Preferred Hotels and Resorts has just announced 20 new additions to its global portfolio, which now spans more than 625 properties across 80 countries. Twenty is a lot to wade through, and honestly, not all of them are for us. But several are, and they are worth knowing about.
Start in Bali. Ametis Villa Bali in Canggu is a 14-villa property with private gardens and pools, joining the group’s upper-tier L.V.X. Collection. Canggu has become a lot of things in recent years, many of them not particularly good for the kind of traveller who reads this site. A small, design-forward all-villa property is a different story, and this one looks like the right kind of outlier.
In France, Boscolo Hotel Lyon and Spa brings 132 rooms in a lovingly restored 1890s building in Lyon’s Presqu’île district. Lyon is one of those cities that serious travellers have always known about and the rest of the world is only just catching up with. A proper boutique-scaled property in the heart of it is overdue.
The one to put in the diary is ENVI Paje in Zanzibar, which opens in June. Twenty-two villas on Paje Beach, with a wellness programme rooted in what the hotel calls an African Wellbeing Philosophy, blending local cultural practices, spa treatments, water sports and a genuine eco-conscious approach. That framing could easily be hollow, but the property’s scale and specificity suggest something more considered.
Elsewhere in the batch, Loewen Hotel Montafon in Schruns, Austria brings a year-round alpine option for those who find the obvious Swiss and French alternatives a little too obvious. And NANNAI Noronha in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, joining the L.V.X. Collection, is notable simply for the location: Fernando de Noronha is one of the most protected and beautiful archipelagos in the Atlantic, with strict limits on visitor numbers. A new property there is always worth paying attention to.
The full list of new Preferred Hotels and Resorts members is at preferredhotels.com.