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Bolivian salt flats with cashmere and WiFi: Amazing Escapes' pop-up hotels make going off-grid a lot more luxurious
If there’s a barrier to having Amazing Escapes arrange a holiday, it is – for all but the 0.001 per cent – cost. "It’s very difficult for us to do anything for less that $100,000," says its Swiss MD, Vincent Raisière.
"Before, if you wanted to stay somewhere nice, you had to go where there was already a luxury hotel. But now it’s possible to stay anywhere in comfort."
Decide where you’d like to go, and Raisière and his team will conjure somewhere fabulous just for you: a lavishly appointed yurt, for instance, or a ‘bubble’ (a futuristic pebble-shaped tent that is inflated and kept in its form by a silent internal turbine).
In February 2019, however, its offering becomes more accessible with the opening of Kachi Lodge at the foot of the Tunupa volcano, on the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, as a temporary all-inclusive ‘hotel’.
Accommodation consists of six geodesic domes, each sleeping two (plus a child), with an en-suite bathroom, solar-heated running water, a wood-burning stove, high-thread-count sheets, cashmere blankets, Wi-Fi and, in light of the 12,000ft altitude, extra oxygen.
The pods are connected to one another by wooden walkways, which also lead to the restaurant: a pop-up by the La Paz favourite Gustu, which ranks 28th in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America. Just be aware that after one season it will all be gone for ever.
The trend for pop-ups is spreading to city hotels too. Take Why Hotel is a new US brand that creates fully functioning hotels in top-spec new apartment buildings, into which permanent tenants or leaseholders have yet to move.
Its latest project is within the 100K Apartments building in Washington, DC’s up-and-coming NoMa district.
A two-night stay at Kachi Lodge costs about £1,530pp, including three meals a day, drinks, snacks, excursions and transfers from Uyuni airport; each additional night is £760. Take Why Hotel costs from £204 a night.
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