Here’s what you can expect:

• Your favorite hotels – 30+ hotels, each with imagery to let everyone dream.

• The hotels at the top of your bucket lists, imagery for most.

• The parts of the world you most want to visit.

• Your favorite city stays in NYC, LA, Mexico City, London, Paris, Lisbon, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Istanbul, Marrakech, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Cape Town. Certain hotels seem to be the hotel of everyone’s recommendation, including my own. This is an easy-to-reference list by city.

• Your favorite hotel stays of the last one or two years, and each that had not already been included has imagery for inspiration.

• And, finally, for fun, a list of your favorite books and films.

It is, clearly, very long because it is very image-heavy. For once, I have not written a novel – your recommendations get the full spotlight. 166 hotels are named below.

Some of the respondents have their own Substack! Please read your heart out. If any other paid subscribers missed the questionnaire but have a Substack and would like to be added to this list, leave a comment and I’d love to do so.

Thank you, thank you, and Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

Favorite Hotels

You really are a group of Good People with Good Taste. What a well-traveled bunch.

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For Today

• Liguria At Risk of Amalfication – sounding the alarm, sharing what I’ve learned about over-tourism from the past 5 years of Google Trends data.

• A few days in Porto Venere – a summer festival crossed off my bucket list, a hotel added to the list, and above all, a touching commitment to community over tourism.

• The names to know in Porto Venere – to sleep, to eat and drink, to shop, and to swim.

• (It’s long, please click to read in the app or browser if it gets cut off in your email)

For Next Time

• The results of all of your favorite places and hotels!

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

Liguria At Risk of Amalfication – American Overtourism in Italy is Driven by Hotels

When I was writing the last Italian New(s), there was one story, one development (literally) that I didn’t include because it was fresh off the press and my feelings were piping hot and deserved a simmer.

The bad New(s) is that the largest resort in Liguria is being built in the hills of Lerici, which will live under the flagship Meliá umbrella. It will be a both a fully-equipped hotel resort and branded residences. I have nothing in particular against the Spanish hospitality group, but we all know I have a general aversion to global hotel groups of any sort, and most so on land that isn’t already over-touristed or where families are still doing most of the business.

For the past year or so, I have been quietly worrying about the potential impending over-tourism of the Ligurian coastline. Increasingly more people are fatigued with the Amalfi Coast’s overcrowding, which is why Ischia has had a huge boom with English-speaking tourists in the past few years.

However, with my year as a travel agent and my time on TikTok and then the years after here on Happy Hoteling, I know that when Mezzatorre reopened as a brilliant Pellicano property in 2019, and really gained traction during the pandemic, that was the true inflection point for Ischia interest. My hunch was correct – the data shows Americans in particular gained interest around Ischia hotels only after Mezzatorre became a viral social media star. It had no impact really on the global or Italian search behavior.

There has also been a lot of increased interest in Puglia, but it’s not centralized – interest is spread across the region and there isn’t one main artery that has fallen to the Amalfi Coast reality. After the White Lotus filmed in Taormina, Sicily rapidly became the place English-speakers, specifically Americans, wanted to go. Beyond Taormina, however, the island is huge and again there is no other one place where over-tourism has taken hold.

Now, the refrain is that it’s too busy, and the White Lotus Season 2, which was filmed at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina, aired in fall 2022, less than four years ago. The pattern is clear – Americans are driving increased tourism, and the appetite is tied to hotels. In the case of both Puglia and Sicily, they are neither as easy to reach as the Ligurian coast if you’re traveling elsewhere in Italy. Ischia is probably the best comparison.

I’ve now lived in Florence for over a year and I’ve been close friends with Capresi most of my life – the frustration is loud and clear, we can’t afford our country anymore.

Right now, the average Italian salary is €33,500/year. The average American salary is $69,846/year, or €59,976/year with the current USD/EUR exchange rate.

In the simplest terms, a €500/night hotel room is not the same degree of expensive to an American as it is to an Italian. Add in the American love of credit cards, and the supply and demand is even less in Italians’ favor. I have examples of rates at two hotels in Ischia: Mezzatorre in 2022 vs. 2023 vs. 2026 vs. 2027 and Regina Isabella in 2019 vs. 2022 vs. 2026 vs. 2027 and the differences are staggering because supply and demand.

Back to Liguria.

My first trip to the area as an adult was in 2022, right after the world opened up post-COVID, and towards the start of the TikTok effect on Italian tourism. I stayed in Lerici, which four years later has not changed in the slightest, and in Santa Margherita which has changed.

Liguria has long been a global summer hotspot, particularly the Cinque Terre, Santa Margherita, and Portofino but things have been accelerating at a rate only social media virality can produce. In turn, prices for everything have rapidly increased in just a few years.

Take Grand Hotel Miramare in Santa Margherita for example. July 24-26, 2024, peak-season almost exactly two years ago, I stayed in the single-occupancy room for €340/night. Now, the same room is €730/night without any change to the room or property offerings. Both were last-minute searches, and I’ve been tracking this since about March.

This is an example that’s quite easy for me to test my gut instinct and lived experience against the data. When I first returned to Santa Margherita for the first time as an adult in summer 2022, there were no hoards of American tourists. By 2024, there were many more, but prices were still largely the same as two years prior. In May 2022, Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker got married in Portofino, which really amped up American interest in the area. Santa Margherita is the town next to it, where there are many more hotels. The day of the wedding, I posted on TikTok about Santa Margherita and the response was largely of people wanting to know, not participating because they already knew. In the four years since, Santa Margherita has become an American influencer hotspot, specifically messaged through the lens of hidden gem which spreads interest like wildfire.

Increased interest for a town, by an American audience, at this moment in time signals an increased interest in a hotel.

