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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A niche side of Colombia
Last year, 16 independent and boutique Colombian hospitality businesses came together to form Nuestra Cartagena. The collective goal is to present an experience of the city that’s niche, intimate and tasteful in an immersive way. Among its members are locally owned restaurants, beach clubs, one or two fixers who specialise in private experiences (shopping excursions, rum tastings, architectural walking tours) and independent hotels that are family-owned or part of local collections. Among these is Casa de la Renta, whose six suites are spread across three storeys in a townhouse on Calle Estanco del Tabaco: it’s a great, riad-like takeover property for a family or group wanting their own little clubhouse-with-service in the centre of town. There’s a grand second-floor living room and balcony, a small courtyard pool for cooling off, and a rooftop terrace for catching rays and sipping sundowners.
The Nuestra Cartagena network offers travellers guides on demand and preferred booking status at member restaurants and beach clubs on Barú and Tierra Bomba. The B Corp-certified Blue Apple Beach and The Pink Mango are both owned by Nuestra Cartagena founder Portia Hart and are two of the most popular on this coast.
New designs on Costa Rica
Esh, in Costa Rica’s surf-centric Nosara, is a new resort overlooking Playa Guiones. Despite the lush, humid situation – every building is canopied in littoral rainforest – the theme here is fire (“esh” is the Hebrew word for it). Some of the self-reverential rhetoric its owners throw about to this end (are Nietzsche quotes ever, ever relevant to a boutique hotel?) belies a very attractive-looking proposition that has already garnered a Michelin key.
The suites and villas are large and clad in concrete in various degrees of finish. The architects and designers looked to shades of ash for their palette, with statement walls painted tar-black, and the open-plan bathrooms reference textures such as basalt and lava stone. There are lots of outdoor bathtubs and quite a few private plunge pools. The restaurant, Almar, specialises in seafood, prepared as crudi with Pacific-coast accents or cooked, natch, over fire.
A low(er)-key Costa Smeralda
Hotelier Aldo Melpignano and his family helped put Puglia on the map with the multi-award-winning Borgo Egnazia resort and a smattering of elegant smaller masserie around Fasano. But over the past decade he’s expanded his reach with an array of hospitality projects, from Imagine, a sailing yacht that circumnavigates the globe, to December’s opening of Castel Badia, an 11th-century castle in the Dolomites remade as a 28-room heritage hotel. (This hot on the heels of relaunching the historic Hotel Ancora in Cortina d’Ampezzo last summer.)
Next up is Sardinia, where Melpignano has partnered with Dolce & Gabbana CEO Alfonso Dolce to manage La Tiara, Dolce’s 10-hectare private estate in the hills above Porto Cervo on the island’s north-east coast. Porto Cervo itself – low-rise, permanent population fewer than 500, and no less pretty for having been almost entirely manufactured in the 1960s by the Aga Khan – is a fixture on the global yacht-racing scene. It’s had its ups and downs, moving from the height of OG 1970s jet-set glamour to a 2000s vulgarity nadir, when a lot of post-USSR wealth of questionable provenance arrived at roughly the same time as Flavio Briatore’s Billionaire club. But recent efforts to reclaim some of its old cachet seem to be gaining purchase; LVMH Hotels has assumed management of two of the Costa Smeralda’s most historically exclusive resorts, the Romazzino – it’s now a Belmond – and the Pitrizza, which will fly the Cheval Blanc flag once its renovation is complete.
La Tiara, by comparison, is all understatement. The 26 one- to three-bedroom apartments (plus a rooftop penthouse) form a pretty clutch of stone houses, with two large main pools. It’s up the hill behind the marina, above the high-season fray, with far-reaching sea views. It proposes a semi-self-catering stay – service that’s there when you want it, from private chefs to a concierge who can book boats, beach loungers and tables, plus full-time housekeeping. The decor is contemporary and warm.
@mariashollenbarger
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