The Best 5-Star Hotel Openings in 2025 

The finest luxury hotels set to open next year offer something for every traveller, from surfers in need of seclusion to those after throwback glamour. 

By Gabriella Lebreton 28/03/2025

Call it the year of the visionary: the best of 2025’s five-star debuts have proudly singular points of view. That’s because many of them are passion projects driven by hands-on owners, each creating the kind of property they themselves would want to visit. 

Take philanthropist Denise Dupré, who’s behind France’s Château de la Commaraine. There’s a dearth of high-end accommodations in this part of Burgundy, which she has resolved to change by transforming this castle, parts of which date to 1112 CE, into a 37-room hotel. When completed, it will host a spa and two restaurants serving the biodynamic wines the surrounding estate produces. Travel specialist Jules Maury of Scott Dunn Private calls it a game changer and has already started booking clients for the opening in late 2025. 

Then there’s jewellery designer Thelma West and her partner, former Apple exec Stefano Liotta, whose Casina Cinquepozzi will reimagine an 18th-century farmhouse in Italy’s heel. “It’s near Putignano, Puglia’s best-kept secret,” says Black Tomato’s Sunil Metcalfe of the 10-room hotel, which has a decidedly “breezy, coastal-Italian touch”. Not to be outdone, the couple are also bottling their own organic rosé and will host guest chefs and other creatives in an on-site artist’s residence flat. 

On Indonesia’s secluded Rote Island, a two-hour flight from Bali, entrepreneur Chris Burch is opening a sister property to his acclaimed NIHI Sumba, which will be overseen by hotelier James McBride. The new escape “is going to focus again on two things: world-class surfing and privacy”, says John Clifford, of International Travel Management. “No expense has been spared,” Metcalfe adds. “NIHI excels at splendid isolation.” 

But it’s not just individuals crafting exciting new hotels. Family-owned groups are on the upswing, too. Malta’s Pisani clan is aggressively expanding its Corinthia chain, whose original property opened in Attard in 1968. The most anticipated of the new sites is the Corinthia Bucharest, a 30-suite property that blows the dust off the historic, but faded, Grand Hôtel du Boulevard. “Romania is long overdue a renaissance,” Metcalfe says. Black Tomato has just launched its first itinerary in the country, and this property will be a fixture on it. 

Active groups will enjoy Australia’s Hamilton Island, which the Oatley family has owned since 2003. In August, guests can start checking in to the 59-room escape The Sundays, which Christopher Wilmot-Sitwell of cazenove+loyd calls “a great luxury option for families who are into scuba diving, snorkelling, and whale watching.” 

Spain’s Madera Fernandez family has been busy building the Vestige Collection, which infuses significant historical sites with thoughtful panache. Its latest project Son Ermità & Binidufà is on the upscale island of Minorca. The estate unites two old farms—one at the top of a hill, the other in a lush valley—into a single 22-room property. Maury predicts that as neighbouring Majorca becomes overrun with international chains, the appeal of such agrarian retreats will only increase. 

In Germany, the Oetker family is reviving its own sylvan stay: Baden-Baden’s Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa, close to the Black Forest, which has been a fixture of this spa town since the 1870s. “It’s going to turn heads, and for good reasons,” Metcalfe says, noting it’s “fresh off a needed facelift”. The same clan is also behind one of the most anticipated openings stateside. In partnership with Reuben Brothers, which purchased the Chesterfield in Palm Beach in 2022, Oetker will manage the renovated property, now called The Vineta Hotel, when it opens in early 2025. The name is a nod to its original moniker and coordinating roaring-twenties aesthetic: it debuted as the Lido-Venice in 1926. “The Vineta is going to fill the space of chic nostalgia in a place where there is none,” says Maury. 

Meanwhile, One&Only will make its US debut in Big Sky, Montana, at Moonlight Basin, a 77-hectare resort that shares a name with a local community. Primed to appeal to Yellowstone fans, it will be open year-round, with a summertime focus on mountain biking, hiking and fly-fishing. When there’s snow, it will offer gondola access to the Madison Base for skiing. 

One&Only’s Moonlight Basin, in Big Sky, Montana, will be its first property stateside.

If you’d rather be on a yacht, there are plenty of developments in the cruise space. Aqua Expeditions owner Francesco Galli Zugaro, whose brand is known for exclusive tours of Asia and South America, will launch a new African route around the Seychelles and Tanzania in December. Silversea is planning a 150-room hotel—ready for the winter 2025 season—in the world’s southernmost town, Puerto Williams, Chile, to make its trips to Antarctica more comfortable. Yet Wilmot-Sitwell claims the more exciting opening is from an under-the-radar luxury operator, Kazazian Cruises, whose modernist all-white boats are the sleekest way to experience the Nile. It’s planning a nine-room hotel on 113 hectares in western Egypt’s Siwa Oasis, closer to Libya than to Cairo. It will have its own helipad, and the local airport will offer hour-long flights to and from the capital. 