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The reason I dug deep into Santa Margherita is because I have the feeling Lerici and Porto Venere are soon to be the new in desire hidden gems, and actual visitation numbers will rise alongside new hotel openings. Americans are leading the way on the hotel interest, which does keep me up at night.

Liguria in general is gaining traction.

And again, interest for Liguria is coupled with interest for hotels in Liguria. I wish The US wasn’t the main culprit, but sadly the numbers are quite clear.

Portofino was the main driver for Santa Margherita desire, and proximity to the Cinque Terre and the reopening of Porto Venere’s historic locanda next year will, I really feel, make the tiny town the next hotspot.

As I go in depth in the story below, Porto Venere is a truly Ligurian town only reachable by windy road and boat, in between the Cinque Terre and the port city of La Spezia. It’s often hailed as the 6th town of the Cinque Terre, which makes semi-sense geographically and aesthetically, but not so much touristically – yet. As the crow flies, it’s about 2.5 miles from Lerici, where the bad New(s) has arisen.

This whole area that surrounds the Gulf of Poets is beautifully simple. Even at the nicest restaurants, people are not all that dressed up. There are not enough yachts to count on even one hand, totally different from the seascape in Santa Margherita and Portofino. It’s casual and comfortable and the sense of community is the main driver. From Tellaro, to Lerici, to Le Grazie and Porto Venere on the other side of La Spezia – it’s narrow winding roads, no train access, mostly Italians, and a beautiful commitment to local customs and traditions.

The Gulf of Poets, as it has been called for the last century or so, is the Gulf of La Spezia. The former name started with Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who took residence in a house on the coast in the early-1800s, and where Percy the poet ultimately found his demise in that sea. A friend of theirs, Lord Byron, also took the bay as his muse, and thus came the nickname. This is to say that for over 200 years, it has not been a place unknown to the English speaker. It has, however, been a place that has not succumbed to the perilous gaze of social media, nor the money-hungry attention of global tourism infrastructure.

The Siege of Paradise, a film that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival this June, is commentary on the over-tourism of Cinque Terre specifically. I can’t wait for some sort of streaming release, but the trailer (which I shared in June) and the below interview with the director Gar O’Rourke give great color to the situation at hand.

A huge enabler of the over-tourism of the Cinque Terre in particular is the easy train connectivity – there’s a station at each village, and it only takes a few minutes to get between towns. If you spend any amount of time on the travel side of social media you’ve likely seen the impenetrable sea of humans vying for space on these trains during the peak summer months – it’s a nightmare, the most sardine-like suffocation in sweltering heat. The train also easily connects most of the rest of the Ligurian coast, though thankfully not usually on the same route as the five towns. The train does not give access to the areas to each side of the Gulf of Poets – only La Spezia. Instead, it’s connected only by ferry or singular windy roads.

The road that winds from the autostrada towards Lerici often demands someone to reverse to make way for through traffic – it’s not a route a Texan driver unfamiliar with narrow thoroughfares would enjoy. This alone is one of the barriers to entry that has protected the area from mass social media-driven overseas tourism. Places are close the way the crow flies, but not the way the car drives. Parking is few and far between, and highly inconvenient almost everywhere. As with some of the world’s most beautiful places, it’s protected by the ardor of the journey. I fear, however, that it could become like the main thoroughfare of Santa Margherita, which leads to Portofino and makes any seafront hotel room pretty noisy 24/7, or the absolute chaos of Amalfi Drive, where the narrow and winding road takes so long to traverse with traffic, most months of the year.

As of now, there is nary a single true 5-star hotel in Porto Venere, although Grand Hotel Portovenere is classified as such. Bar Eco del Mare, a day at a beach club on the Gulf of Poets runs about 15-25 euros, peak-season. In the middle of the Ferragosto holiday, the area is busy, but one can still walk up to a restaurant and get a table.

As you’ll read about my time in Porto Venere below, I only encountered one other pair of Americans – it was Ferragosto weekend and it was for the Italians. But, and a big but, American interest has taken root.

I’m aware how annoyingly ironic it is that I, an American living in Italy, am commenting on this and sounding the warning bell. The story about my beautiful time there will live behind a paywall, and I will tag my Instagram photos as just Liguria, not Porto Venere in particular. This is not foolproof, but it’s a point or two of friction in a culture that is, generally, quite lazy. I encourage the same vagueness for anyone else who has any sort of audience – I do think the little things make quite a big difference in the matter of social media-driven over-tourism.

It is also the reason why, at least for now, I haven’t shared the name of the hotel that will be reborn in the town next year. Right now, there’s a big gap between interest and visitation to Porto Venere, because there isn’t a trendy, photogenic, Special hotel. And Americans are looking for that.

Porto Venere will come first, but I really think Lerici is next. Right now, interest hasn’t quite gotten there – the bad New(s) only came out to the trade publications a couple weeks ago and there isn’t a single hotel that’s even slightly luxurious at the moment.

Unlike every other destination I researched on Google Trends, there has been no spike in searches of hotels in Lerici.

Again, the arrival of the Meliá resort will change the land forever, concessions and infrastructure will have to be made that will change the small area in ways small and large. It will, if traditional tourism patterns ensue, make way for more change, more development.

For Italians, it wasn’t so long ago that Portofino was still a lovely, local place to visit.

I don’t have one singular intent with this story, but rather hope in a slew – for any hospitality insiders reading to look at this from a different perspective, for anyone who has been to these less-busy towns to speak of them with extra tact, and the same for anyone who will go in the coming months and years.

Thank you for listening :)

Pretty Damn Perfect: Porto Venere

I had been to Porto Venere once, a few years ago, but only for the day. It was immediate love – teeny tiny, colorful, sea-centered, and casually cool. It is so very Ligurian, and I love Liguria. In the years since, have suggested many of my readers spend time in the town and unanimously the feedback is always an emphatic yes – it’s a place that is really quite hard not to like.

