10 Hotels I'm Excited for in 2025
Plus, dark tourism comes for Menendez brothers, the war on lockboxes, and the NYT takes on sex party tourism.
One of the more fun parts of running The Daily Beast’s travel section until a year ago was figuring out which hotels we wanted to cover. There are so many talented, ambitious, and creative people working in the hospitality industry. Getting to champion, critique, and experience these places before most of the public was, well, awesome.
Right about now we would’ve been mapping out trips and coverage for hotels in the coming year, so in that spirit I thought I’d share a handful of the hotels I’m excited to try to check out that are opening in 2025!
This is Airelles first property outside of France, although they’re not going very far. The luxury hotel group best known for Le Grand Contrôle in an outer wing of the Palace of Versailles and a chateau in St. Tropez is now entering the crowded Venice market. The hotel group has transformed a three-building complex into a 45-room hotel on the less crowded island of Guidecca. Architectural history buffs should be especially drawn as the main building is a 16th century palace designed by none other than Palladio.
Is it bad that I like Palm Beach? For some reason I feel guilty about liking it as much as I do, but then again I like all of Florida—the charming, the tacky, the trashy, and the low-key. And for the first time in a couple decades, Palm Beach is back at the center of everything. Given the attention fixed on this once (and still kind of) sleepy resort town, anything new is notable. And an historic property like the former Vineta turned Chesterfield turned Vineta again is significant in a town with few hotel options. The overhaul has been entrusted by Oetker (Le Bristol Paris and Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc) to interior designer Tino Zervudachi of London-based firm MHZ, who is known for the ability to mix eclectic with historic.
Vestige Son Ermitá | Binideufá
Longtime readers (i.e. people who have been reading it since June) know that I loved my month in Menorca earlier this year. (Read my guide here.) This small island is becoming a reputable alternative to the more fast-paced islands in the Meditteranean. Part of that has to do with the rapid growth in high-end boutique hotels, one of which I checked out and reviewed while there—Vestige Son Vell. Now, two more historic estates on the island have been turned into a small luxury hotel by the Vestige group– Son Ermitá and Son Binideufá which are in the central hills overlooking the northern shore of the island. An exact opening date hasn’t been issued yet.
Standard Hotel, Brussels
Standard Hotels has been on a tear of late, launching hotels in Bangkok and Ibiza while also unveiling (finally) its luxury brand The Manner in New York City and its younger, more affordable StandardX in Melbourne. If there’s one major city in Europe that has a reputation for being anything but cool, that one could argue needs some of the cool that a brand like a Standard can bring, it’s Brussels. Now, this oft-overlooked center of European government will be getting a Standard in March. The 180-room property will be in the redevelopment of the city’s World Trade Center in the Northern Quarter, an area heavy on corporate headquarters and glass office buildings. It seems a little mad to me—a Standard in an office district? But that’s also what intrigues me about it.
For fans of Botanic Sanctuary in Antwerp (which I know many of you are. My guide to Antwerp is here), I’ve been told this new hotel in the southern Netherlands is very much along those lines. Found on the banks of the Maas River outside the historic city of Maastricht, it’s a new chapter for a villa that traces its origins back to an 11th-century motte-and-bailey castle. Over the centuries, many additions were made, including a Swiss chalet-style roof that gives it a more eclectic flair.
There are a whopping three Aman properties scheduled to open in 2025, one in Bangkok, one in the Dolomites, and one in Mexico. But the Mexico property, Amanvari, is by far the one I’m most keen to see open. And of all the hotels and residences debuting on the southern tip of Baja California of late, none are as eagerly anticipated as Aman’s first property in Mexico. The hotel is sandwiched between the teeming-with-life waters of the Sea of Cortez and the Sierra de la Laguna mountains in the Costa Palmas. (Costa Palmas is a development which also contains a Four Seasons resort and residences, a marina, golf course, farms, and a couple miles of beach.) It will be interesting to see how Aman carves out a unique experience in the crowded hospitality world of southern Baja, especially given it chose a more developed pocket of the region rather than some of the more spectacular remote spots.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a property more hyped up on social media in the last year or so than this one opening in 2025 in Montana. It is One&Only’s first property in the U.S., and expectations are high after the success of recent properties like Mandarina in Mexico and Aesthesis in Greece. The new property is at Big Sky and spread across six buildings designed by Seattle firm Olson Kundig. The designs have a Pacific Northwest feel to them, where the nature envelopes glass and beam constructions that seem to float.
They’re not exactly a secret, or even what one would call underrated, but my hunch is that over the next few years we’re going to see a lot more travel to islands in Indonesia besides Bali. Friends who have island hopped by boat still contend it’s the best sailing trip they’ve ever done. And from what I’ve seen, that enthusiasm is warranted. The hotel I’m excited for is the latest outpost for NIHI Hotels on Rote Island, one of the southernmost in Asia due north of Australia’s Dampier Peninsula. Scheduled to open at the end of 2025, it will be made up of 22 thatched roof villas with pools on a remote sliver of beach.
