A hotel with so much character and class it single-handedly refreshed Lake Como's placid waters. Signs of hope in the planet’s largest rainforests. The contemplative thrill of road tripping through Portugal’s Old Worlds.
This week, PRIOR reflects on the intel, insight and insanity from all over the map that fueled the world of travel in 2022. Along the way, we sprinkle in a few bread crumbs about voyages we maybe, just maybe, hope to go on in the new year.
GO COMO The hotel opening of the year? Passalacqua, an 18th-century private home turned superb retreat on the freshwater shores of Lake Como. Grand and meticulous, yet warm and embracing, the estate felt like an instant classic from the jump.
Owner Valentina De Santis's philosophy: A property should reflect the personality of its place. That alone was a radical break from today’s hospitality homogeny. It was, as well, a reminder of the role that hotels, great ones anyway, play in defining how we come to know the places where they’re located.
Inspired service (think brioche piped with gianduja on the spot from breakfast) and hidden charms throughout (nooks padded with blue-quilted walls, pool chairs under a giant magnolia tree) meant that Passalacqua almost single-handedly revived the lost art of the glamorous, cool Italian lakeside jaunt. And in an era of same old, wannabe new influencer travelscapes, the hotel managed to do the impossible: Reposition Lake Como, and scenic lake destinations in Italy more generally, as a fresh experience that lives up to the price tag of getting there. Bravi!
Looking Forward to 2023: It’s a tragedy now well known: Southern Ocean Lodge, Baillie Lodges's celebrated flagship stay on Kangaroo island in Australia, was decimated by bushfires in 2020. But it is looking like the property’s meticulous, multi-million dollar rebuild by owners Hayley and James Baillie will be a remarkable lesson for all on how to rise from the ashes. Like De Santis in Lake Como, the Baillies on Kangaroo Island understand a hotel is nothing but a window to a destination, which, in this case, is Australia’s answer to the Galapagos. When the lodge reopens next year, suites will be reoriented to offer even more dazzling views of Down Under wilderness.
A MEDITERRANEAN METAMORPHOSIS 2022 was the clearest snapshot yet: The Balearic ways of life are slowly evolving, island by island. To see for ourselves, PRIOR navigated the hangover-optional corners of Ibiza, mosied around the new Piet Oudolf-designed gardens in Menorca and rounded up the next generation of artisans who call Mallorca home.
Looking Forward to 2023: Situated between Sicily and Tunisia, Pantelleria, an in-the-know, windswept island where Luca Guadagnino shot his 2015 film A Bigger Splash, is poised to be the shiny new Mediterranean rock on the block. (Or “pearl,” as it is known.) The volcanic landscape gives the island a certain rawness. While Pantelleria does not have the clubs or cafes of other isles, what it does have is a cohort of white-hot designers from Milan, who are about to unveil their passion-project houses — all in the vernacular of the island’s cubist, bunker-like houses. Expect those properties to be featured in shelter magazines and architecture newsletters the world over.
