Year´s best hotels, by Travel + Leisure:

Design: The Singular, Puerto Borries, Patagonia, Chile

Here’s a challenge: take a century-old meat-storage facility on the shoals of Patagonia’s icy fjords and turn it into a top-notch adventure resort. The first hotel from Singular, an independent, Santiago-based hotel company, is up to the task. Chilean-born designer Enrique Concha helped transform the brick-and-timber structure an hour from Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park into a cavernous main lodge with cathedral ceilings and dramatic walls of glass. Fifty-seven guest rooms—all with floor-to-ceiling windows—look onto the original pinewood dock, the Last Hope Sound, and the snowcapped Andes. After a hearty traditional breakfast we were fortified enough to explore our surroundings, which included the two for-guests-only private reserves, just a short sail away. thesingular.com. $$$$

—Rocky Casale

Read the complete list here!

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Article published in DESIGNREISEN about The Singular Patagonia.

DESIGNREISEN is a team of travel managers, specializing in the highest standards. The design of individual luxury travel with incomparable luxury hotels is their specialty.

Read the article here!

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

The Singular Patagonia was published in Luxo. Read the article here!

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Read part of the article written by Rocky Casale on The New York Times Style Magazine.

Chile’s boutique hotel business is booming these days, most notably with last December’s opening of two stylish resorts that changed the way travelers experience the absolute remoteness of Patagonia.

The standout of the two is The Singular Hotel, which occupies a converted sheep slaughterhouse on the shoals of Puerto Bories. On the outside the hotel and spa looks like a cluster of unkempt farm buildings, but the inside is industrial chic: rooms of polished red brick, hulking steel and wooden beams. The meat factory’s former refrigeration buildings were partitioned and converted into 57 guest rooms (from $580 per person per night, including meals), each fitted with a giant glass wall that faces the Patagonian fjords and the snowcapped Andes Mountains.

The Singular’s bar, lounge and restaurant is in a turn-of-the-century general store at the base of the old factory. The immense red brick room has cathedral ceilings, long antique wooden tables and high-backed leather Winchester chairs. The bartender makes a pisco sour that will make your blood glow, and the food — the sources are from Patagonia’s backyard pantry of mountains, farmland and sea — is excellent, especially the braised rabbit. And because this is Patagonia, the hotel employs a team of adventure experts to cart guests all over the countryside to horseback ride with professional gauchos, zip around on speed boats between the glacial fjords and trek into the grassy foothills of the Andes and Massif mountain ranges.

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Newly opened in November 2011, The Singular is a renovated cold-storage plant on the shores of Last Hope Sound, just outside the town of Puerto Bories in southern Patagonia. The concept of a factory-turned-hotel may sound a little odd, but in reality it means lots of space, history and just the right amount of quirkiness.

Built by the British in 1915, this long red-brick building was used to process wool and meat which was then shipped back home. After almost 70 years in operation, it was declared a national historic landmark and has now been transformed into a hotel which pays homage to its history – the hallways are filled with original Victorian machinery (wheels, steam condensers, boilers and forges) all of which are stamped with their places of origin, like Derby, Birmingham, London and Glasgow.

In contrast, is the new wing, which has 57 bedrooms and the biggest spa in Patagonia (3,000-square-feet). In keeping with the past, the corridors have industrial-looking stainless steel walls, and the bedrooms are furnished with solid Victorian-style furniture. Full-length windows give the bedrooms a ‘capsule’ feel and make the most of the views over the fjord.

Most guests book all-inclusive stays and spend the days on the hotel’s excursions which include hiking, biking, boating and visiting Torres del Paine National Park. After a long day in the elements, the spa with its sauna, steam room and swimming pool is the perfect place for warming up and chilling out.

What’s hot?

- The Victorian machinery in the hallways

- The bedside notes giving snippets of the hotel’s and region’s history

- The enormous beds and huge windows overlooking the water

- The excursions – especially horse riding and visiting a cave in which giant sloths lived 10,000 years ago

- Relaxing in the spa after a day exploring Patagonia

What’s not?

- The price tag

- The swimming pool is quite small – surprising given all the space

- This part of the world was previously thought to be uninhabitable, so bring plenty of clothes and be prepared for grey skies, high winds and unpredictable weather

Need to Know: The Singular Patagonia

Number of rooms: 54

Check-in/check-out times: 3pm and 12noon

Swimming pool: Yes

Spa: Yes

Dogs welcome: No

Eating and drinking: The spacious restaurant has an open kitchen and plenty of different seating options (from high stools, to big comfy seats and dining room tables). There is a long bar at one end where guests can settle in with an aperitif or partake in beer and wine-tasting evenings.

Near to? A whole lot of nothing. Remoteness aside, the hotel is a few minutes outside Puerto Bories, and two hours’ drive from Punta Arenas – where there’s an airport with frequent flights from Santiago.

Getting there: LAN (0800 977 6100; Lan.com ) flies from London Heathrow to Santiago via Madrid. Once on the ground, it is a three-hour flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas. The Singular will arrange airport transfers.

The ELLE Edit

Best room: There are 54 rooms and three suites.The style is similar in all the rooms, and all have stand-alone baths and huge beds, but the difference lies in space – the suites measure 70 square metre and come with vast windows and expansive living rooms.