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I shared on Substack Notes that nearly every week, I dive into somewhere in the world I don’t know much about on YouTube. Two weeks ago it was the Falkland Islands, last week it was Kashmir – the highly contested area that spans Pakistan, India, and China. To my delight, people were curious about how I do this, which I see as one form of my continuing education. In general, I try to find a summary about the area and it’s history and current realities from a reputable journalistic source – in this case it was Al Jazeera. Then, I usually watch a video by a creator who is native to the area and still lives there to understand daily life. Finally, I like to watch a travel creator with high moral standards share their journey of visiting the place. Sometimes I go deeper than this, but this is usually the formula. It takes an hour or two, I pick the place on a whim based on snagged interest, and it helps me continue to know and understand more about the world as a whole. I may have already told you about this at some point, so if I’m repeating myself please forgive me.

Emirates may have just cracked the code to comfortable economy travel.

shared everything we need to know about LED lightbulbs that actually look incandescent.

Whether you’re from Marin or not, Ken Fulk fan or not, anxiously awaiting the reopening of Manka’s or not (I am, obviously, all three) – this is quite the juicy read, and would make a fantastic movie.

When it’s too hot to go outside and everything is closed anyway, I read. I was so excited for Riley Sager’s The Unknown to be published, but 50% of the way in I had to give up – I found it utterly boring, despite the premise of a movie being made on a small Vermont island where women disappeared a century ago. If you like thrillers but paranormal stuff isn’t for you, this isn’t for you either. I finally read Yesteryear, which I sillily didn’t have much interest in for all these months – I thought it was great, with a genuinely fantastic ending, of which I’m always a tough critic. I have nothing to add to the cultural commentary, but I’m so glad I finally gave in. I also read Sarah Pekkanen’s The Women in White, which involves a dual timeline of the 60s and today around four women who underwent a mind control study. It had more substance than the typical thriller, and for once I enjoyed the first 75% of the book more than I did the ending. Still, I’d recommend.

The NYT 50 book list of best thrillers of the 21st century. I have read 23, and clearly have some catching up to do from the time period where I had put my love of reading on hold.

The Uffizi (and Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens) are embarking on a 50 million restoration! Two years sounds ambitious, but all of the plans are much-appreciated to my ears.

I had written a “my two cents” piece about both the Amanvari/Ryan Walker debacle and the “No Influencers” sign in Nantucket but decided not to publish as it veers into hot take territory, which is not something I enjoy. It would have made today’s piece meatier, but sometimes you do not need a double-double, just a simple hamburger.

For Consumption

Edie Parker was one of my favorite clients to work on in my agency life, and I’ve become such a fan of the brand. The end-of-season sale is on, and this radicchio ashtray and this coconut one are so fun – they can be homes for olive pits if you do not partake.

Norma Kamali has been one of my favorite designers for a long time, both because the fabrics travel very well and because I have pieces of my mom’s from the 80s that have fully held up in all the ways. They’re also having a sale, and I’m debating between a few staples – a riff on a black dress I have (wear off-the-shoulder, not as a hood), a casual full skirt, and a classic shirtdress.

I’m really into purple right now, and these socks are the perfect hue. Also in the purple department, Araks is having a sale and this classic one-piece bathing suit is something you can wear for many sunny seasons ahead.

Maria de la Orden is having a great sale too – this cape, this jumpsuit, and these pants are some of my favorites.

For Today

• How to make a solo-traveler feel welcome

• What are your favorites? Hotels? Places? A questionnaire for paid subscribers, from which I’ll create a feature titled In Residence with Hotel People.

• The Italian New(s)

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

How To Make a Solo Traveler Feel Welcome

According to me, obviously.

Only offer a single-occupancy room and describe it as such if you genuinely want to attract a solo traveler.

• If it’s intended to be a teenager, au pair, or something of the sort’s room, make that a clear distinction.

• Pretty please, always provide more than one pillow. And at the pool or beach, pretty please provide two towels.

• If the guest in this room will get the lesser table at the restaurant, the back row at the beach/pool, the shorter end of any stick, I encourage you to flip the mentality entirely. Yes, they will be likely spending less than a couple, and surely less than a family of five. But, solo travel is, I would argue, some of the most impressionable travel. A great stay is likely to be extra-recommended, the choice for a return trip, and somewhere that makes the person fall in love with the place at-large. Also, solo travelers do often have a f*ck it, why not treat myself mentality – a larger bar tab, multiple things ordered off the room service menu, the purchase of a piece of hotel merch, an extra big tip to housekeeping.

Take after Keith McNally at Balthazar, where his policy is to offer a solo diner a glass of champagne on the house.

• The cost of a gesture like this is so low for a hotel, but has such a high emotional ROI.

• Small things like this are the type that get word-of-mouth really flowing, and make people go out of their way to stay with you.

• In regards to solo travelers, especially female, making the guest feel special is worth it.

Encourage your staff to pick up on their energy and if it seems like it would be appreciated, encourage them to extend extra attention.

• We don’t have someone else to go order another spritz, or to adjust the umbrella – it is always very appreciated when a member of staff notices this, without feeling watched.

• Usually, solo travelers aren’t staying at a hotel for pure solitude. Human connection is almost always appreciated, but only if it’s not forced or overly formal (unless the guest is). A longer chat, an extra question asked, a clever joke.

• On the flip side, there are certainly solo guests who want to fly under the radar, and are taking time to themselves quite literally. It’s important in these instances not to insist on engagement, or participation in anything. Solo travelers are sometimes working while they’re in residence, or taking time to catch up on sleep.