Any time one of the historic Art Deco hotels in Miami Beach gets a refreshm and thus another lease on life, I’m happy. They are real treasures, and now the white and powder blue fluted tower that was long the Confidential will be reopening after a refurbishment as an Andaz. There will be 287 rooms and 64 suites, as well as a reimagining of the two pools and beach house. Culinary options will be in collaboration with José Andrés Group, and check-in will be done with ocean views.
Zulu Camp at Shambala Game Reserve
Next summer, Shambala Game Reserve will reopen a redesigned Zulu Camp with eight new chalets and new public spaces including a bar, library, game room, and dining area filled with works by local artists to celebrate Zulu culture. The property was once a private hideaway for Nelson Mandela, whose former residence is one of the villas guests can rent—and still includes some of his books and other items. One thing I’ve learned from the safaris I’ve been on is that it often pays to go to regions that are under the radar, and the Waterberg region of Limpopo where the reserve is located often is. In addition to typical Big Five safari experiences, the reserve also has sunset boat rides on the largest manmade lake in South Africa
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
The war on AirBnB, Vrbo, and other short term rental properties officially has a new front: lockboxes. I noted a few weeks ago that Marseilles had not only banned them, but authorized city officials to destroy them if they see them. Now, in the list of changes Florence plans to introduce to curb the ills of overtourism, it is also targeting lockboxes, banning them in the city center.
Somehow, the impossible will soon be possible. Visiting New York City will get even more expensive. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is proposing that the restaurants and shops at the city’s airports be allowed to raise prices and add on a surcharge that would lead to a whopping 7.5% increase for already astronomical prices. I don’t know what the breaking point is for New York City becoming so wildly expensive that it loses out on a generation of multi-visit tourists, but it sure seems like they’re testing it of late.
I very much understand being inspired by a film to go somewhere you might not have heard of or realized was so beautiful. That was the case for me—for years I wanted to go to the Oaxaca coast after seeing it in Y tu mamá también. But I didn’t want to go to recreate the movie’s magic or because I wanted to have a similar experience. I just thought it looked great. I mentioned last week that the reason the French president might have waded into a dispute over the future of Emily in Paris was the shocking outsized influence the show has on driving tourism to France. Now, the BBC has an article examining the impacts of other shows—Succession on tourism to Norway, Ted Lasso to Richmond and White Lotus for Sicily. Some of these I get, but I think a lot of people are setting themselves up for disappointment if they’re hoping to tap into what they’ve seen on screen.
Finding myself a bit at a loss for where to start with this New York Times feature on people traveling the world for sex parties. Part of that is how unsexy the Times managed to make it all sound, as if they, ahem, sucked all the naughtiness out of it. It also felt like they tried to shoehorn a gay man in at the end because they didn’t know what to do with a community that is worlds apart on this stuff than the couples featured in the beginning.
But I’m at a complete loss for words when it comes to somebody selling cans filled with air from Lake Como. Leaving me especially speechless is that the person doing so got the idea from somebody who was selling cans of air from Naples! I love Naples, but who goes there and thinks, “Oh I want some of this in a bottle.”
Anybody telling you that there’s a magic solution for long security lines in the U.S. and who uses CLEAR in that story should not be listened to. CLEAR is useless, and even TSA Precheck will now often have longer lines because the machines it uses are so slow.
The visuals for the Orient Express yacht are pretty spectacular, especially the cabins. No notes except to say bravo.
I often wonder how much or how little most readers know about the media industry. Exhibit A is that readers seem unable or unwilling to buy the idea that there’s a line between the opinion and the news section. So, too, do I wonder if readers know that most travel coverage in magazines and newspapers involves press or FAM trips (where a destination or hotel or airline picks up the tab). One of the biggest funders of news sites in recent years has been affiliate marketing. Basically, if you buy something because of an article you read, the website gets a cut of it. In travel, that can mean gadgets you might use to travel, but the big money maker for sites like The Points Guy is credit cards. Now, Google—the almighty god—is cracking down and these places are losing millions of dollars in revenue.
Finally, I must admit that I smirked when I saw the news that AirBnB’s Gladiator II promotion has backfired. The issue involves a contest in which 16 winners get to take part in a mock gladiator battle in the Colosseum as a tie-in for the new Gladiator sequel. I’ve said before that I dislike AirBnB’s stunt promotions and experiences when the core issues driving customers nuts—the fees, that you can’t search by rating, and so on—continue. So it tickled me a bit that some in Rome are outraged by the promotion, turning it into a symbol of its residents losing their city to becoming a theme park.
INDUSTRY NEWS
The Menendez brothers’ house has turned into a dark tourism hot spot
Disneyland’s Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is now open, replacing Splash Mountain
Makauwahi Cave Reserve in Kauai to reopen after outcry
Notre Dame’s restoration surplus of nearly $150M will be used for future preservation
Four Seasons New York has reopened after being shuttered for years
Southwest flight struck by bullet at Texas airport
The fight over the Oakland airport’s name continues as a judge rules it cannot use “San Francisco” in its name
London is looking at introducing a tourist tax
Grand Canyon might be raising campground prices