Airelles Crosses the Alps Into Venice With Its First Non-French Property
For forty years, Belmond’s Hôtel Cipriani has held an unchallenged position at the apex of Venetian hospitality. That era of single-brand dominance ends this month. Airelles, the French luxury group, opens the Palladio Venezia on the Giudecca Canal—its eighth property and its first outside France. A Sixteenth-Century Stage The Palladio occupies a palazzo dating to the 1500s, positioned directly across the water from the Piazza San Marco panorama that every top-tier Venice hotel sells. Airelles renovated the building to its house standard, the same approach it applied to the Château de Versailles guest residence and to Cheval Blanc Courchevel’s most direct competitor in the French Alps. Rate positioning tells the competitive story plainly. Weekday entry rooms open in the high four figures; full-floor suites run into the low five figures.…
