As tourists flock to Italy this summer, it may be tough to snag a reservation at one of the 146 hotels recently recognized with “Michelin Keys.”
02.05.2024 - 07:59 / forbes.com
Here are some things that Finca La Donaira does not have: televisions, a reception desk, a restaurant, a bar, a concierge, a paved road in front of it, room keys, any sort of dress code, luxury-brand lotions and shampoos, designer linens, tasting menus, symmetry, and shiny objects.
Here’s what the small hotel—for lack of a better word—in southern Spain does have: functional beauty, nine utterly dreamy guest rooms, a close connection with nature, a freeform approach to hospitality, an outstanding equestrian program, all sorts of farm animals, a natural swimming pool fed by a mountain spring, a pervasive tranquility, permaculture that does not reek of hippie-dom, the soft amber glow of the Andalusian sun, and the confidence of a place that knows the rules well enough to break them.
Even though its management came through Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton, La Donaira doesn’t tick many of the five-star-hotel boxes. Forget stars (except maybe the star-carpet of the night) and forget boxes. A beautiful anarchy prevails.
The stone stairways that connect the levels of the gardens don’t align. Wildflowers pop through organized shrubbery. Prime real estate is given to a medicinal garden with some 300 plant species next to the main house. Virtually nothing came out of the traditional hospitality world.
Rather—as these projects often are—La Donaira is the fully realized vision of one creative spirit. Austrian tech entrepreneur Manfred Bodner bought the 544-acre estate in 2005. (Subsequent land purchases have brought it closer to 1,500 acres.) He had come to Spain on business a couple of years earlier and found his childhood passion for horses reawakened by the lively equestrian culture.
He also saw in the estate, on the rolling hills of the Serranía de Ronda, an ecological canvas on which to reflect his family’s (and country’s) tradition of holistic living. He felt that Western societies’ relationship with the biosphere was generally broken, and he had some ideas about fixing that.
“Maybe we could create a beautiful place, in the middle of this pristine nature, where we explore all imaginable forms of human interaction with the rest of the biosphere,” reads the hotel literature. “Through animal experiences, through food, through our permacultural experiments or simply through being…. So we kicked it off with our practical research into alternative agriculture methods. Based on the permaculture and agroecology principles, focusing on soil fertility and biodiversity. Following with ecoluxury tourism.”
As for that ecoluxury tourism, the house is a timeless fusion of styles and traditions, a confabulation that’s somehow both fully Spanish and completely unlike anything else. When Bodner and crew found it, the main
As tourists flock to Italy this summer, it may be tough to snag a reservation at one of the 146 hotels recently recognized with “Michelin Keys.”
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