Hotels With Soul · Seven stories of belonging
Latin America.7 remarkable luxury hotels, and the convictions that give them life.
A house patiently restored. A sky made newly visible. A grandmother’s craft finding its way back into someone’s working life. Places worth knowing through the people who make them possible.
A Cusco courtyard, a Bahian house, Chiloé weather and Atacama guiding are not excursions from the product. They are the product.
That is what draws me to these seven hotels. Their most interesting decisions begin with something that was already there: a building carrying generations of history, a coastline an artist loved, a way of making things that deserved another generation of work. The hotel gives that encounter a future.
There is room here for considerable luxury. There is also room for a more interesting question than how much a room costs. What becomes possible because this particular place exists? Who gets to make something, tell a story, preserve a building or help a stranger see differently?
These are seven quite different answers, across five countries. Each deserves time. None needs to stand in for an entire continent.
01 · Cusco, Peru
Inkaterra La Casona
The patience inside an old house.
The detail I keep returning to at La Casona is the work that came before the welcome. Denise Koechlin directed the restoration of a sixteenth-century manor on Plaza de las Nazarenas, attending to its courtyard arches, carved wood and surviving wall decoration. Inkaterra’s tribute to the late designer describes the discovery of murals and friezes concealed beneath later surfaces. Somebody had to believe those surfaces were worth looking beneath.
That is a generous kind of imagination. It grants an old building the possibility of surprising the people responsible for it. Restoration requires decisions about what to reveal, what to repair and where modern comfort can enter without overwhelming the original rooms. Much of the intelligence disappears into the finished result. A guest sees a house that feels coherent; the choices that made it so are harder to see.
Opened as a hotel in 2008, La Casona belongs to the Peruvian company founded by José Koechlin. Its scale remains domestic: eleven suites arranged around the main patio. Fireplaces, heated floors and large bathtubs provide a thoroughly contemporary welcome inside the historic structure. Colonial furniture, textiles and original murals give the rooms different ways of carrying time.
Fire, stone, carved doors, textiles and an intimate courtyard carry more meaning here than an oversized amenity inventory could. The courtyard is especially important. It gives the house a center, a shared piece of sky around which private lives can briefly settle. Small hotels can achieve a lovely balance this way: enough company to feel inhabited, enough privacy to feel at home.
Cusco’s history is too complicated to compress into a romantic description of colonial elegance. Inca and Spanish colonial histories occupy the same city, and the surrounding streets remain part of a living Andean culture. La Casona’s location makes that complexity close at hand. The house offers a place from which to become more attentive to it.
I admire the restraint in allowing a building to remain the principal attraction. Denise’s work has an enduring, practical consequence: people can continue to use what she helped preserve. They can sit beneath those beams, gather around that courtyard and return after a day in Cusco. Care becomes visible through the life the house is still able to hold.
Explore Inkaterra La Casona · Eleven suites in Cusco’s historic center.
02 · José Ignacio, Uruguay
Posada Ayana
A hotel that makes an appointment with the sky.
Most hotel art can be appreciated on the way to somewhere else. James Turrell’s Ta Khut asks you to give it a portion of your day. Its opening frames the sky; changing natural light and carefully composed artificial light alter what you perceive. Sunrise and sunset supply the timing. You have to arrive, sit and allow something to happen at its own pace.
The work shares its grounds with Posada Ayana, the José Ignacio hotel created by Austrian art lovers Robert and Edda Kofler. As Condé Nast Traveler recounts, their original intention was a private retreat before the project grew into a hotel. Commissioning Turrell extended the family’s enthusiasm into a place that other people could enter.
Ta Khut opened in 2021. The hotel offers its guests sunrise and sunset access during the season, while public visits have their own arrangements. That distinction matters. A privately commissioned work can become part of the cultural life of a town when its owners make room for people beyond the overnight guest list.
The most memorable appointment of the day can be with something nobody owns.
A Skyspace makes that idea unusually tangible. The sky was always available. The architecture, light and act of gathering change the care with which people look at it. I admire a hotel willing to give such a quiet encounter this much importance. It trusts the guest’s capacity for attention.
Ayana’s smaller decisions belong to the same sensibility. The hotel describes locally made tableware, soaps and creams, along with wool blankets woven by a maker it identifies simply as Hugo. That little act of naming is appealing. Beside an internationally recognized artist, there is room to remember the person who made the blanket.
The art gives the property a remarkable center of gravity, but the human scale keeps it approachable. José Ignacio is still the setting: a low-rise coastal town, the sea nearby, daylight doing much of the work. The family’s accomplishment is to make looking feel like a worthwhile way to spend time together.
Seasonal note, checked September 29, 2026: Posada Ayana advertises reopening on October 29, 2026. Ta Khut’s public program is scheduled to resume at the end of October. The hotel welcomes adults aged 18 and over. Check the hotel and Skyspace information for the relevant dates.
04 · San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Awasi Atacama
The freedom to ask one more question.
A private guide changes the social contract of an excursion. You can admit you have forgotten the name of the volcano. You can ask why a plant grows in one apparently unpromising patch and not another. You can be very interested in a small thing without feeling that a busload of people is patiently waiting for you to become less interested.
