Ace Hotels has partnered with renowned Tokyo-based architecture firm Kengo Kuma and Associates to launch its first property in Japan. Slated for arrival in winter 2019, the Ace Hotel Kyoto will embrace the region’s industrial and imperial legacy in a transformed structure from the 1920s.

“The thought was to create a hotel that is connected to Kyoto and open to the surrounding area. To begin with, the proposition was to create a dense garden where communities, as well as the past and the present, are connected to this venerable land with its various gardens, which have existed since the Heian period,” Kuma says. “Every detail and material was thought through to connect the building, land, and history together.”

The Tetsuro Yoshida-designed red brick building will be modernized with a wooden grid system reminiscent of traditional Kyoto, while fine louvers and meshes will serve as environmental devices that gently filter light and wind. Local artists and craftspeople will infuse the hotel with a sense of place. Here’s to hoping. 

Imagine exploring a part of the world that’s so untouched that few have trodden the same path before. Imagine exploring it in a way that’s totally unique without a single person having experienced it in the same way as you. Sound’s impossible? Think again.

Black Tomato’s award-wining travel service Blink is bringing the most personalized luxury experience imaginable; the chance to design your own temporary accommodation and experience in locations so private that no one else will have stayed there and never will again in the same way. 

Blink experience takes you from La Paz into the startling volcanic Eduardo Avaroa Natural Reserve and onto the lunar landscapes of the Salar de Uyuni with plenty of adventure along the way.  All of this, for a limited time period, in only a select few locations. Imagine waking up to watch the sunrise over the Salar de Uyuni desert from your private dome camp, in complete solitude – a story that so few will be able to tell. Blink or you’ll miss it. 

Say hello to the newly completed Myconian Avaton, set on a private section of one of the longest beaches on Mykonos, bookable now for stays beginning May 11. A showpiece on the famed Elia Beach, the property is defined by its stunning panoramic views and unique mix of traditional and modern Cycladic architecture, blending local stone with white walls and wooden windows. Sublime spa and wellness facilities complement 85 harmoniously designed rooms, suites, and villas, where modern and vintage furniture match the eternal spirit of the surroundings, and private pools and Jacuzzis abound. Check in…

via GUARDIAN

For many people the best kind of holiday is one based on local knowledge, but how do you know where the locals go—especially when they may prefer not to tell you? Through social media

No one wants to be a tourist – not even tourists. It has connotations of uncritical consumption, of high prices and low quality, of being mindlessly funneled amid a mass of humanity towards the sorts of joints that real New Yorkers or Londoners or Parisians wouldn’t be caught dead in.

The success of any experience of an unfamiliar city is measured by how much it overlaps with a local’s, and that’s never been truer than now. As cheap flights flood Europe with visitors, measures against tourists’ obstructive, destructive impact have been taken in Venice, Barcelona, Rome and most recently Amsterdam.

There’s never been a more desirable time to pass for a resident. But how do you know where the locals go – especially when they may prefer not to tell you? By mining their publicly available data, of course.

Computer scientists at ITMO University in St Petersburg say they have developed a way of using Instagram to “create a ‘locals’ guide’ … that is as genuine as it gets”. They analyze residents’ posts on the photo-sharing app to identify the city’s hidden gems, then share them with tourists.

They have developed an algorithm that aims to distinguish between photos publicly posted by locals and those posted by visitors, and using the geotagging information to locate them both on a map. The result reveals at a glance the different haunts favored by each group, “thus helping the locals to indirectly advise tourists”.

Alexander Visheratin, head of research at ITMO University’s eScience Institute, said tourist guidebooks typically recommended 10 to 15 attractions in any one city. “However, locals usually know more. By identifying their favorite places, we can significantly diversify such guidebooks.”

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via UrbanDaddy

Cuba possesses so many famous draws:

Vintage cars, mesmerizing rhythms, fine cigars…  

Rooftop infinity pools.

Okay, it only has one of those.

Which you’ll find atop the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana, the country’s first five-star hotel, now open in a prime, square-block of historic Old Havana, looking just like this.

You’ll step out of your 1968 Chevy and into a distinctly 2017 lobby of glass walls and marble ceilings. Before making your way to the presidential suite to take in sterling views of the city’s central park through French windows until the Jacuzzi tub calls your name. Answer that. Or don’t and visit Spa Albear for a hot stone massage instead.

Once you’re immaculate and relaxed, head to the downstairs bar El Arsenal to break your daiquiri fast. Or go straight to Constante Bar to acquire rum in its purest form. They’ve got a lot of it. There’s also San Cristobál Panoramic restaurant overlooking the city, in case you like your views with Caribbean seafood.

Wherever you begin, you’ll most likely end up at Evocación Tobacco Lounge before the day is done. That’s where a smoking sommelier will help pair your cigar with the right aged spirit.

Cigar-rum dissonance is really such an issue back home.

I dream of deserts….
A 111-room build on the rim of the Ramon Crater, in the heart of the Negev Desert, a two-hour drive from Tel Aviv. The 40 one- and two-story buildings are clustered on 12 acres. Outside, local stone and wood blend with the desert landscape. Inside, a palette of brown, tan, and beige contrasts with crisp white linens. Need I say more?