• There should be no one-size-fits-all approach to solo travelers, just as their should not be for any other type of guest.

Girls and gays, yes, we would love you to take our photo.

• I can only speak from the female perspective, but I have never said no to a kind admirer wondering if I would like to be at the other end of the lens.

• On the other hand, please, do not take our photo without asking as a sort of omg I could never souvenir or social post.

• If you’re a photographer and would like a photo, please ask – if you’re me, I will always say yes and feel appreciated.

An invitation to join a table when appropriate.

• This is one you have to read the room on, but if you’ve made easy conversation with a solo traveler, an invitation to join your table for a drink is usually very appreciated.

• But equally, please do not use someone’s aloneness to hit on them if they seem content. The invitation to join a table is most welcome when it’s from a group or a couple that you have already engaged with. If it’s out of the blue it’s strange.

Please, no pity, from anyone.

• Staying at a hotel solo was a choice. The reason varies person to person, stay by stay. Catty whispers, looks of pity, remarks on how brave we are are the last thing any party-of-one wants.

Fellow solo travelers, is there anything you would add?

Leave a comment

What Are Your Favorites?

I thought it would be fun and interesting to have all of you In Residence – the Hotel People of Happy Hoteling. You know what my favorite hotels are, and my favorite places and where I most want to visit, and I’d love to know the same from you. I think, and hope, that you may want to read about and discover from your fellow readers as well. Word of mouth is still the most powerful influencer, and this is, at least in the digital age, one form of that.

I also know that many of you have your own Substack, and I’d love to share a comprehensive list of anyone who would like theirs shared with all my readers (free and paid). I’m incredibly fortunate to be where I am on this platform and I want to help with visibility, as Substack becomes an increasingly more crowded space. Not Instagram, not TikTok, not emails for travel advisors, just Substack publications.

The link to the questionnaire will be below the paywall. Please submit your answers by August 23, at which time I will take it down and collate all the goodies.

THE QUESTIONS –

• What are your favorite hotels in the world?

• What is your favorite hotel either where you grow up or where you live now?

• What hotels are on the top of your bucket list?

• Where in the world is “your place” (not where you live, at least 30 mins away)? Or, if you’re fortunate to have more than one, do share!

• If applicable, what has been your favorite hotel stay of the past year or two?

• What are your favorite city hotels?

• What is your favorite city in the world?

• Where in the world that you have yet to visit is on the top of your list?

• What is your favorite book, song, and movie of all time? This is not where I’m the taste police – share what you really love.

• And also, do you have a Substack? If so, please share the link so I can make a list for everyone!

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BOOK REPORT

My summer reading has been quiiite good.

The very best was The Burning Side by Sarah Damoff, who wrote The Bright Years, one of my favorites last year. She’s such a wonderful writer – so good at capturing the human condition and its intricacies through characters you get to know. This is about a family in the aftermath of a house fire. I read it in just over 24 hours, I couldn’t put it down! 5/5 stars.

Also a 5-star read was Heather, by Caitlin Mullen. It’s a thriller in a bit more of a literary way. It involves a cold case and the stories that are told about being a woman, especially in a small town. Others didn’t love it as much as I did, but it was another I couldn’t put down and finished feeling totally satisfied.

Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer was a wonderful, character-driven escapist novel set here in Tuscany. It reminded me a bit of my favorite Italian-set novel Beautiful Ruins – the characters, the rich sense of place, the local oddities. It lacked much of a plot but mostly, I didn’t care. 4.5/5 stars for me.

Nine Lives by Catherine Steadman is set in a neighborhood in London that…keeps tabs on each other. It was claustrophobic at times, but a page-turned better written than many thrillers. 4/5 stars.

Dolly All The Time by Annabel Monaghan was a much-awaited book for me – I love all the author’s work, they’re a bit up the alley of a Nancy Meyers movie to me. A romcom without being too trite. This was one of the best, a tale of class and family and New England and yes, love. 4.5/5 stars.

I’ve read a handful of others, but none worth recommending.

MY ITALIAN PHARMACY SUMMER WINNERS

The Italian pharmacy doesn’t get the attention of its French counterpart, but I’d argue the biggest gems are not on the beauty side of the spectrum but the helpful side.

At the beginning of the heat I was struggling big time, always seeing stars hoping I would make it home and not faint. Stefanie told me about the Italian classic Polase, and when I went to the pharmacy I saw the flavor lampone (raspberry) and bought that without realizing it wasn’t the OG formulation. It is specifically a hydration packet, and at least in comparison to LMNT and Liquid IV, it has been an absolute game changer for me. I have not seen starts once since, even in feels like 110 degree heat.

There’s the normal pharmacy and then there’s the parapharmacy, which doesn’t sell any actual medication but natural things and all the skincare stuff. The woman who works at mine is so knowledgable, I go in with a list of ailments big and small and leave with solutions, usually natural (although I am not afraid of chemicals). Two recent heroes. One, Euphralia Allergy eye drops which are natural and the solution is pink but maaaaan does it work. For me, it works far more than a Visine allergy equivalent. Two, Halimed Cream, which has cardiospermum halicacabum, of which I was half-sure I would be allergic to. It ended up being one of those pretty balloon vines, and I am not allergic. In fact, in my almost 35 years of constant cortisone usage nothing has ever worked better to treat a mosquito bite, specifically. I can get a ginormous bite and apply it and wake up with it barely detectable – it’s magic. It has also worked for me on sun rash, but not on eczema.

The last is embarrassing to pull out in public, but when I’m hot and sweaty I don’t care. The Chilly antibacterial minty wipes, intended for intimate uses, are a goddamn savior to use on the back of your neck, the insides of your elbows, behind your knees to not just get the sweat off, but to get an instant (if not long-lasting) chill. I do not use it as intended lol.