“The land is an ancient seabed, and the hotel will be constructed using ancient white coral from the local area,” Wilmot-Sitwell says. What makes it worth the trip? “It will be one of the most exclusive hotels in Egypt.”

Top image: The indoor pool at Baden-Baden’s Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa, which is getting a “needed facelift”.

 

Moving Mountains 

Inside Switzerland’s $3.2 billion, Verbier-rivalling ski resort.

Andermatt, a burgeoning community sequestered high in the Swiss Alps, has long attracted a cosmopolitan clientele with its cinematic beauty. Sean Connery filmed Goldfinger’s infamous car-chase scene here, and visitors have included everyone from Queen Victoria to Elvis Presley. But its remote location limited its growth—something Egyptian property tycoon Samih Sawiris has worked to change. 

Since first glimpsing its peaks from a helicopter in 2005, he has pumped an estimated US$2 billion (around $3.2 billion) into the most expansive development project in the Alps. Sawiris was granted a unique exemption from stringent Swiss laws limiting foreigners from acquiring property, and until it expires in 2040, you, too, can buy real estate here. Over the past 20 years, his determination to create a resort rivalling Verbier and St. Moritz has resulted in scores of projects, including the 119-room Chedi Andermatt hotel and Reuss, a new residential district. He has even augmented the local ski area. Today, Andermatt offers 180 km² of pistes—more than France’s swank Courchevel resort. The options are varied, so you can savour untracked descents punctured by tight ravines, open powder bowls and challenging off-piste terrain. At the top of Nätschen mountain, you’re as likely to encounter skiers as you are gourmands trekking to one of two Michelin-starred restaurants at Gütsch, right next to the gondola station. 

Despite the scale and ambition of Sawiris’s master plan, Andermatt’s old town retains its rustic charm. It’s a quixotic blend of past and present, at once authentically Swiss and definitively international: over a third of the new homes in Reuss are owned by non-Swiss residents. Join them—before the area gets hardpacked.  

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Omega Just Unveiled 9 Watches in Its New Constellation Observatory Collection

The line-up shows up a bevy of metals and colours, too, as well as two new calibres.

By Nicole Hoey 31/03/2026

Omega’s latest watch is in a universe of its own.

The Swiss watchmaker just unveiled its new Constellation Observatory Collection today, the next step in its Constellation lineage and the first two-hand hour and minute timepieces to ever earn Master Chronometer certification. And if you were paying attention to any of the dazzling watches spotted at the Oscars this year, you would’ve caught a glimpse of the new line already: Sinners star Delroy Lindo rocked one of the models on the Academy Awards red carpet, giving us a pre-release preview of the collection.

Developed at Omega’s new Laboratoire de Précision (its chronometer testing lab open to all brands), the collection houses a set of nine 39.4 mm watches. The watches underwent 25 days of scrutiny there, analysed via a new acoustic testing method that recorded every sound emitted from the timepiece to track irregularities, temperature sensitivities, and more in the name of all things precision. (Details such as water resistance and power reserve are also thoroughly examined.) This meticulous process is all in the name of snagging that Master Chronometer label, meaning that the timepiece is highly accurate and surpasses the threshold for ultra-high performance. The Constellation Observatory Collection has now changed the game, though, thanks to its lack of a seconds hand.

A watch from the Constellation Observatory Collection, with the Observatory dome on display. Omega

“Until now, precision certification has required a seconds hand,” Raynald Aeschlimann, president and CEO of OMEGA, said in a press statement. “The development of a new acoustic testing methodology has made that requirement obsolete. It is this breakthrough that has enabled us to present the Constellation Observatory, the first two-hand watch to achieve Master Chronometer certification.”

In addition to notching its place in history, the collection also debuted a new pair of movements: the Calibre 8915 and the Calibre 8914, each perched on a skeletonised rotor base. The former’s Grand Luxe iteration will appear on the 950 Platinum-Gold model in the collection, which offers up that base in 18-karat Sedna Gold alongside a Constellation medallion in 18-karat white gold with an Observatory dome done in white opal enamel surrounded by stars. The second Calibre 8915, the Luxe, will find its home on the other precious-metal models in the line, either made with the brand’s 18-karat Sedna, Moonshine, or Canopus gold seen across the case, the hand-guilloché dial, and, of course, the movement itself. (Lindo chose to rock the Moonshine Gold on Moonshine Gold iteration, priced at approximately $86,000, for Sinners‘s big night at the Oscars.) As for the Calibre 8914, it can be found in the collection’s four steel models.

