3 Hotel Insiders Share Their Travel Tips, Favourite Places & More
Vanina Kovarski
Creative Director of Hotel du Couvent in Nice, South of France
Nice has been underestimated for years. Treated as a stopover on the way to Cannes or Monaco, when actually it has more history, more art, more genuine daily life than most of the south coast. Valéry Grégo, the founder of Perseus, who I've worked closely with for over 15 years, found the convent – abandoned since the nuns left in the late 1980s – and understood immediately that this wasn't a blank site to impose something new on, but a 400-year-old building with its own memory that simply needed to breathe again. That's the thread through everything we do at Perseus: we uncover what's already there rather than invent an identity from nothing.
People are tired of manufactured glamour and are craving something that feels lived-in and true. Nice has always had that, we're all only now catching up to it. You get centuries of art and architecture, the light that drew painters here for a hundred years, real Mediterranean food culture, and the sea, all within a very small radius. It's not an experience anyone designed – it was simply always there, waiting to be noticed again.
Almost everything on-site ties back to the region. During the whole project, whatever decision we needed to take, our line was always the same: we are in an old convent, in Nice, now a hotel – and we always come back to that. The food is grown at our own farm just 45 minutes away, and bread is baked on site where the convent's nuns once had their own bakery. The apothecary is run by a local herbalist, in the exact spot where the nuns' herb shop used to be. The soap in every room comes from a local brand in Grasse. Even the vintage pieces are sourced from antique dealers and flea markets around Nice and northern Italy. It's less about decorating with references to the region and more about keeping the actual mechanisms of the place – who grows the food, who makes the remedies – rooted here, the way the convent itself once was.
I'm not really a beach club girl in the classic south of France sense. I'd rather walk the Sentier du Littoral towards Villefranche-sur-Mer, with its small coves and impossibly turquoise water. Keep going in that direction and you'll reach my favourite place to visit, Villa Kerylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, a design masterpiece that recreated a Greek villa on the water. Most people don't realise it, but Nice and its surroundings have the second-highest number of museums in France after Paris. I love the Matisse Museum and Villa Santo Sospir too.
I ate at Bánh Mì constantly during the ten years we worked on the hotel. Their take on Vietnamese food with local produce and inspiration is just so delicious, and a great selection of natural wine too. And Chez Davia is an institution. Some of my favourite moments in Nice now happen inside our own walls. I love sitting in the terraced gardens with a negroni at sunset.
My packing essentials always include a shirt from ELV Denim, started by my dear friend Anna Foster. I adore everything she makes, and it works over a swimsuit by day or on its own at night, and one of her new jean shorts. Swimsuits are always Tara Matthews. the fit is unmatched, and I love her work so much I asked her to create a capsule inspired by Le Couvent, which you'll find in our Roman baths. And a pair of raffia Birkenstocks I've cherished for years, from their collaboration with Il Pellicano, another hotel close to my heart.
My favourite people to travel with are my husband and our three boys – chaos and all. Travelling with teenagers doesn't slow me down so much as push me to be active and try things I wouldn't otherwise. They have a way of dragging you into whatever's next.
I love Nice but also Saint-Paul-de-Vence for the art scene. The Fondation Maeght and the Chapelle Matisse are two of my favourite things in the region, with a night at La Colombe d'Or if you're lucky enough to get a room. And Hôtel Les Roches Rouges in Saint-Raphaël holds a special place in my heart, even though it isn't a Perseus hotel anymore. We had so much fun with the team creating that place.
I can usually tell from a few photos whether I'll love a hotel or not. What's in the welcome fruit basket tells you a lot – if it's not local, seasonal fruit, that's already a ‘no’ for me. Same with anything that looks too polished, straight out of a brand playbook, logos everywhere... I'm looking for somewhere with soul, a real meaning, real people behind it, a sense of community – not storytelling for the sake of it.