Awasi makes that relationship central to the stay. Each room has a private guide and four-wheel-drive vehicle assigned to it, allowing explorations to respond to the people taking them. The twelve-room property in San Pedro de Atacama is the original Awasi lodge, which the company dates to 2007. Its guiding model gives a huge landscape a manageable, conversational point of entry.
The setting needs that kind of attention. Northern Chile’s desert holds salt flats, volcanic terrain, highland lagoons and human histories that reach far beyond the usual description of an otherworldly landscape. Calling a place otherworldly can be useful shorthand for wonder. A good guide helps make it part of this world again, full of names, relationships and reasons.
Awasi’s buildings participate in that explanation. Adobe, stone, wood and thatch draw on local building traditions, with the ancient settlement of Tulor identified by the hotel as an architectural influence. Round rooms and suites keep the forms intimate. The property is in the town, which means the return from an excursion leads back into a lived settlement rather than an abstract desert stage set.
Curiosity becomes easier when the day has room to follow it.
This is where the operating decision becomes humane. The same landscape can invite a demanding walk, a patient look at a bird or a long conversation about how people have lived here. A guide can help fit the day to someone’s interests and energy, with routes subject to conditions and access. The experience has space to become particular.
I like the confidence of building the value of a hotel around that encounter. Good guiding is skilled work. It requires knowledge, judgment and the ability to notice what another person is beginning to care about. Giving it such a prominent role recognizes a form of hospitality that happens well beyond the front desk.
The kitchen offers another beginning. Awasi names Lima-born Sebastián Prieto as its chef and identifies chañar fruit, quinoa, potatoes and algarrobo among the ingredients that connect its food to northern Chile. A landscape that first appears spare turns out to offer a vocabulary of flavors. The guide and the cook approach the same place through different kinds of knowledge, and the guest benefits from both.
Explore Awasi Atacama · For a different Chilean approach to guided exploration, read the fuller story of Explora Torres del Paine.
05 · Chiloé, Chile
Refugia Chiloé
A boat belongs in the description of the hotel.
Previously known as Tierra Chiloé, Refugia is now independently owned and run by the Purcell family.
The Williche is a wooden boat built locally for a hotel on an archipelago. That fact says a great deal about Refugia. Water is the means of reaching other islands, understanding distances and seeing how settlements face the sea. The boat helps guests enter that geography on its own terms.
From the Rilán Peninsula, Refugia looks over Pullao Bay. Its twenty-four rooms occupy a striking building by Mobil Arquitectos, whose elevated, shingle-clad form makes a bold silhouette on the hill. The Purcell family, also associated with Ski Portillo and the founding of Tierra Hotels, now operates Refugia independently. The renewed name keeps a recognizable place in view while clarifying its present identity.
The architecture earns a closer look. In their account of the original design, the architects describe a practical conflict: the best views faced south, while useful solar warmth came from the north. They had to reconcile the pleasure of looking out with the demands of a cool, rainy climate. Window placement, eaves, thermal performance and the building’s skin became part of the answer.
That is the sort of design story I enjoy. It makes the beauty more meaningful. A remarkable view is easy to praise; making a room comfortable enough for somebody to keep enjoying it in difficult weather requires thought. Chiloé’s changing conditions become something the building helps a guest live with.
Inside, a suspended copper fireplace draws people toward a shared center. The current interiors credit Carolina del Piano and Alexandra Edwards working with Chilean artisans. Outside, the Williche extends the welcome. Refugia’s Quinchao excursion, for example, connects a visit to the island with a family honey business, local farming and a return by boat. Native potatoes and giant garlic belong to somebody’s working day before they become a visitor’s discovery.
This is why the hotel’s role as an interpreter matters. A distant church can become a building made and cared for by a community. A meal can become a way to understand an island’s agriculture. A channel crossed by boat can become part of an everyday network of homes and livelihoods. The guest begins to see relationships where the map showed separate points.
I admire Refugia for making those connections part of its hospitality. The bold architecture gets attention, but the journey outward gives that attention somewhere worthwhile to go. The hotel can be a place of considerable comfort and still encourage people to become better guests of the wider island.
Explore Refugia Chiloé · Excursions depend on conditions and the program arranged for a stay.
06 · Holbox, Mexico
Ser Casasandra
The hospitality of an artist’s home.
In the hotel’s telling, a taxi driver helped give Casa Sandra its name. Why not name the place after yourself? It was a wonderfully practical suggestion for something that began with a deeply personal impulse. Cuban artist and writer Sandra Pérez Lozano had found a home on Holbox, off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. What grew around that home continues to carry her sensibility.
The property’s twenty-fifth anniversary reflection in 2025 describes a gradual evolution from private refuge to hotel. Its current name, Ser Casasandra, makes being part of the invitation. That language is supported by tangible decisions about what a room contains and how people spend time there.
There are books about art and architecture, works by Sandra and other contemporary artists, and furnishings by designers including Jorge Pardo and Patricia Urquiola. The hotel identifies relationships with Arsenal and La Isla Residencia. Art is part of an ongoing exchange, with living makers and changing work.
