Europe’s coolest three-star boutique hotels

Those five-star ratings aren’t easy to get. There are about 200 boxes you have to tick. Each room has to have — to pluck out a few random requirements — sewing kits, shoe horns and flexible vanity mirrors, plus the hotel must have a restaurant with room service. (Fun fact: Switzerland created international hotel ratings in 1979.)

Looking out over the snow-covered houses in Mürren

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Three stars has often meant tired, cynical and boring chain hotels, but there’s a chink of light on the accommodation horizon: a lower rating is fast becoming the banding of choice for the hotel industry’s mavericks, romantics and eco-serious. And the designer and entrepreneur Touhami has form for being all three.

Born in 1974, he has experienced peaks and troughs during his career, from being homeless for a year in Paris to, about five years later, being hired by Liberty in 2003 to revolutionise its menswear. Touhami was given the French version of a knighthood in 2020, and two years ago the perfume company Officine Universelle Buly 1803, which he owned with his wife Victoire de Taillac, was snapped up by the luxury behemoth LVMH.

“This hotel is only 2 per cent of my turnover,” says Touhami, “but it is my lab.” The hotel café has touches from his design studio ARI (Art Recherche Industrie; a-r-i.ch), including furniture that slots together without nails or glue, in tribute to traditional Swiss mountain architecture, and espresso cups with handles that dip neatly into the saucer so they don’t slip around.

In the rooms the sheets and towels are all emblazoned with the Drei Berge’s logo (Touhami is famed for his love of fonts) and come from Beltrami, a small eco-conscious Italian company that he invested in a few years ago (the brand uses fibres from European birch trees). The impressive dark wood beds? Touhami designed them bespoke and then helicoptered them into this car-free village. The tricksy Bernese Oberland weather meant cloud cover kept the helicopter stuck there for over a month. “It was 43 days,” he says, rolling his eyes. “But if you’re climbing or skiing all day, you need a good bed.”

Balconies at the Drei Berge Hotel

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Touhami has added a Japanese chef and his family to Mürren’s 400-strong population and the Drei Berge’s restaurant is now a fondue-free zone. “Cheese is a terrible food for mountains,” he tells me. “If you go to India and Japan, the food is curry, with rice or udon noodles. You can’t sleep properly if you eat cheese at night.” The menu, which also includes rotisserie chicken, pasta and Japanese dishes, is as superb as you’d expect from a French-Moroccan owner. Mains start at about £26.

There’s no frozen food in the kitchen, with the exception of bread, which is brought in from Paris, as Mürren’s bakery closed down several years ago. However, Touhami is planning to open his own bakery, which will also supply Mürren’s other hotels and the locals. The wine comes from vineyards with altitude, even if the champagne house being used is technically only 300m-high. “We’re in the mountains, let’s play the mountain thing,” he says.

At their best, three-stars have everything you need, nothing you don’t and they can take risks a five-star hotel can’t. Touhami is not going to have that scourge of the modern age, dynamic pricing, where prices rise with demand; entry-level rooms start at £275 and will be capped at £410 in peak season. It’s not cheap, but this is Switzerland, and it’s in a pedestrian-only portion of the Bernese Oberland where every loo roll and napkin has to come up by cable car or the tiny electric train. “I want people to keep coming back year after year,” says Touhami.

There’s no room service, but if you’ve been skiing, or walking the Lauterbrunnen Valley, heading downstairs to the bar and restaurant shouldn’t be a problem. No air con? “We’re up a Swiss mountain. Isn’t it better to just open a window?”

The Drei Berge Hotel lobby

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The bathrooms still have the slightly weird pebble-shaped (but clearly expensive) Villeroy & Boch basins of the previous incarnation, but there are noble reasons for leaving them in. Keeping serviceable bathrooms as a way of reducing landfill and cost is very much on trend — the fashionable hotelier Birch took the same approach with its two UK properties in recent years.

With great three-star hotels, the hardest thing is finding them; online results get clogged up with bland chain offerings. Here’s hoping Touhami succeeds at Drei Berge in doing what he’s already a master at — starting a trend.

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Sarah Turner was a guest of the Drei Berge. B&B doubles from £275 (dreibergehotel.ch). Fly to Zurich

Ten more three-star hotels with panache

1. Hôtel Henriette, Paris, France

Stylish Left Bank retreat with room service
When the designer Vanessa Scoffier opened Henriette ten years ago, she gave this Paris budget hotel a chic update that still works brilliantly. Depending on which of the 32 rooms you book, you might get plyboard-centric minimalism or a 1970s feel with vintage wallpaper and furniture. Well thought-out lighting is a constant wherever you are and while there’s no restaurant, room service can deliver everything from breakfast to evening charcuterie. On a cobbled street in the Left Bank’s villagey 13th arrondissement, with a lovely courtyard garden, Henriette doesn’t stint on romance.
Details Room-only doubles from £89 (hotelhenriette.com). Take the train or fly to Paris

2. Hotel Gutkowski, Ortigia, Sicily

Converted fisherman’s cottages with veggie-friendly restaurant
Displaying its three stars with pride on the Ortigia seafront, this hotel was founded by Paola Pretsch in 1999. Converted from two powder-blue fisherman’s houses, the 26 rooms — some with balconies — have bare floorboards and simple furnishings. The hotel has a generous feel with complimentary granita served each afternoon. Breakfast, which includes homemade quince jam and local ricotta, is included in the rates. The newest addition is a small restaurant, specialising in vegetarian food.
Details B&B doubles from £61 (guthotel.it). Fly to Catania