Visit HOTELDUCOUVENT.COM
Marie-Louise Sciò
Creative Director & CEO of Il Pellicano Hotels, Italy
I never thought I’d work in hospitality. I studied architecture, which turned out to be handy in this role. I knew I wanted to do something creative but I never thought about it too much – I struggled to decide what to study because I had so many different passions, from film to fashion to interior design. I decided that studying architecture would give me a bit of all that. After university, I went back to Rome and started working as an interior designer. One day my father asked me if I’d redo one of the bathrooms at Il Pellicano. I said yes – and things went from there.
At the time, I wasn't going to the hotel much. I told my father, “I think you need to re-launch it to a younger crowd.” Luckily, he agreed. I started that process through interior design, as that's what I knew how to do. I could draw floorplans and I had good taste, so I redid the whole place over a winter season.
The clients who'd been coming to Il Pellicano forever didn’t like change. So, I tried to tiptoe in and not change it too much. I remembered what it looked like when I was a kid. And then I called Slim Aarons and asked if he could send me some of his photographs of the hotel, because I wanted the references. The best part of the project was when the longtime clients came in for the first time and said, “You know, something's changed but we don't know what.” That gave me a boost. Once the interiors were brought up to date, I focused on the graphic design of the hotel, as that no longer matched the interior design, and the music was kind of dissonant. I needed to bring it all together to make it harmonious. And that's how I become a hotelier. Growing up in a hotel, I was so familiar with the world of hospitality but I didn't study it. In hindsight, it was great to not have had that training because I approached things differently and I was freer to do things in a certain way.
The thing that unites all three of our hotels is their unexpected locations. There is a joyfulness to them all, but they have their own characters. I think of Il Pellicano in Tuscany as the older sister. I see La Posta Vecchia outside Rome as more masculine – it's a bit more promiscuous, a bit naughtier, and it has real grandeur and opulence because it has the biggest private collection of Renaissance furniture. Mezzatorre in Ischia is more whimsical – she's the younger sister of Il Pellicano. The locations are a bit off the beaten track. Now, Ischia is really popular, and Porto Ercole is popular purely because of Il Pellicano, but whenever we search for sites initially, we always look for the less obvious.
I’m so proud of Issimo, our online shop. It’s a love letter to Italy. I always curated the shops at the hotels – we’ve long had a big shop at Il Pellicano, and I always did the buying as it came naturally to me. It was a natural step to bring it to life online – and because our hotels are seasonal, it made sense to have a digital footprint year-round that went beyond the booking platform. The shop is an extension of our hotels – it's all about travel, discovery, food, design and fashion, and about highlighting Italian excellence in different fields. It sells cashmere, pyjamas, cups and saucers, ashtrays, beach towels and branded bedding to get that hotel feel at home.
Like all Italians, I love to travel around Italy. I love Orvieto in Umbria, and Civita di Bagnoregio and Lubriano, which are two lovely towns. I am obsessed with Lake Bolsena. The landscape is really beautiful – it's wild and it feels kind of undiscovered. I like that it's not primed and pristine and perfect. And I love the Tuscan Archipelago. There's a lot to see.
When I’m booking a holiday, I almost always go by word of mouth. Personal recommendations are the most powerful thing. When I travel, I really don’t mind whether I stay in a five-star hotel or a one-star hotel. What I look for is a soulful place.
My son and my boyfriend are my favourite people to travel with. But I also love travelling with the writer Yolanda Edwards and a friend of mine, Francesca, who's a set designer. We both love exploring, we have the same sensitivity, and we like to go off the beaten track and find things that are not completely obvious.
I have a list of packing essentials. This includes my headphones, which I can’t travel without, a big scarf – very versatile – and a diary, and a good pen and pencil. I love to draw and write, so I need these to hand while I’m away. I also always carry a face oil – I really like using Seed To Skin, which is an Italian brand, and another is Lavika. I love its body oil, which is made from pistachios from Sicily.
