Our pick of the best women-owned boutique hotels to support on International Women’s Day (and beyond)
08 March, 2023
In
a crowded space – there are an estimated 187,000 hotels open
around the world – meeting a woman hotelier is still surprisingly
rare. According to the UN, some 54 per cent of tourism industry
employees are now women, but if you glance across the imaginary
table of all the globe’s hotel owners, the majority are still –
depressingly – male.
What better way, then, to support the women making leaps in the
travel world than to book a stay at a woman-owned boutique hotel
this summer? Here are four of our favourite.
The nine-room Hotel Aristide in Syros’ well-heeled Vaporia
neighbourhood is a sustainability-driven, swoon-worthy stay run by
a triad of high-achieving women. Oana Aristide, author of a
literary thriller published in the same year as she opened the
hotel, 2022, transformed a dilapidated but distinguished
neoclassical building on the waterfront of the island’s main town,
Hermoupolis, with help from her mother, Simona, and sister Jasmin,
a practising doctor. The result? A boutique stay that celebrates
Syros’ offbeat character and showcases the island’s industrial
heritage through local craftsmanship. Rooms are colourful and
expressive, an art gallery sits alongside the restaurant and two
bars, and there are regular artists’ residencies and workshops on
site throughout the year.
Oana Aristide’s insider guide to
Syros
Former lawyer Meryanne Loum-Martin is the only Black woman
hotelier in Marrakech. The 24-key Jnane Tamsna, a joint project
between the hotelier and her ethnobotanist partner Gary Martin (who
designed the property’s lush three-and-a-half hectares of palm and
olive groves, as well as the rambunctious kitchen gardens),
delivers colourful, cosy bohemian interiors, and welcoming little
luxuries, like complimentary fresh grapefruit juice, a rotation of
regular events, and, in Loum-Martin, an encyclopaedic knowledge of
Morocco and its culture. Located a 20-minute drive from the medina,
the hotel’s five character-imbued villas (all with pools) are
spread throughout the verdant gardens, and there’s also a tennis
court and a restaurant serving a Mediterranean-influenced menu.
British-Trinidadian Portia Hart was bewitched by Colombia after
travelling through the country; seven years later, her boutique
hotel, Townhouse, in Cartagena’s historic walled city, is a love
letter to the destination, the hotelier’s adoration written out in
the aesthetics, ambience and socially-conscious ambition of the
11-bed stay. One of a collection of businesses helmed by Hart (that
also includes two beach clubs and an environmental enterprise in
the region), the hotel’s unstuffy rooms are decorated with
colourful murals by a local artist. Upstairs, an award-winning,
palm-fringed rooftop bar is a favourite dusk hangout destination
for city residents. And, in keeping with Hart’s unerring admiration
of the region, the hotel aims to preserve, as well as celebrate,
its home: 75 per cent of the property’s waste is diverted from
landfill, a regenerative farm supplies the on-site restaurant, and
roughly 80 per cent of the hotel’s outgoings are spent within
Colombia.
Read our interview with Hart in Vol. 36: Discovery
36-88 Carrera 7, Centro, Cartagena 130001,Ethiopian-American entrepreneur Yodit Eklund – the woman behind
trendsetting African surf brand Bantu Wax – blends European and African culture
in her seven-room stay, Seku Bi, in Dakar. Housed within two French
colonial villas on the Petite Corniche, the hotel takes care to
preserve historical features – like the original terrazzo floors
and the airy, classical proportions – but balances the old with
striking contemporary local artwork and furniture made by
pan-African designers. Uniforms worn by the women on the team are
the handiwork of Senegalese designer Adama Paris. The in-house
Italian restaurant, Il Pappagallo, is helmed by Abdou Fall, a
Senegalese chef who spent his childhood in Turin, and now whips up
Italian-influenced dishes using local ingredients.