 

Omega Constellation Observatory Collection
A look at a gold case-back from the collection. Omega

Each model is a callback to myriad design features on past Omega models. That two-hand dial, for one, comes from the 1948 Centenary (the brand’s first chronometer-certified automatic wristwatch), while the pie-pan dial (seen in various blue, green, and golden hues throughout the line) and that Constellation medallion caseback both appear on watches from 1952. The star adorning the space above 6 o’clock also harks back to 1950s timepieces from Omega. And to finish off the look, you can opt for alligator straps in a variety of colours, or perhaps a gold iteration to match the precious-metal models; the brick-like pattern on the 18-karat Moonshine bracelet was also inspired by Omega watches from the ’50s.

We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for any other Constellation Observatory timepieces (or any other unreleased models from the brand) at the rest of the star-studded events headed our way this year—perhaps the Met Gala?

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Best Combustion Supercar: Ferrari 12Cilindri Spider

A modern classic in the making, combining naturally aspirated power with elegant restraint to deliver performance that feels as refined as it is visceral.

By Vince Jackson 20/04/2026

In a year when carmakers of all persuasions sheepishly extended hyperbolic electric targets, it’s fitting that the monastic puritans of Maranello—who, lest we forget, won’t finally yield to the sin of battery power until October with the Elettrica—opted to make combustion their major power play.

As an uncertain future of AI omnipresence barrels towards us, the 12Cilindri—an analogue, open-topped tribute to Ferrari’s late-’60s/early-’70s grand tourer, the Daytona—represents a defiant fade into the past, a pause for breath, a fleeting return to The Good Times when nascent technology provoked excitement rather than existential dread.

Guiding this automotive nostalgia trip is, as the nomenclature suggests, a naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 engine, generating an unceasing wave of power as it sears towards the 9,500 rpm redline with relative nonchalance. That’s because the 12Cilindri is not a mouth-foaming attack-dog. It scales performance heights with the refinement of the finest Italian works of art; its “Bumpy Road” mode facilitates comfy al fresco GT cruising, and even the imperious powerplant is mannerly at most speeds.

For all the yesteryear romance, progressive technologies and engineering, such as a world-class 8-speed transmission, advanced electronic aids and independent four-wheel steering, are baked into the deal. The 12Cilindri’s clean, stark design somehow toggles between retro and modern; and while vaguely polarising, one can’t ignore its magnetic road presence.

In terms of aesthetics, Ferrari describes the 12Cilindri as being “ready for space”; in many ways, a fantasy vehicle that transports users to another dimension is probably what the world needs right now.

The Numbers

Engine: 6.5-litre V12

Power: 610kW

Torque: 678 Nm

Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch auto

0-100 km/h: 2.95 seconds

Top speed: 340 km/h

Price: From $886,800

Photography by SONDR.
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Inside Loro Piana’s First Sydney Boutique

A first Australian address brings the Italian house’s textile-led approach to retail full circle.

By Horacio Silva 26/03/2026

On the fourth floor of Westfield Sydney, near the Castlereagh and Market Street entrance—in the space formerly occupied by Chanel—Loro Piana has opened its first Australian boutique. It is a significant address change for that corner of the mall, and a meaningful one for the Italian house, which has sourced Australian merino wool for decades but until now had no retail presence here.

The facade is understated—creamy, tactile, more about texture than theatre. Inside, the store unfolds across a single, expansive level divided into distinct men’s and women’s wings. The separation is clear without being heavy-handed: womenswear leads from soft accessories and leather goods into ready-to-wear, while menswear occupies its own assured territory, with tailoring and outerwear given proper breathing room. Footwear (supple loafers, luxurious slides, pared-back sneakers) is particularly strong, and the sunglasses are a quiet standout: mineral-toned frames with a disciplined elegance that feels entirely of the house.

That same restraint carries into the interiors, where the surfaces do much of the talking. Walls are wrapped in the company’s own linen and cashmere; carpets are custom, dense underfoot, softening the acoustics and the pace. Oak and carabottino wood add warmth without fuss; marble accents introduce a cool counterpoint. The effect is a composed space calibrated around material, proportion and restraint.

The Spring 2026 collection now in store underscores that sensibility. Silhouettes are elongated and fluid; cashmere, silk and featherweight merino move in sandy neutrals, creams and muddied earth tones, with flashes of marigold and pale turquoise breaking the calm. Tailoring is softly structured and projects confidence without aggression. Leather goods arrive in buttery skins that feel almost pre-lived, as though time has already worked its magic.

