Hotels as breathtaking as the destination
MANILA, Philippines — Don’t just visit a destination – live it. At the top of our list during the holidays would be shopping and especially travelling. Celebrate the holidays and share the joys of traveling this season with your loved ones as you explore the most amazing destinations. The hotel or resort where you choose to stay could be just as breathtaking. Make your travelling experience even more rewarding by adding ease and convenience wherever you stay by using your Mastercard.Your Mastercard debit or credit card gives you that worry-free experience when booking your hotel accommodations online. There’s even the added layer of protection with the Mastercard SecureCode (ask your bank about it), which allows you to have a unique password (called a One Time Password or “OTP”) for each online booking you make.
Bringing your Mastercard with you also means not having to carry around lots of cash. Your EMV debit, credit, or prepaid Mastercard are equipped with a chip that makes purchases in store more secure. You can also sign up with your bank for SMS alerts to get notifications each time you shop. Should you lose your card while traveling, just call your bank hotline (make sure to save it before you leave) so they can keep your money safe.
Discover how using your Mastercard allows you a higher level of flexibility, convenience, and security than cash. If you’re still planning your holiday travels, check out our picks from among the hippest properties around the world that you can book using your Mastercard.
Frolic like a design star: Il Sereno Lago di Como
Lake Como is the Milan design crowd’s favorite getaway and the Patricia Urquiola-designed Il Sereno is where they stay. Jutting over 450 feet of Lake Como in Torno and cut into the solid rock of a cliff face, its boxy and linear appearance made of regional stone and local walnut stands out among the buttercream-walled grand dame hotels and palazzos owned by figures as historical as Pliny the Younger. Yet at the same time, it’s almost camouflaged by reflections of its Alpine setting on glass, laid in gridwork and vertical gardens with 260 native plants. Its 30 Scandinavian-meets-Japanese ryokan oversized lake-front suites all have their own furnished terraces and unobstructed water views. Check out their Masseratti and Riva packages and take them out for a complete Lake Como experience when they re-open in March. Just like the sister property in St. Barths, this hotel has no bad angles. Il Sereno in Lake Como, serenohotels.com/property/il-sereno/
For the decadent bohemian: Cuixmala, Costalegre
Cuixmala is not quite new and is the “oldest” in this list, having opened to the public a few years ago -- this public being public figures from Ronald Reagan to Emily Ratajkowski. The grand, moorish, pink-and-peach, 13-room hotel (with four suites, six bungalows, three private villas, and 10 casitas) is perched high on a cliff above a private, two-mile beach between tourist town Puerto Vallarta and port city Manzanillo. It has its own tennis courts, soccer field, horse stables, sea turtle sanctuary, and a 25,000-acre wildlife reserve (replete with jaguars and freshwater crocodiles). Zebra interactions are normal in the un-manicured tropical greenery. Tip: Don’t forget to drop by nearby sister property Hacienda de San Antonio, a more romantic, cosmopolitan 120-year-old estate set at the foot of the Colima Volcano in the midst of a 5,000-acre nature reserve. Cuixmala, Mexico, cuixmala.com.
Fill your senses: Six Senses Bhutan
If you’re already planning your summer trips, consider this circuit experience in one of the happiest places on Earth. Six Senses Bhutan is made of five new lodges throughout the country’s rolling hills and greenery in Thimphu, Punakha, Gangtey, Bumthang, and Paro featuring only 82 total suites, all meant to be visited in succession to get a more in-depth tour of the kingdom. Each lodge is designed to reflect its rural Himalayan surroundings: the rural farmhouse Punakha, for instance, partially constructed of traditional mud brick and woven bamboo walls, while the property in Gangtey features a stunning bird-watching bridge. Six Senses Bhutan, sixsenses.com.
Alice in Arabian Nights: Mondrian Doha
You don’t come to a Mondrian hotel for understated décor, and this aesthetic finds a perfect match in the Middle East’s proclivity for excess. Designed by Marcel Wanders in collaboration with local consultants South West Architecture, the chain’s latest property in Doha, in a nutshell, is Alice in Arabian Nights. It has a hallucinogenic look from the outside at night. Inside, it’s a forest of soaring cloud trees in the lounge. The atrium staircase is made of spiral lace-work. The 2,000 square meter ballroom has its own 24K gold elevator. The black-and-white indoor pool worthy of the Queen of Hearts lies underneath a colored glass dome calling to mind a Tiffany lamp, as if you had been shrunk by a potion suspiciously labeled “Drink Me.” The 270 rooms exude a Scheherazade vibe with decorative arabesques. The spa is a psychedelic extravaganza of bubble-clad chambers worthy of Verner Panton. Mondrian Doha, Qatar. Morganshotelgroup.com/mondrian/mondrian-doha.
Monkey business: Bisate Lodge
Situated within the natural amphitheater of an extinct volcanic cone on the Albertine Rift, Wilderness Safaris’ Bisate Lodge has six thatched-roof spherical forest villas inspired by the King’s Palace at Nyanza. Inside, it has basket-like ribbed walls and floor-to-ceiling glazing. Each villa (it can host a maximum of 12 guests) is set around a central volcanic stone fireplace and all have unobstructed views of the Bisoke, Karisimbi, and Mikeno volcanoes. The property is also a wildlife corridor central to the preservation of critically endangered mountain gorillas. You can witness them in their natural habitat with a trek, among other excursions to encounter the golden monkey population, to bird-watch, or to visit a local tree nursery. Bisate Lodge, Rwanda, wilderness-safaris.com/camps/bisate-lodge.
Stay here for Miami Art Week: Faena Hotel Miami Beach
The Baz Luhrmann- and Catherine Martin-designed beachfront Faena Hotel Miami Beach was founded as an incubator as well as a platform for artists both established and emerging, so expect no less than a rabbit hole – but well-curated, if its gilded lobby, the Cathedral and its floor-to-ceiling murals of wild animals and biblical allegories don’t already give it away. For Art Basel, Phillip K Smith will be presenting a mirrored installation on the hotel’s private beach using 300 geometric reflectors angled at 10 degrees to play with one’s view of the horizon. Miami-based artist Kelly Breez is teaming up with the science/art collective Coral Morphologic to deliver a series of 3D Mapping projections that will illuminate the circular Faena Forum. Its 58 rooms and 111 suites, crowned with two penthouse rooms offer a Chateau Marmont-meets-Fitzgeraldian Art Deco feel. The compound has a 3,000-square-foot cabaret, a wine cave, an ocean-view restaurant set in a dome, and a 22,000-square-foot spa Tierra Santa Healing House with a hammam where you are scrubbed and bathed on a slab of semi-precious amazonite. Faena Hotel Miami Beach, faena.com.
Go back in time: Amanyangyun, Shanghai
Amanyangyun is just outside metropolitan downtown Shanghai yet even just driving through the ancient camphor forest surrounding it feels like taking a trip back in time. It took a decade to build and the result is nothing short of majestic. The undertaking has required the disassembly, relocation, and restoration of dozens of Ming and Qing dynasty houses, reassembled brick by brick into antique villas and Ming Courtyard suites that feature contemporary interiors and private pools. 10,000 ancient camphor trees have been replanted into its own forest park which has its water terraces, lotus ponds, and wildlife-rich wetlands. There are also tea-rooms in a forum named Nan Shufang (after the royal reading pavilion in The Forbidden City) for ancient calligraphy, Chinese painting, or a tea and incense ceremony; an Aman Spa; two pools; and six dining venues. Amanyangyun, Shanghai, China, aman.com/resorts/amanyangyun.