I’m not a fancy shampoo girl, hair is one area I have always been fortunate in. I do, however, wish my hair were a bit lighter like it was when I was younger and now rarely achieve because I don’t sunbathe like I used to. The Schultz Ravviante Camomile shampoo has moved the needle, if even just a little – I put it on kind of like a mask, before I get in the shower, while I wait for the water to get warm. It’s stupidly inexpensive.

THANK YOU FOR THE LOVE

It was clear I felt very strongly about last week’s hotel, but the fondness has only grown with how it’s been received. I love when you love the places I really loved.

I did a pretty substantial edit after pressing publish, but that doesn’t ever land in your inbox. If you read it there, this is the permanent version.

For Consumption

A good saturated light blue cashmere sweater on sale.

I had mixed feelings about the Rosie Assoulin x Target collaboration because I’m such a fan of hers, but I did buy this dress and these pants, which are waiting for me at my mom’s house.

My favorite category, luxury novelty pieces on sale: inside out jeans, a tie skirt, and a golden paperclip necklace.

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

Don’t Have Single-Occupancy Rooms If it’s Not a Place to Be Solo

This is an example of a hotel where the people do not make the place, policies serve no purpose, and where some things just didn’t match up. It’s also a hotel that I was very inspired by creatively, slept incredibly well in the pretty perfect bed, and had a 10/10 pasta. I always say I’m not a grey ground girl, and I’m not – I loved what I liked and I hated what I didn’t.

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I didn’t realize I had been looking for a hotel that would become “my place.” A place to replace the hotel my dad and I stayed in Capri, where we stayed in the same room every year. A place I would love to take my hopeful future kids, every summer. I had been looking, and it has been found!

You wouldn’t be wrong considering this an over-dramatic start. I had a firm ranking of my most favorites for years, and this hotel quickly infiltrated the top spots with ease. That’s my equivalent of brining someone home to meet the parents.

The lock screen of my phone had been the same since 2022, the day I first jumped into the world of hotels and posted my first TikTok video. It was of Villa Feltrinelli, a stone’s throw away, which was always the top spot on my bucket list. Now my phone displays the time with a photo I took last weekend.

Expectedly, sharing it on Instagram Stories and Substack Notes, I was met with the most interest I’ve ever received about a hotel. Equally, my DMs were flooded with notes from fellow loyalists expressing just how much they love it too. An undeniably Special place – when I left I was immediately homesick. For a hotel! The next lake property on the itinerary stood no chance.

Shall we? (All photos have been taken by me and I’m quite proud of them – please don’t use them without crediting me, thank you! Usually, I don’t really mind.)

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xMarissa

There’s been this refrain on social and Substack about lifestyle hotels being what I call copy and paste, or beige, or swimmers in the sea of same, or of the moment. Almost always, that post is the first time I’ve heard of or seen the writer or poster. As a curious 34 year old kid, I peruse their profile searching for a hotel that they seem to deem as actually cool, or original, or chic, or trendy, or whatever their choice adjective is. Almost always, I find the same hotels – yes, they fit those descriptions, but they’re also quite oversaturated in the travel content space.

Because I have never claimed humility as one of my graces, and some would say I’ve been cool since I was a single-digit kid, my internal commentary is usually the same refrain – did you decide that was cool or did someone decide that for you? In other words, did it play its own cultural game of aspiration and inspiration and appeal to your own eyes’ and experiences’ appetite, or is it aesthetic (ughhhhh) and Instagrammable and just feed your ego or social stature when you post it on your feed?

In many ways, this internal chatter of mine is snobby, as one has to have stayed at a good amount of actually individual, character-driven hotels to be able to authentically land on that distinction. After a recent stay at a hotel that had long been on my list in another Tuscan city, I realized one of the biggest drivers of what I deem a cool hotel is that it is decidedly not perfect. It is not a perfectly synchronized symphony. I do not have to agree with every policy, and likely I won’t. Critically, it is not a big feat of careful pomp and circumstance. It is not too safe, nor too any one thing. And almost always, it is much better in person that is in in photos.

This is why I couldn’t care less about a hotel’s Instagram feed when deciding if it makes the Happy Hoteling cut, or why I don’t discriminate against hotels with quite bad websites.

In the case of the hotel I’m sharing today, those are actually not the case – both their Instagram and website are good, but it was decidedly better in person. It’s not gaining access to the distinction of one of my favorite hotels in Italy, but it’s certainly a top choice in Tuscany – an area where I’ve done extensive Happy Hoteling and the map of approved hotels is very saturated.

Previously, I had thought of this hotel as the best choice in Siena, and as having a very picturesque pool and more than one perfect loggia. It is why I booked it – it’s hot as hell and I wanted to bask by a good pool.

There is this one room, and one tree, one in-room detail, and almost all the staff that totally took it to Genuinely Cool territory, of which I think will be a new descriptor of mine, like Special.

We know by now that the greenest flag for me is a staff that I deem cool. Yes, they should be good at their job, but I want to banter with them and want to want to have a drink with them. If you were to examine my archive of hotel reviews, this is the reddest thread (yes, it’s equally as important to me even when I am not staying solo).

To be clear – a hotel does not need to be cool to earn my appreciation. There are so many hotels I like for their luxuries and other aspects and not for their cool factor.

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Today, it’s the 2026 edition of Happy Hoteling in Spain, fully updated, and fully filled out. Every hotel has a description, a reason for being or staying. The places that have fallen in grace have fallen from the list, the new doors newly added, and the recently-closed removed. It will always live in the archive, whether or not you need it now.

