by NIKKI EKSTEIN
FOR decades, New York’s Hudson Valley has been something of a local secret. Yes, New Yorkers know it — they’ve been vying for reservations at Blue Hill at Stone Barns and hunting for antiques in Beacon for years. But ask Londoners or Parisians to name a single town or hotel in the region and they’ll likely draw a blank. It’s not the Cotswolds — yet.
Now Philippe Zuber, the French CEO of hospitality development firm Kerzner International Ltd, hopes to spark global curiosity about the bucolic Manhattanites’ escape, giving it the same illustrious reputation as that English countryside domain.
In early 2028, he plans to open the first East Coast location of One&Only, Kerzner’s ultraluxury resort brand, on 21 acres (8.5ha) adjacent to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) campus in Hyde Park, 90 minutes north of the city by car. It’ll consist of 61 modernist cabins with glass walls facing the region’s rolling, forested hills, some with hot tubs on their deck and others with fire pits or balconies.
There will be two pools — one specifically for families — plus a Clinique La Prairie spa, a few rooms in one central building, a kids club and at least three ambitious restaurants. And, most important, it will carry the esteemed One&Only name, which carries a reputation for hyper-detailed design and service in rarified destinations from Mexico to the Greek Isles to Rwanda.
“We believe that in this destination we will have to do something that’s extremely fine dining, something that has not been achieved and that justifies a trip in itself,” Zuber said. Speaking exclusively to Bloomberg, he explained that the restaurants are still in early conceptual phases, but in addition to being in a marquee, destination-making spot, he said a high-end Japanese restaurant feels like a “must” and that a third venue will highlight some other “specialty cuisine”.
Given their proximity to the CIA campus, Zuber said the restaurants “cannot be anything less than exceptional”. It won’t be exclusively a culinary destination, however. Kerzner has made strides in wellness and longevity with One&Only’s new sibling brand, Siro, and the Clinique La Prairie spa at its recently opened Dubai resort has already earned the brand much praise.
The Hudson Valley resort, which is as yet unnamed, will take cues from both to offer its own versions of science-backed wellness and relaxation.
“We have a competitive edge now in this wellness space,” Zuber said, pointing to hard-core fitness programming at Siro, which is led, in some cases, by professional athletes who do residency-like stints at the hotels. The Hudson Valley hotel will not take that approach, but it will incorporate water sports on the river, which few other hotels in the region have on offer. Yoga and hiking in the surrounding area, which gives way to the Catskill mountains, will also be available.
But food is poised to be the star feature of the resort, and culinary programming will be extensive, including for families and multi-generational groups.
“Across all of our resorts, cooking classes and cooking together as a family with our chefs are the No 1 most popular activities,” Zuber said. The extent to which these will incorporate staff from
CIA is still being determined, but the intention is to leverage the institution next door to create programming that’s accessible and easy to incorporate into an extended weekend itinerary.
Even homes being built for sale on the site (the starting prices will be around US$4 million [RM17.48 million] for two-bedrooms, though they’ll go into a rental pool) will be differentiated by enormous chef’s kitchens with top-of-the-line appliances and wine cellars.
“We know that people love to cook together, love to party together, and think of the kitchen as the heart of the house,” he said. That philosophy could be said to underpin both the real estate and the hotel proposition.
While Zuber hopes the hotel will become more than just a regional draw, he knows that New Yorkers are a prime audience for the brand. Americans, and New Yorkers in particular, are some of One&Only’s biggest fans and the among the most dominant customer groups at most of its hotels — even though all of the company’s 14 properties are outside of the US. Its first American resort, in Big Sky, Montana, will open in November, and Zuber has teased that more US properties will follow.
“The US market is absolutely critical to us,” he said.
He’s not the only one betting on the Hudson Valley’s potential. By 2028, when the hotel opens, the area will be a competitive ultraluxury resort destination.
Already, Auberge Resorts Collection has raised the bar for luxury in the region with its Wildflower Farms resort, which has been notching US$1,000-plus nightly rates since it opened in 2022; it’s also a culinary destination, with some of the country’s best chefs dropping in for pop-up workshops, cooking demos and tasting dinners.
Soho House at some point plans to open its long-delayed Grasmere House, on a 250-acre site with a working farm in the town of Rhinebeck, as a sort of American version of its popular UK-based Soho Farmhouse. Six Senses, too, is on the way, taking over a 1750s Dutch Farmhouse building as part of a wellness retreat it’s building near Hyde Park and Clinton.
But Zuber said that if he’s pulling inspiration from any where, it’s the Paul Bocuse Institute in Lyon, France — not any of his counterparts heading to the Catskills.
“What I can say is that we will have to be very ambitious, very defining-of-the-trends, and not in any way cookie-cutter,” he said. “We have to define the destination, and we will be very ambitious in how we do it.” — Bloomberg
- This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition
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The post One&Only is opening ultraluxury resort in Hudson Valley appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.
