Walking enthusiasts who want to kick off their boots at the end of a long day on the trail can now do so at boutique hotels, offering a step up from the more basic accommodation that has historically catered for this market. And what’s more, there is even an entirely new term coined to capture the trend: “bootiquing.”
Making the most of this movement, Original Travel has, over the last year, welcomed to its portfolio the likes of Trailborn, a new US brand building stylish properties in national parks. Trailborn goes where the hikers want to be – along coastlines, atop mountains and on the beach, with two properties open so far in the Rocky Mountains and four more in the pipeline, including Mendocino and the Grand Canyon, Wildflower Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. All offer miles of scenic walking trails and 300 climbing routes on the storied crags of Shawangunk Ridge, and Ambiente Sedona which has amazing trailhead access to some of the premier hiking and mountain biking in Sedona.
This side of the pond, we have Oasyhotel in Tuscany’s San Marcello Piteglio nature reserve and Hotel de Len in the Dolomites National Park. In Norway, Union Oye, which reopened in the fjords last year after a huge refurb, is the staging post for many of the most iconic mountain hikes and trails in the country.
Co-founder of Original Travel, Tom Barber, says: “Our client base tend to be adventurous types who like to pick out their own path on their travels, so these kind of properties have proven particularly popular. Guests can roll out of bed and immediately be surrounded by nature that they can almost always enjoy in solitude. The next step was to build point-to-point itineraries where people can walk between these kinds of luxe properties and enjoy a genuine journey of adventure.”
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