327 hotels. A whopper. Comprehensive as can be! 6 in Galicia. 4 in Cantabria. 81 in the Balearic Islands. 6 in Extremadura. 65 in Andalucia. 60 in Catalonia. 18 in Madrid. 17 in Basque Country. 12 in València. 2 in Navarra. 7 in Asturias. 2 in La Rioja. 6 in Castilla-La Mancha. 7 in Aragon. 10 in Castilla y Leon. 24 in the Canary Islands.

I know it’s not becoming to say, but I think I’m quite good at my job. Thank you Art History major for the research expertise. This was enjoyable for each of the 327 hotels. I feel so very fortunate.

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

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For Today

• An essay on why I haven’t been to Capri since moving to Italy. It’s maybe my favorite thing I’ve ever written, because it’s the most true. I’m terrified to publish, but I also know I need to. Yes, I know I just said I was now a private person – for some reason, this is far less invasive than sharing my day-to-day life. If you have a hard time reading about elderly parents (dads, in particular), please do skip. And promise me you will not, under any circumstances, pity me?! Great, thank you.

• 14 very, very good additions to the Italy hotel list. Not a single meh! One of the best batches in a very long time, I’d say.

  • Campania – Another new opening in Capri, one that fills true white space. A new opening in Sorrento that does just the same. An incredible historic property in Cilento. A simple hotel in Nerano. The only place that makes my cut in Vietri-sul-Mare.

  • Puglia – A hotel with some of the most jaw-dropping rooms in the region, and perhaps the country.

  • Emilia-Romagna – A Renaissance-era country house outside Bologna, with incredible grounds and some of the most charming painted rooms.

  • Sardinia – A hotel in a town, on the water, white-washed.

  • Sicily – A hotel with one of the best beaches, in Siracusa.

  • Tuscany – A hideaway in Maremma I’ve been gatekeeping for years and now am sharing because it’s the type of place that the world could use more of right now. An old world hotel in Florence with an outdoor pool. A countryside property that has fun with color. Another countryside property that ticks all the boxes for hidden gem fodder, with a natural pool, to boot. And, lastly, a hotel outside Lucca with a room in a former chapel.

For Consideration

Yes, the heatwave is really that bad. It has been the longest stretch of red alert (highest heat, biggest danger) on record, since Florence started tracking temperature (a long time ago). I love having the top apartment, as you know, I love the light, and I really love the skylight. But even with AC, it has been extremely hard to keep the space cool. I feel for the majority of others in my neighborhood who do not have AC whatsoever. I feel for so many, in so many countries, because I know firsthand that extreme heat is not just a nuisance. On Wednesday, it was the patron saint day of Florence, San Giovanni, my first in the city. It was the final game of the calcio storico – the ancient game that I genuinely do not understand. The final this year was between my neighborhood, Santa Croce, the azzuri, and Santa Maria Novella, the rossi. WE WON! It was scorching hot but I had to participate, especially because my neighborhood is where people actually live, so it was oh so alive. I had dinner outdoors, almost fainted, but then was saved by this TikTok with a woman who shares an acupressure point for relieving heat in your body, placebo or not.

I am just so enamored with shells, and art using them in entirety. This grotto in London, and this home below have taken the prize this week.

There are a lot of transportation strikes across Italy this July, do note! And in Florence, there will be a lot of extra delays due to planned expansion.

Torino aka Turin is such a great city, especially for design. This cafe has me wanting to take the train there stat!

Le Lappe, a hotel in Chianti, just reopened after an off-season renovation and I love how they’ve shared the craftsmanship that has gone into it.

I finished a handful of books in the last few weeks. When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams is a tale of a mother and daughter who move from Paris back to their family home on a small New England island. There’s a bit of treasure hunting and a bit of romance and a bit of historical fiction and all in all, I loved it – 4.25/5 stars. Too Close to Home by Seraphina Nova Glass is a small town thriller, one of my favorite mindless genres. I was completely hooked for the first half, and while the ending was something I saw coming, I still enjoyed the plot (the writing is not great). 4/5. Alex Finlay is typically one of my favorite thriller authors, but his latest, The Anniversary, is one you can skip. The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews had everything I thought would make it best-of-the-year fodder: an art heist, the art world of Manhattan, a bit of infidelity, but I found it, more than anything, boring. The end was the best part, but I would not call it great.

For Consumption

• I’ve been eyeing colorful Murano jewelry for summer. These ear cuffs and these bracelets in particular. Low brow, high fun.

• This vintage summer weight Moschino jacket! The buttons!

• From the H&M sale – $7 jelly flip flops and a good purple summer dress.

• These pants if you enjoy dressing like an elderly Italian man.

• From the Net-a-Porter sale – a supremely good Dries skirt that you can wear to the pool or at night but just wear it a lot, and the striped Versace jeans (still stupid expensive) I’ve been waiting to go on sale but now they’re not left in my size.

HAPPY SUNDAY, HAPPY HOTELING, HAPPY SUMMER!

xMarissa

I Haven’t Been to Capri Since Moving to Italy

Before I knew how to read, I was already dreading the day my dad would die. I learned how to read very early.

To be clear, NO my dad has not died – he will turn 90 in August, and he insists he’s doing very well, really darling.

My dad was not the oldest in my elementary school class, but I always felt like I had the oldest dad of anyone I knew. Mostly, it’s because of the good stuff – he was around, really and truly present and did all the mundane stuff like carpool and serving hot lunch with enthusiasm. I always felt like he gave it 100% because he knew he would exit this world sooner than I would be ready.

Somehow, other dads I know and loved left first. It’s a miracle is what I know I should feel, and what I do feel, sort of.

But the reality, or my reality, is that it’s really hard to feel that miracle when you’ve been prematurely grieving since before you could read. I remember talking about this in therapy just after I did learn how to read. And yet, here I am, almost 35, still feeling the same way I did as a tiny child that still fit in Baby Gap.