Visit PELLICANOHOTELS.COM
Athanasia Comninos
Owner of The Rooster in Antiparos, Greece
When I was 11, I told my father I wanted to study hospitality. Of course, he pretended he hadn’t heard – he bypassed it. We have a family house on Naxos. In my 20s, I suggested we built some nice little houses on our land to rent out but he didn’t want to. So we left it. I worked in shipping for decades. Then, 10 years ago, I came to Antiparos, fell in love with the island and decided that the quieter side should be where my hotel was built.
I travelled a lot when I was younger and I was always fascinated by boutique hotels. The art of hospitality clicked when I spent a lot of time in Trancoso, in Bahia, Brazil in my 20s. I was staying at a hotel called Etnia Casa in Bahia. It was a very cosy hotel. You would walk through the pool and everyone would be eating around it. It was a special place. This is 23 years ago, so you used to have to email the owners to ask if you could stay. The people who worked there were really special. We got a room for New Year’s Eve, and the people staying there were special. One of them, for instance, was Adam Clayton of U2. Another was a Frenchwoman who designed Chanel accessories. Everyone was notable in some way. But the fascinating thing was how understated it was. It was the first time I’d seen something so relaxed, where everyone was talking to each other.
On the beach, there were no sunbeds, no umbrellas and everything was so simple. That’s when it clicked for me, as I didn’t like organised beaches either. I used to go to Mykonos – it was different back then. I always chose beaches like Agios Sostis and Paraga, which didn’t have umbrellas. Agios Sostis still doesn’t. I always chose that kind of beach – no sunbeds, no loud music. So Etnia was my biggest inspiration. When I started The Rooster, I said ‘there’s no way I’m going to put sunbeds on the beach.’ I had no hospitality experience, so I had a consultant – he told me I was crazy.
Hotels can do high-end in many different ways. Things don’t need to be served on a silver plate. This was my mentality and my childhood memories. We always used to head to the beach with our own umbrellas and a cool box of lunch. We used to stay on the beach for hours. I visited Babylonstoren in South Africa ten years ago, and thought – why don’t we have farm stays in Greece? This is why we have the Farmhouse restaurant here. I said, ‘We need a coop, and we need to find a grandmother to cook Greek food.’ The consultant said, ‘The coop is going to smell.’ But I knew our guests would love the chickens and having fresh eggs. So Babylonstoren was another one of my inspirations.
I didn’t choose Ayurveda. It came to me. I wanted wellness practitioners from around the world at our spa, the House of Healing. I didn’t want anything mainstream, as it’s not something I’m interested in. I was introduced to Abi, who specialised in Ayurveda. Param Jyot is a visiting teacher of ours. He teaches Kundalini yoga and does amazing meditation and ceremonies. I met him at Chiva-Som in Bali. He’s one of the reasons the House of Healing happened, because I wasn’t into healing and yoga before I met him. Everything happened very organically.
Working in publishing was the best education. I worked at Liberis Publications for four-and-a-half years. The owner’s wife was Eleni Liberi, who ran Greek Vogue for 20 years. I went on to launch Vogue’s Living section, which was travel and interior design. I’d often go out with a photographer, shooting houses and writing about them. I got a lot of ideas for the hotel’s interiors there. I also learned to work under pressure, to deadlines, and late into the night. I’ve worked with a lot of people from back then, here at The Rooster. I think you can always tell whether someone’s had an interior designer do their house or done it themselves. I prefer the latter.
The Rooster started as a small project and things just kept happening. It wasn’t planned. I can’t work in a structured way – I work very much with my gut feeling, in quite a sentimental way. Of course, I’ve got better at it, because my gut didn’t always give me the right decisions. But at the end of the day, I think it worked.
Visit THEROOSTERANTIPAROS.COM
Or continue to comment as a Guest below
DISCLAIMER: We endeavour to always credit the correct original source of every image we use. If you think a credit may be incorrect, please contact us at info@sheerluxe.com.
/https%3A%2F%2Fsheerluxe.com%2Fsites%2Fsheerluxe%2Ffiles%2Fwebsite-images%2F2025%2F03%2Fsign-up-pop-up.jpg)
