Hotel > Articles > Destination Hotels: Label over Location

For the truly status-conscious, it’s not where you go that matters; it’s where you stay. Planning vacations is no longer about choosing between the islands of the Caribbean. Who really cares where the hotel is, as long as it’s an Aman or an Ong.

Alice Daunt at Earth London, an über-exclusive travel agent in the UK, says people nowadays are obsessed with where they stay. ‘They don’t call up and tell me where they want to go,’ says Daunt. ‘They just say, ‘I want to go away in April’ and expect me to come back with an amazing hotel. There are the Aman junkies, the Como junkies, even the Four Seasons junkies.’

Amanresorts was the first ‘destination hotel’ chain, founded by Indonesian entrepreneur Adrian Zecha in the 1980s. Rest easy at an Aman, knowing staff are aware of your sleeping habits, your penchant for sashimi and whether you prefer a freshly-squeezed mango juice with or without the ‘bits’. It doesn’t come cheap but that doesn’t put off their kind of guests. Although they have only around 500 rooms across eighteen Aman resorts, they count more than 100,000 repeat guests, some paying as much as $3,000 a night. Trina Dingler-Ebert, director of marketing, says it became a lifestyle when people started choosing us for our branding. ‘The greatest compliment was learning guests were bumping into each other at different Amans’, Dingler-Ebert says.

Another comparable chain is Singaporean businesswoman Christina Ong’s Como empire, which stretches from Parrot Cay to London’s sleek Halkin hotel to the Metropolitan in Bangkok. ‘Her tastes are stamped all over the hotels and people love it,’ says PR head Nigel Massey, who says she is involved in every aspect of design. ‘For that, she has an incredible following.’

For safari vacations, those in the know choose luxury travel specialists and conservation pioneers CC Africa. Marketing Manager Shayne Richardson says they have a huge percentage of returning guests. ‘If they go to a CC Africa lodge, they know it’s going to be the same concept, the same hospitality, the same magic. It doesn’t matter whether the staff are Tanzanians, Zanzibaris or Zulus, the sensitivity is the same.’

Where label matters more than location:
Aman-i-khás, India
On the edge of Ranthambhore National Park, this luxury camping resort in Rajasthan is set up for only nine months of the year and packed away in hot summers. Just six air-conditioned canvas tents in the Mughal tradition with minimal furnishings: a writing desk, traveling trunks, an oversized bed. Beyond the camp, in the rugged Aravalli hills, you can go on game-drives to spot tigers.

Amanpulo, Philippines
Fly south from Manila to the coral island of Pamalican, rimmed by seven square kilometers of pristine reef. Forty cottages, modeled after native dwellings, are discreetly set back from the beach behind a tangle of bush. Emerge to wiggle your toes in flour-like white sands, edging the Sulu Sea.

Parrot Cay, Turks and Caicos, British West Indies
Ong's private island resort is a Caribbean cliché. Beach houses with a white and teak interior aesthetic, and three miles of white sand. But the hottest spot in Parrot Cay is Shambhala Retreat hosting some of the world’s top yoga teachers. The resident chef prepares low-fat organic menus in addition to sophisticated haute cuisine.

Uma Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Nineteen sensitively designed suites set within twelve acres of rice paddies with a sweeping vista of lush Balinese hinterland. The Shambhala Retreat here is being conceived for women only, with meditation and reflexology treatments.

Soneva Fushi, Maldives
If you’re going to the Maldives, it has to be a Soneva resort, pioneers of island vacations in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Just a 30-minute seaplane ride from the capital is the privately owned tropical island of Kunfunadhoo, and the site of your barefoot vacation. Each wooden villa is set within dense lush forest, ensuring ultimate privacy.

Kwande Ecca Lodge, South Africa
CC Africa prides itself on ‘light-footprint’ accommodation, like Ecca Lodge on the Eastern Cape. Six intimate suites built with stone-and-mesh gabion walls and topped by corrugated iron roofing have expansive viewing decks over the African bushveld. Lodge rangers and local Xhosa trackers offer game drives in 4 by 4 vehicles, or rhino tracking on foot.

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