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Today is a long overdue edition of The Florence Files.

• An essay on becoming a more private person

• All my new favorites in the city – the best sushi, the best tacos, a hidden gem courtyard for aperitivo, a vintage bookstore, and a great café with great people watching, to name a handful

• All the new additions have been added to the Happy Hoteling in Florence Google Map, which is linked at the end of the post, the only thing under the paywall today

For Gauging Interest

No, those are surely not the only things in the works but things I’d like a temperature check on.

I’d also like to get an updated read on what you think about the For Consideration and For Consumption sections (absent today as they were present earlier in the week).

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

The Florence Files

It’s about time, isn’t it?!

THE BIRTH OF AN UNDER-SHARER

When I moved here, I thought I’d want to share it all with you all. I thought I would have a litany of Instagram Stories every day, and that I’d update you in writing here like I did in that first month of March 2025, before I had any visa whatsoever.

I’m truly a extroverted introvert – if you meet me in person I am anything but meek but I am also most at home in my inner world and I always have been. Last May, in the Aeolian Islands, I had this wave of realization that posting about and sharing my life in detail was good for my outer world but bad for my inner one. I find it a bit tasteless to whip out a tripod, or film myself in public. It adds to the ever-changing intangible, collective reality of a world that’s deeply entrenched in social media. When I was participating in that, I would innately view what was in front of me through a lens of possible captures. A walk through Florence would have stops in my pace every 45 seconds or so, changing a moment in my mind into an attractive content capture of it. I have absolutely no problem with others doing this or me doing it sometimes, but I realized that I always felt like I was interrupting my train of thought or forward inertia to document it, so I could essentially, show it off. I realized I would have lots of camera roll proof of what my eyes saw but I would have less immersive memories of moments if I continued this way.

As someone fortunately born with a good memory, I was altering the way I would look back on things. When I remember moments from the past, it’s a full picture – what it sounded like, what it felt like when the air hit my skin, what it smelled like, what I connected with, what I critiqued, and most of all, how I felt. Taking lots of iPhone photos had changed this a bit – I was losing some nuance of the full spectrum of emotions tied to any one memory. I guess I remembered the moment of actually taking the photo more than I remembered the actual just being part.

It’s abundantly obvious for any reader or follower of mine that I am a deeply nostalgic person, and that’s something I like about myself. I’m able to tap into childlike joy easily because I remember being a child so vividly.

In the hammock of Locanda del Postino in Salina last May, I thought about my favorite travel memories from my life. My favorite ones, those that I could recall with most clarity were rarely captured through on an iPhone, unless by accident. My favorite memories at hotels were also rarely captured, even though writing about them is my job.

I decided as I swung in the hammock, looking out at an infinite sea, that it was not necessary to live through a lens in order to do my job. At the end of the day, my main job is to write, which is not dependent on constant capture.

It’s not?! I grappled with this realization, someone who entered high school the year Facebook opened to non-college students, and who was in the middle of college when Instagram debuted. I had subconsciously programmed that one day, when I have an audience I will need to share it all. (Substack has released colored text, and what is new is novel!)

I realized that I felt a strange freedom when my phone would die. Yes, partly because I was unreachable to anyone besides whom I was with, but also because there was nothing to interrupt the inertia of one moment after another – the narrative of a day existing as it naturally would. I thought about all the times I’ve been somewhere in Italy with a fully dead phone and how much more vivid my memories were of those times. Sure, I didn’t have proof that I was there but, after all, I am not on trial. I need no proof – I have this insanely good memory despite taking Benadryl my entire life.

The things I did want photos of – the hotel itself, things that I felt compelled to capture in video so I could replay the sounds, and my outfits – I could still capture without being on a never-ending scouting trip because I now live in Italy.

So I stopped photographing every day. I continued to live in awe and excitement and frustration and anxiety with only a mental capture. I was shocked how much I loved the…anonymity? I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it most closely equates to how I feel internally.

I shared a bit of the beginning of this feeling about a year ago, but not the full breadth. I got DMs asking me to share more of my everyday life in Florence and it made me want to do so even less.

So for the last year, and especially since being back permanently with a new visa in March, I’ve shared almost nothing in real time. Instead, I chose days where I take my Leica out with me with the intention to photograph that day. Photographing is not the same as taking content, in my mind. Even untrained, it’s some form of art. This practice gave me a new habit for my iPhone – to the camera as a camera and not as a diary or proof of existence.

Dear readers, WHAT A JOY. A radical re-wiring, a powerful nervous system reset I didn’t expect. Now, I keep my phone in my purse and take it out with intention – like a camera. I have days where I naturally feel like stopping to metaphorically smell the flowers every few minutes and photograph it, but I’ve stopped forcing that to be every day. I take photos and videos of my outfits when it naturally comes to mind, instead of it being a daily box to tick.

For my first few weeks back I tried on sharing my private life on my Close Friends stories – dating and day-to-day trials and tribulations. I quickly realized I wish I would have kept most of the things fully to myself, as even on my Close Friends stories, I would distill the complexity of a thought or a moment into a run-on sentence and it didn’t feel really and truly true.

That has made me revel in something I thought I would never possess – mystery. The product has been big changes to my body – less anxiety, and most critically, and chronic illness flares that would last less long. I’ve forever struggled with what most humans do, perception, and specifically, if and when and how people could tell how I feel on any given day.

As a lifelong sick kid, I’ve come to realize over-sharing was a product of trying to influence a narrative of wellness. I did not predict that under-sharing would actually shift my reality towards actual wellness. I also did not predict that having less to be perceived on would make me even more curious about the world, which is my most prized possession. I do now know that for me, personally, over-sharing goes hand-in-hand with over-thinking, which is not fertile ground for true curiosity.

