Above: Tyrol’s Stubai Valley is a four-season destination for outdoor enthusiasts.
PERSONAL PICK: Top: Vitality World is the largest area of the award-winning spa. Right: Local game comes from the hotel’s hunting preserve. Center, right: Hotel entrance provides a warm welcome. Center, below: The spa boasts 20 saunas and steamrooms.
Spa Hotel Jagdhof The third and final hotel on the family’s “Route de Bonheur” was Spa Hotel Jagdhof, which is home to antique farmhouse furniture and historical photographs of the region. At this hotel, Hostettler didn’t just take it all in; he also figured out a way to bring some of it back home to the United States. “The draw for me was this very cool pop-up, where they took a ski gondola and turned it into a four-seat restaurant. You can have dinner in the gondola, sitting in the back of the hotel’s lawn,” he says. The experience so impressed him that he recreated it stateside. He and the Ocean House team found a four-person ski gondola that someone in Vermont was selling on eBay. They
34
bought it, gutted it, painted it, installed new windows, added heat, and put it on the front lawn next to the Ocean House Christmas tree, serving fondue inside three times a day. “It was the smallest Swiss restaurant in the smallest state in America,” he says. The idea was so successful in Rhode Island that during his trip to Austria, he decided to expand the concept. “We bought two more gondolas in Austria, and they each seat eight people,” he says. “They’re in the shop being outfitted right now. This winter, we’re going to put them around a firepit and call it Fondue Village.”
OHMCOLLECTION.COM
Right: Gondola dining inspired Fondue Village at Ocean House.
STUBAI VALLEY
Stubaital is a valley in Tyrol, Austria, situated within the Stubai Alps. There are four ski areas that offer everything from snowboarding to toboggans, and there’s the Stubai Glacier for visitors to experience. “It’s where we spent the most amount of time, because we wanted to explore the entire area,” Hostettler says. “We rode up to the top of the glacier. To get to the top, we had to change gondolas three times, at each station. You’d probably be an hour skiing down without having to stand in a lift line.” Hostettler finds the scenery in this part of Austria as breathtaking as any that he saw throughout the Austrian Alps. “The glacier was packed with snow still, because it was the end of March, and on the second night, it started snowing,” he says. “The hotel is in the valley at the bottom of the glacier, and it’s magical. It’s everything you think of as a quintessential Alpine experience: the chalet houses, the wood, the fireplaces burning, and yet every one of these hotels has a spectacular, modern spa and cuisine from Michelin-star chefs. It was absolutely amazing.”
Above: Glacier skiing is a big draw for visitors.
RESORT PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPA HOTEL JAGDHOF; STREAM BY ©PSZABO - STOCK.ADOBE.COM; GLACIER BY ©STEPMAR - STOCK.ADOBE.COM
DESTINATIONS