The distinction is interesting because a home has permission to be particular. Its books need not appeal to everyone. Its art can hold a thought a guest has never encountered before. Staying in a place shaped by someone’s interests gives you the opportunity to borrow their attention for a while.
Casasandra’s rooms deliberately omit televisions, phones, radios and alarm clocks. A guest can still bring the outside world in through a personal device, of course. The room simply offers fewer competing instructions. There is space for a book, another person or the view to become enough for the moment.
The property’s community program describes film evenings, workshops and connections to local cultural and animal-welfare efforts. These are useful companions to the quiet. Rest can include participation and conversation; it need not mean withdrawing from everyone around you.
I appreciate the courage involved in allowing such a personal point of view to remain visible as a business grows. A founder’s taste can become less legible with every attempt to make a hotel universally appealing. Here, Sandra’s interests still provide a reason for the rooms, the art and the slower rhythm to belong together.
That coherence makes the welcome feel comprehensible. Someone imagined a life with room for making things, reading, resting and gathering. Then she opened the door. The generosity is in allowing others to spend a little time inside that possibility.
Explore Ser Casasandra · An artist-founded hotel on Holbox.
07 · Trancoso, Brazil
UXUA Casa Hotel & Spa
A place for the makers to keep making.
Evandro was working as a waiter when designer Wilbert Das learned that he knew how to weave. His grandmother had taught him. According to UXUA’s account of its atelier, Das offered him work that brought that family knowledge into the hotel’s gardens, where guests could encounter the making as well as the finished piece.
That story gives me a better understanding of UXUA than a list of amenities could. It begins with paying attention to a person. A skill already existed. Somebody recognized it, made space for it and connected it with people who might value the result. A grandmother’s teaching acquired another setting in which to continue.
Das first came to Trancoso in 2004. The former Diesel creative director eventually made a home and a hotel here, with co-founder Bob Shevlin. The project’s own account describes a commitment to life in Bahia. UXUA opened in 2009, bringing restored houses and local craft into a hospitality business that takes its character from the village’s historic Quadrado and the people around it.
Each casa has its own identity. Seu Irênio keeps the name and remembered character of a former resident. In the restoration, glass roof tiles admit light through an old roof, while opened interior partitions allow air and views to travel through the house. The pleasures are contemporary, but they emerge from close attention to what the building can become.
Casa do Lago, completed in 2020, takes a different path, using wood reclaimed from abandoned farms for a new interpretation of a Brazilian colonial house. The distinction is worth preserving. UXUA includes both restoration and new making. Its coherence comes from the way materials are handled and the people involved, allowing individual houses to remain individual.
Collaboration with local artisans, including Pataxó makers, is central to that work. The permanent atelier makes craft visible in the life of the property. A chair or a textile becomes easier to appreciate when you can understand some of the decisions and labor that brought it into being.
A skill has a future when somebody can make a living practicing it.
This is the contribution I find most compelling. Hotels are buyers of enormous amounts of work: furniture, food, fabric, construction, flowers and care. Those decisions can help determine which forms of knowledge remain economically possible in a place. UXUA makes some of that purchasing power part of its creative identity.
The result is a kind of beauty with people still inside the story. The house has a past. The wood has come from somewhere. The person at the loom has learned from someone. A guest arrives for a few days, but the most important relationships can continue after departure.
Explore the story behind UXUA · Distinct houses, design and craft in Trancoso.
What stays with me
The welcome begins long before arrival.
These hotels have very different ideas about how a day should feel. Yet the details that make me admire them often happened before a guest could see the result. Denise studying an old wall. A family choosing to share an artist’s work. A designer discovering that the person serving dinner knows how to weave.
That is why place cannot be manufactured by adding a regional pattern to a finished room. It develops through decisions about whose work matters, what deserves preservation and how the surrounding community enters the life of a property. Over time, those decisions become something a guest can feel.
The most interesting luxury here is the chance to participate, however briefly, in a place that somebody has thought about with unusual care.
I write about places whose character deserves close attention. If you are building or caring for one, and would value a conversation about its story or direction, I would be glad to hear from you.
A few useful distinctions
Before choosing a stay.
Which countries do these seven hotels represent?
The seven hotels are in Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile and Brazil. This is a selective editorial collection, not a complete survey of Latin America.
Is Posada Ayana open throughout the year?
No. Posada Ayana operates seasonally. As checked on September 29, 2026, the hotel advertises reopening on October 29, 2026, and Ta Khut’s public program is scheduled to resume at the end of October. Confirm dates directly with the property.
Is Refugia Chiloé the hotel formerly called Tierra Chiloé?
Yes. The hotel previously known as Tierra Chiloé now operates as Refugia Chiloé. It is independently owned and run by the Purcell family.
What distinguishes the stay at Awasi Atacama?
Awasi Atacama assigns a private guide and four-wheel-drive vehicle to each room. Explorations can be arranged around guests’ interests and pace, subject to current conditions and access.
Where should I check rates and inclusions?
Use the official property links in each story. Room-only stays and hosted programs are not directly comparable, and inclusions, seasonal dates, taxes and transfer arrangements can change.