3.Hôtel le Sénéchal, Île de Ré, France

Characterful mid-range with a swimming pool in Ars-en-Ré
The architect-owner Marina Ducharm’s motivation for opening Le Sénéchal, over two decades ago, was so people who weren’t wealthy enough to have a second home on France’s glitzy west coast island could still visit. Ducharm has added rooms and a swimming pool, but this beautifully aged and restored building in the centre of the island’s most desirable village, Ars-en-Ré, has stayed proudly three-star. It’s open all year round, with log fires accentuating Ré’s considerable wintery charms.
Details Room-only doubles from £122 (hotel-le-senechal.com). Fly to La Rochelle, or take the train via Paris

4. Hôtel le Sud, Juan-les-Pins, France

Bargain Côte d’Azur hideaway
With the same quintessentially French style she brought to the infinitely more expensive Coucou in Meribel and Hoy in Paris, the architect Stéphanie Lizée mixes stripes, ceramics and a sunny disposition in this 29-room hotel in Juan-les-Pins. Le Sud channels a pre-Bardot simplicity in this pretty portion of the Côte d’Azur with just a bar and a swimming pool. Hungry? A food truck takes up residence in the garden for the summer months and there are dozens of cafés and bars in the nearby streets.
Details Room-only doubles from £58 (hotellesud.com). Fly to Nice

5. Hotel Santa Maria, Rome, Italy

Former convent with courtyards in trendy Trastevere
This hotel calls itself a three-star “superior” and it deserves the moniker. Created from the cloisters of a 16th-century convent, it’s still a bit of an oasis. The 19 rooms won’t win any prizes for their slightly kitsch decor (especially the murals) but the whole property is charming, from the family who run it to the convivial flower-filled courtyards where breakfast and evening drinks are served. Nearby? There are perfect Roman trattorias aplenty in the surrounding Trastevere area.
Details B&B doubles from £118 (hotelsantamariatrastevere.it). Fly to Rome

6. SOFS Boutique Hotel, Aarhus, Denmark

Scandi-styled B&B with wine bar
This 26-room hotel is in the oldest part of this hip Danish city and was opened in January 2022 by the 34-year-old Sofia Stenstrup-Jepsen. Decor is a mixture of antiques and classic Scandinavian styling. Yes, there’s a lovely suntrap garden at the back, but the café at the front of the building — which also serves as reception — is where breakfast is served each morning. Most of the food is organic and in the evening the space becomes a wine bar. Culture is on hand — Den Gamle By, a living history museum, is a 15-minute walk away and allows you to travel through Denmark’s past (£23; dengamleby.dk).
Details B&B doubles from £153 (sofshotel.dk). Fly to Aarhus

7. Hotel Hotel Señorio de Ursua, Navarra, Spain

Homely Basque Country farmhouse stay
A 17th-century farmhouse, family-run for two generations, in the middle of the Basque countryside that, thanks to the library and pool table, does a fine impression of a posh family home. Surrounded by superb hiking and cycling country, there are breakfasts of serrano ham, homemade cakes and jam, and log fires in winter. The adjacent restaurant, also run by the owner, gets rave reviews.
Details B&B doubles from £74 (sawdays.co.uk). Fly to San Sebastian

8. Hotel Hinteregger, Matrai, Austria

Family-owned Matrai three-star with a spa
Owned by the same family for four generations, the Hinteregger in East Tyrol has always had women in charge. Surrounded by the Hohe Tauern National Park, it blends 19th-century farmhouse origins with a thoroughly modern extension. Mid-sized, there are 60 rooms with freestanding baths as well as a spa and a natural swimming pool for the summer months. The restaurant, in the oldest part of the building, serves typically Tyrolean food, much of which uses produce from the owner’s farm.
Details B&B doubles from £125 (hotelhinteregger.at). Fly to Salzburg or Innsbruck

9. Pensione Accademia, Venice, Italy

Perfectly-placed 16th-century palazzo turned hotel
In an absurdly good location between two smaller waterways on its own promontory looking out to the Grand Canal, this is an old-school three-star and should be cherished as such, from the lack of lifts to the bow-tied barmen who dispense aperitivos in the garden on warm evenings. Owned by the Salmaso family since 1955, in a small but very pleasing 16th-century palazzo, it has 27 rooms, including some singles, and a complimentary breakfast — a rarity in Venetian five-stars.
Details B&B doubles from £120 (pensioneaccademia.it). Fly to Venice

10. Companhia das Culturas, Algarve, Portugal

Eco-conscious apartments and rooms with two pools
Sustainably minded hotels wear their three-star status with pride. The Companhia das Culturas hotel near Fazenda has no televisions, and there’s wi-fi only in the communal areas. But there is a marble-clad hammam, cork-lined yoga studio and two swimming pools. The family of the owners, Eglantina and Francisco, have run this estate for over seven generations and they’re still adapting buildings for new use. There are just six rooms and four apartments, all with an enticing mix of old meets mid-century decor, with farmland plus a yoga studio with classes and sandy beaches at Praia Verde a hike away.
Details Room-only doubles from £104 (companhiadasculturas.com). Fly to Faro

What’s your favourite three-star hotel? Let us know in the comments below

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