by Claire Wrathall, The Daily Telegraph, December 28, 2016
In light of the fragile value of sterling, my instinct is that 2017 will be a year when people look beyond the Eurozone and countries with currencies pegged to the US dollar, to nations with economies more precarious than our own. Bar the British Virgin Islands and Barbados, the EC dollar is used across the English-speaking Caribbean and has been linked to the greenback for 40 years - expect this region to hold less allure over the months to come.
Despite the fact that many Mexican hotels publish their rates in US dollars, Donald Trump’s electoral promises mean you actually get more pesos to the pound now than you did at the time of the Referendum so the country's tourism industry could draw Britons seeking sunshine instead.
This Christmas has seen the opening of the most ambitious, most expensive hotel yet in Mexico's Yucatan state. Chablé Spa & Resort (from £965) is a former sisal hacienda dating back to the 18th century, half an hour from Merida, with 40 contemporary casitas and villas in its 750 acres.
Its restaurant is under the aegis of Mexico’s starriest chef, Jorge Vallejo of Quintonil in Mexico City, and its executive chef, Luis Ronzon, has cooked with Rene Redzepi at Noma. (Redzepi, incidentally, will be running a seven-week open-air pop-up version of Noma on the Caribbean coast of this peninsula at Tulum, a four-hour drive from Chablé, from April 12 (about £600 a head, including drinks and service, bookable through noma.dk/mexico .)
Of course if you’re lucky enough to bag a reservation, it would make sense to stay locally, in which case Casa Malca (from £415) is the newest and most luxurious hotel within walking distance. Alternatively, 90 minutes' drive north a branch of Hyatt’s design-forward Andaz (from £650) has just opened within the huge golf-and-luxury-hotels development Mayakoba.
Brazil, too, has faced political upheavals that have weakened its currency, so the Oetker Collection’s forthcoming Palácio Tangará (rates to be confirmed) in São Paulo may seem something of a steal, at least compared with its flagship: the glorious Hôtel du Cap in Antibes, to which it bears more than a passing resemblance.
The superpremium German brand’s first venture into Latin America, Tangará stands, surrounded by trees, on the edge of Burle Marx Park, which was laid out by the same designer as Rio’s fabled esplanade.
Likely to become a weekend retreat for wealthy Paulistanos who can’t face the long drive out of town to the coast, there will be two swimming pools, a Sisley spa and a Jean Georges Vongerichten restaurant. And my hunch is they’ll arrive by chopper hence the detail that the hotel will be served by five helipads. São Paulo is, for the record, the only city in the world where you can book choppers as well as cars through Uber.
And Chile will become that much more alluring a destination to those who remain loyal of British Airways, when it launches the UK’s first direct route to Santiago from Heathrow on January 4, which will make the sublime landscapes of the Atacama Desert and Patagonia that much easier to reach, not to mention Easter Island and the prospect of heli-skiing weekends in the Andes. For advice on itineraries, my first stop would be the British-based South America specialist Dehouche .
Currency considerations notwithstanding, BA is clearly banking on continuing demand for the US, with new services to New Orleans (from March 27); Oakland (March 28) for convenient access to California’s wine country; and Fort Lauderdale (July 6).
The hotel opening for which I’m keenest to cross the Atlantic, however, is the long-in-gestation Four Seasons Surfside, a reinvention of the historic Surf Club with dazzling modern additions by Richard Meier at the northern end of Miami Beach. Especially if, as has been mooted, the restaurant is the first overseas iteration of La Sponda, the Michelin-starred restaurant at Le Sirenuse, Antonio Sersale’s fabled hotel in Positano.
Of course the argument in favour of France is proximity and ease of getting there, in which case you might want to have the forthcoming Relais de Chambord in the Loire Valley on your radar. Due to open next autumn, right by the fabled Château de Chambord (with its double-helix staircases, possibly the work of Leonardo da Vinci), it’s the creation of Pablo Carrington.
He is the Spanish hotelier behind Cap Rocat in Mallorca and Torralbenc in Menorca, two exquisite properties that are also so reasonably priced (at least in low season) as to be worth countenancing even if the pound is at parity with the Euro by the time it opens.
This article was written by Claire Wrathall from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