What distinguishes Loro Piana, particularly in a market that has grown noisier by the season, is its refusal to perform luxury in an obvious register. There are no oversized insignias telegraphing allegiance. Instead, the status is encoded in fibre count, in hand-feel, in how a coat hangs from the shoulder. It assumes the wearer knows and, crucially, does not need to announce it.

Sydney’s luxury landscape has matured in recent years; global houses no longer test the waters but commit to them. Yet Loro Piana’s arrival feels different. It is not trend-driven expansion but material logic. For a country whose sheep stations have long contributed to the house’s fabric story, this boutique reads almost as a thank-you note written in cashmere.

 

Photography: Courtesy of Loro Piana.

 

 

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This Stylish, Water-Resistant Dopp Kit Might Be the Last One You Ever Buy

Patricks’s limited-edition wash bag is designed to keep liquids in and out, so it can come along wherever your travels take you.

By Justin Fenner 11/03/2026

If all you’re going to do is look at it, a leather Dopp kit from a fashion house is a fine choice. But if you take travelling seriously—and do it often, for business, pleasure, or both—such a bag will inevitably end up blemished with droplets of water or stained by errant flecks of toothpaste. Get stuck with a cavalier team of baggage handlers, and it can even get soaked in your favourite fragrance or anti-ageing serum.

But Patricks, the high-performance Australian grooming brand stocked in Harrods and Bergdorf Goodman, has a solution. Its limited-edition bathroom bag, called BB1, is purpose-built to protect everything inside and out. Conceived by industrial designer George Cunningham with brand founder Patrick Kidd, the cuboid design is executed in a water-resistant recycled nylon you can rinse clean. It’s lined with a thin layer of shock-absorbing foam to safeguard your products, but if a bottle somehow gets cracked in transit, the two-way water-resistant zippers and sealed seams (which keep liquids from seeping in or out) ensure that whatever leaks won’t ruin your cashmere. Inside, two dual-sided zippered compartments are ideally sized to fit toothbrushes, razors, and other small essentials.

And though its clean lines and rugged construction make it undeniably masculine, its greatest feature is borrowed from women’s makeup bags. Like the best of these, BB1 unzips to lie flat, giving you unobstructed access to everything inside. Well, you and the 999 other gentlemen who move fast enough to snag one. $289

Courtesy of Patricks

1. Hanging Loop 

The G-hook system isn’t just a stylish handle: You can also use it to hang the bag from a hook or secure it to your carry-on.

2. Two-Way Zipper

The closures are water-resistant in both directions, meaning liquids won’t get in or out.

3. Fold-flat Construction

BB1 opens to 180 degrees, letting you scan its 4.2-litre capacity at a quick glance.

4. Technical-Fabric Shell

The durable recycled-nylon is easy to maintain and woven to survive splashes and leaks from your go-to products.

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You Can Now Place Bets on the Future Prices of Rolex Models

And which models will get discontinued next, thanks to a new collaboration between Kalshi and Bezel.

By Nicole Hoey 11/03/2026

You can bet on pretty much anything these days, from when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will get married to who will be the next James Bond—and now that includes the Rollies on your wrist, or on your wishlist.

Prediction market platform Kalshi, regulated in the U.S., and luxe watch marketplace Bezel have teamed up on a new platform called Watch Futures that allows users to splash down cash on where they think the prices of a particular luxe timepiece are going, whether that’s a Rolex Submariner or a coveted Patek Philippe, Time & Tide reported.

You can also place a wager on which models might be discontinued, as well as any future launches from the top watchmakers on the new platform; with Watches and Wonders coming up, it’s certainly a well-timed launch that could see a lot of activity as a slew of new releases are announced at the event.

Watch Futures is all based on Beztimate, Bezel’s system (once used only internally) to help it accurately calculate the market price of a timepiece. It draws data from real-time transactions, live bids, verified sales, and other market offers to spawn its own series of independent valuation models to establish a watch’s value. From there, it’s up to bettors to place their wagers, and then the platform will showcase any price fluctuations or other updates as time goes on.

This new platform could have some pretty large implications for the watch industry.  As any horological savant would know, the internet and collectors alike are constantly chattering about which models are on the way out or when a certain timepiece of the moment’s time in the limelight will fade, of course, having a large impact on the prices of said model. And now, a Watch Futures user can have a direct stake in where a model is headed—and if they own said timepiece, it can be a protection from dwindling values on the marketplace, say, if a user places a bet on their model losing value and that actually comes to fruition.

To see Watch Futures in real time (and scope out how some pieces in your collection are faring), you can use the Kalshi app or its website.

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