Best dish: Chef Laurent Pasqualetto changes the menu daily and uses local produce and recipes where possible. The soups are delicious (think carrot and ginger ) and the beetroot gnocchi is not to be missed. Also, make the most of the Chilean wine.

Fashion/design credentials: Designed by renowned Chilean interior designer Enrique Concha and local architect Pedro Kovacic, the building’s historical role gives an extra dimension to this luxury hotel. The combination of original machinery and replica Victorian furniture alongside modern-day comforts and excellent service gives a feeling of complete rest and escapism.

Who stays here? Wealthy Chileans and Europeans who come to explore the region, some with a particular interest in historical ties; honeymooners looking to come to the one of the most wild and woolly parts of the globe to share their early days of marital bliss.

Check the article on Elle´s website here!

Categories: Press, The Singular Hotels, The Singular Patagonia, Tour Operators

Read the article published by Luxury Latin America here.

The Singular Patagonia – Torres del Paine, Chile

Puerto Bories, near Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile

A fast five-minute drive from Puerto Natales, the launch-town for tourists bound for Torres del Paine National Park, The Singular Patagonia is an excellent alternative for travelers seeking to also know the local culture and other attractions outside the park.

On my trip to The Singular to do this review, the hotel loaded me down with info to help inform my impressions of this stunning new addition to Chile’s hotels. One such document, ”Ten Reasons to Discover Patagonia with The Singular,” gave several strong arguments in favor of the hotel. Maybe the most compelling reason stated there? “Best of Both Worlds” – which they define as combining through The Singular the possibility to visit both the extraordinary Torres del Paine park and the authentic Patagonia culture and other notable destinations in the area outside of the park.

But perhaps the most singular reason that makes this hotel different from any other I have ever come across in Chile is that it is actually a historic, tourist destination in its own right.

The Singular is built on and around a 1915 cold storage plant for processing and exporting frozen meat and wool. After more than 70 years, the Frigorifo Puerto Bories plant closed down and in 1996 was declared a national monument. As Nicolas Sahli, the executive director and owner of The Singular tells it, this plant played an integral part in boosting the sheep farming industry in the region that his own great-grandfather several generations ago, Jose Menendez, helped establish. This industry now informs the cultural identity of Patagonia almost as much as the towering peaks in Torres del Paine.

“History is important to our concept in all of our hotels,” says Sahli, who also has a Singular hotel in the downtown Lastarria neighborhood in Santiago. “We want the architecture and design of our hotels to not just honor local history and culture, but add to it and at the same time respect the natural environment around us.”

The immersion with local history begins the minute you pull into the tin roof-covered parking lot that is made up of the remnants of an old slaughterhouse. It is just the first sign of the hotel’s genuine attention to preserving the site’s past while allowing the future a luxurious point of entry. Then, after going down a funicular elevator to reach the hotel lobby below, you are in the middle of the restored former sheep processing plant/museum itself; the 54 guest rooms and 3 suites are in a new, adjoining wing.

If the insides of an old sheep processing plant are an unconventional front and center for the hotel, the modern wing of rooms built for The Singular Patagonia also feature an uncommon design for a 5-star luxury hotel. This two-story wing keeps to the factory theme, with industrial-looking stainless steel walls along long corridors in which all the rooms are to one side to take advantage of a priceless view of the Last Hope Fjord. While it is a mini-hike for the unfortunate guest with a room at the far end of the corridors, the logic behind this design is that it also affords unusually large rooms for all: each of the guest rooms are a generous 500 square feet while the suites are 770 square feet. Inside the rooms, guests are rewarded with handsome Victorian-style furniture finely handcrafted. And the beds are supremely comfortable while facing the tremendous Patagonian vistas through a full-sized glass plate window. The result: one of the best hotel rooms I have had the pleasure to stay at.

The hotel’s restaurant also does not disappoint. The French chef and his kitchen use local ingredients to make delicious Chilean dishes and tempting desserts. On my first night, I had a memorable meal of Patagonian lamb with an exceptional, award-winning Chilean Syrah wine from Viña Tabali. The hotel offers two rates: a bed and breakfast plan, and a full board plan with three meals and your choice of daily excursions. The approximately $200-$300 difference in prices, depending on the time of year, are likely worth the extra expense for the possibility to partake in one of the 20 varied activities on offer.

For me, the best excursion was a trip through the windswept Patagonian fjords on a high speed boat that included a hike and picnic lunch at Glacier Serrano in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park. The boat belongs to the hotel, and actually departs from the hotel’s own pier. Some other trips include horseback riding, kayaking and hikes in Torres del Paine.

The Singular Patagonia is an original, with a concept that is very different from the increasingly competitive array of hotels both inside and around Chile’s star destination, Torres del Paine. For its creativity and high-quality facilities, this is a great new addition to Patagonia travel and most definitely gets a hearty two thumbs up.

Web Address: www.thesingular.com/puertobories

Total Number of Rooms: 57

Published rates: $520 to $1,820 BB or full board with activities.

Review and photos by Jimmy Langman.

Categories: Press, The Singular Patagonia, The Singular Santiago, Tour Operators