Five hotels with the now factor

Top secret

Since opening Soneva Fushi in the Baa Atoll in 1995, Sonu Shivdasani has set a bar in the Maldives for both fantastical indulgence and quantifiable sustainability. Not much shaded area in that particular Venn diagram, but Shivdasani has made it work across a micro-collection of sandy, alfresco, “no news, no shoes” resorts. Soneva has long been a close to carbon-zero business; it was the first in the hospitality industry to commission a Total Impact assessment (in 2016), and one of the first in the world to have levied, in 2008, an environmental surcharge on every stay, whose proceeds might be directed as far afield as Mozambique (where the Soneva Foundation has engaged a reforestation NGO to plant 3.7 million indigenous trees).

Soneva Secret, which opened in late March, is both a culmination and a distillation of the Soneva haute-castaway paradigm. The location, in the remote Haa Dhaalu atoll – the westernmost point in the Maldives, accessed by a 75-minute flight from the capital, Malé – is its first selling point. Soneva Secret is the only resort for dozens of miles in every direction. “In my nearly 40 years of travelling the country, I’ve never come across such a unique environment,” Shivdasani says. “It’s a place where you see the marine ‘big five’ everywhere” – whales, manta rays, turtles, dolphins and sharks.

Go sparser and bigger was the plan: there are just 14 beach and overwater villas, but they start at about 4,800sq ft (and go up to nearly 12,500), including the ones in the atoll’s lagoon that can only be reached by boat (there’s also the Maldives’ first floating villa). Expect the usual Soneva array of fantasy accoutrements: bedroom ceilings that retract for stargazing, water slides, grey-washed wood walls, open-air baths. Each accommodation has three dedicated staff, including a private chef who prepares meals to order, any time of day, every day. You can reach the lagoon’s tower restaurant via zipline or schedule your sundowners with a side of snorkelling in search of dolphins; or get a lesson on coral restoration – another beneficiary of Soneva Foundation funds – from the resident marine biologist. soneva.com, from $3,200

Grand designs in London’s Paddington

The small French hospitality collection Lignée Hotels recently brought its quintessentially Gallic game to the heart of London. But the new Grand Hotel Bellevue is not, as might be expected based on their groovy French locations, in Marylebone or Westbourne Grove: it’s on Norfolk Square, a block from Paddington Station, dans le coeur de W2. It’s that slightly off-piste address, though, that allows for the exceptionally chic design to be accessible at exceptionally appealing rates.

Fabrizio Casiraghi, very much a designer of the moment (he’s currently busy with the Four Seasons in Rome), created interiors that bring out the sexy in what are occasionally pretty snug spaces: many of the top-floor accommodations – designated aptly as Cabin Rooms – recall superbly tasteful shipmates’ quarters. Casiraghi left the listed Victorian building’s bones alone, layering in dark-wood boiserie in a half-wall effect. There are his signature skirted sofas, burnt-orange and garnet palette, and plush wall-to-wall carpet underfoot. There’s no restaurant, but the Pondicherry bar is tiny and unassailable in its coolness, wrapped in tapestries designed by New York firm Bode and serving coupes of whatever your tipple of choice is. grandhotelbellevuelondon.com, from £200

A Bahamian Belle reborn

In the late 1960s and ’70s, Eleuthera’s Potlatch Club was a magnet for eccentric New York socialites, European royals, Hollywood A-listers along the lines of Greta Garbo, and the occasional rock star. Cut to 2016: Jamaican-American Bruce Loshusan and Cuban-born Bahamian Hans Febles come upon a series of tumbledown bungalows fronting a seven-mile stretch of pink-sand beach and are instantly smitten with them – and their potential. After a seven-year restoration, the Potlatch Club is back open, and billing itself as Eleuthera’s first proper luxury boutique hotel.

The original clubhouse – of 1920s provenance and updated in the ’60s by Ray James Holman Nathaniels, the Sri Lankan-born architect credited with bringing modernism to this part of the Caribbean – has been augmented with one-bedroom cottages and two more contemporary villas, for a total of 11 accommodations. The design is unadulterated Caribbean-colonial, with pastel block prints, coral-stone floors and much wicker and rattan. There is a restaurant and bar, a spa and gym – and 100-plus more beaches on the island waiting to be pitched up at. One to bookmark for a buy-out, next time a milestone occasion rolls round. thepotlatchclub.com, from $475

An haute auberge for Château La Coste

Some people make the pilgrimage to Château La Coste in Provence for art installations by the likes of Tracey Emin, Andy Goldsworthy and Damien Hirst. Others come for the architecture: Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer and Per Kirkeby have all contributed to the built environment. Still others just want a wander in the vineyards, a glass of the estate’s solidly good rosé and a nosh at one of the six restaurants whose kitchens are overseen by the likes of Francis Mallmann. Villa La Coste, an ultra-exclusive 28-suite hotel, has operated here since 2017.

Last month, a second property opened on the estate with a more pared-back atmosphere. Where the Villa elaborates its minimalism in glass and steel, the 76-room Auberge La Coste is all blush-hued local stone, forged-iron lights, cobbled lanes and whitewashed furnishings on unfinished wood floors. Some of them connect, making them perfect for families; for longer stays, there are a handful of studios with compact kitchenettes. Similarly straightforward is the gastronomy: there’s one restaurant, La Rôtisserie, which more or less does what it says on the tin; and one ground-level bar that’s all polished wood, red leather banquettes, and a mirrored backlit bar. chateau-la-coste.com, from €265

Casablanca, fit for a King

Fourteen years ago, the Royal Mansour opened in Marrakech under the auspices of Mohammed VI, Morocco’s king and the hotel’s owner. From its inception it was conceived down to the last detail to be hors classe – above and beyond any conventional five-star rating system – and a showplace for the finest Moroccan decorative arts and handcraft. It’s an extraordinary place: the accommodations are all riads, the spa a soaring white-on-white haven, the restaurant led by Hélène Darroze. Last month it was joined by a sibling property in Morocco’s biggest city. The Royal Mansour Casablanca is quite a different story: a namesake one, for starters, occupying as it does the original 23-storey building that housed El Mansour, the city’s first five-star hotel opened in 1953, from which the king’s group takes its name.

The redux is a metropolitan proposition all the way, from the fields of marble and the state-of-the-art tech in the 149 rooms, suites and apartments to the 2,510sq m, two-storey spa. La Grande Table Marocaine restaurant is on the 23rd floor, and there are two further eateries: Éric Fréchon is executive chef at La Brasserie, while Keiji Matoba, of Matoi in Ginza, has signed on at the Sushi Bar, where the sous chefs work in a foursquare open kitchen surrounded by benchtop and leather barstools. It’s all very sleek and urbane: the city’s old medina, just across the avenue and stretching to the Atlantic, provides contrast. royalmansour.com, from £436 

@mariashollenbarger