recently christened after her. By any standard, Queen Victoria, known simply as “the QV,” is an imposing vessel.
Posted on 14 December 2008
Located 26 miles south of Cancún, the Mandarin occupies a one-mile-long, 150-yard-wide sliver of land that stretches from the region’s main highway to the Caribbean Sea. Reflecting pools line a thatch-roofed pavilion at the front of the property, where guests board golf carts for a ride through the jungle, past a cenote (a freshwater sinkhole), and along canals to their rooms.
Posted on 14 December 2008
In Munich, Germany, new boutiques and fashionable wine bars mingle with the city’s traditional beer-hall, brass-band gusto. This merry dance of old and new continues at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski München, a 150-year-old grande dame that occupies a commanding position on the broad Maximilianstrasse.
Posted on 14 December 2008
The historic Hotel Caruso, Orient-Express Hotels’ fourth property in Italy, incorporates the excavated remains of an 11th-century palace, a colonnade that dates to the 17th century, and buildings and artworks from the 1700s. But the property, which opened after a million restoration in 2005, does not lack for modern comforts.
Posted on 14 December 2008
Since 1867, the Amstel has been a fixture on the banks of its namesake river in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The hotel became an InterContinental property in 1981 and since has reduced the number of accommodations (which now total 55 guest rooms and 24 suites, most with views of the Amstel River).