It turns out you can molt from an over-sharer to an under-sharer, just like I have finally learned to slow the f-ck down.

Knowing myself, sharing this now could totally be a catalyst to want to now suddenly share more, or it could not at all. Regardless, I finally understand the power of a private life and keeping things to yourself and giving the world less fodder for perception. I’m now living a different reality of an only child, one where I am not the main character in every scene but an active extra in each day.

When you do see me post on Instagram Stories, you’ll know that it was because I actually, actively felt like capturing that moment. You’ll know it was not crafted, nor curated, or over-thought. I don’t have the power to know what works for everyone, but this has proven to be the most sustainable way for me to be a content creator with the over-played trope of American in Italy.

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MY CURRENT FAVORITES IN FLORENCE

The majority of the time, I still frequent my favorite places that I’ve shared many times over and over again. It feels good to be a regular, and for people to know about and understand my allergies. And, I’ve become one lucky bitch who gets a discount at restaurants many reserve months in advance for.

BUT, I do have a handful of new favorites and discoveries worth sharing.

First is the best, best, beeeeest sushi in Florence, by far. Until I first went about a month and a half ago, I was really under the impression I would never really satisfy my craving for fantastic tuna sushi. We are not by the coast, after all. We are known for meat and beans.

Then the explore page on Instagram became useful, as I was dealt a post of sushi that actually looked like the real deal, with the caption stating it was a Japanese sushi chef. It was called Bentoro. I looked it up and it was, miraculously for me, an 8-minute walk from my apartment. But outside the historic center walls, in Campo di Marte, a direction I rarely turn towards except to dispose of my garbage. The restaurant is small and off the touristed track, which is its saving grace – I can arrive and sit at the sushi bar without calling ahead almost every time. The otoro, or fatty tuna, is genuinely among the best I’ve ever had. I now crave it like I craved Sugarfish for so long. The wakame salad is exactly how I like it – with multiple types of algae and not in a soup of sauce. The sushi rice is real sushi rice, a main gripe for many other restaurants in the city. The fish is always something that actually melts in your mouth, not just an adjective. There is never one hit of fishiness, which I despise as I’m allergic to all fish besides tuna so I do not have the palate for that. The sake is good and actually cold. I love, love this place.

Just around the corner is another gem, a place that I’d had on my personal Florence Google Map since last March, but had never been to previously because again, I rarely go into Campo di Marte. It’s called Bar Bar, and it has the most magical little outdoor courtyard that actually feels like a hidden gem without hyperbole. They open at six, which is so wonderful because I’ve come to prefer lunch being my heartiest meal and then enjoying a good aperitivo in the six-o-clock hour. They have tapas, bar snacks and little plates along with a cocktail menu, and it’s all so good. They also have a true menu for lunch and dinner, but I’ve yet to stay for a full meal. It’s a place that does not exist, almost at all, for tourism and I f-ing love it.

Both of these places are in the via Gioberti area – just outside the historic center from my neighborhood, Sant’Ambrogio.

My other favorite is…tacos. Yes, real, good tacos, even for a Californian and someone who’s spent a lot of time in Mexico. Tosco Tacos is right in the heart of my neighborhood, Sant’Ambrogio, helmed by an Italian guy who fell in love with Mexico and wanted to bring a piece of it home. Huge success. Everything is made in house and everything is good and really satisfies the craving for something not Italian. The salsas have the right spice. I get the carnitas tacos and, when available, the al pastor. It doesn’t taste like an Italian play on Mexican cuisine, it tastes like what their tagline is – the Mexican taqueria in Florence.

Now, beyond my immediate vicinity.

I’ve been on an unintentional hunt for a great shakerato in whatever part of the city I’m in. Two new fantastic additions to the rotation – Caffè Lietta and Giacosa (not new whatsoever, but new in my regular attendance).

Something I love about Venice and Bologna is the café culture under a loggia – it’s so cinematic regardless of circumstance. It feels so Italian, so communal, so much like a living room outdoors. Caffè Lietta is under a loggia in Piazza della Libertà, another area at the very perimeter, by Porta San Gallo – the northernmost point of the historic center of Florence. While there are tables inside, the glory is outside, in the tables under the loggia, where English is rarely spoken and a lot of old Pucci is frequently seen. They make a great shakerato, and they toast a toast (ham and cheese) just right, and they make a solid spritz for aperitivo. It’s the perfect place to go if you feel stifled by the tourism of the city.

Giacosa is the birthplace of the negroni. Yes, really! But I hate gin. I’m in it for the shakerato and the heavenly maritozzi, with not just fresh whipped cream but also creamy custard. It’s divine, and very conveniently located in the Santa Maria Novella neighborhood. Someone asked a while ago where has my favorite maritozzo, and now I can firmly say there, even though it’s not hyper-traditional. It’s a great stop in conjunction with a day of shopping, or an hour well-spent at the Giunti Odeon or at Palazzo Strozzi, or Palazzo Davanzati. Usually, for me it’s paired procuring a new book at Odeon and looking at beautiful things at Loretta Caponi and a visit to COS and a meal at either Cantinetta Antinori or Trattoria Marione.

Lastly, some new-to-me stores.

One of my favorite things about Italy is the existence of the erboristeria – an herbalist shop. People thrived in this city long before modern medicine, after all. As an eczema girl, I use rosehip oil religiously and in the US a big bottle of the pure thing is often pricier than I’d like. I found a really good one at Erboristeria Medicinale Toscana, an unsexy name and place with an extremely affordable price. It’s the deep orange color that means it’s the real, good stuff and I’m quite obsessed. The brand of the rosehip oil is Le Erbe di Jonas.

In the same piazza, there’s a vintage store that I had long not thought twice about, Giratempo Vintage. The downstairs, however, has some treasure to be hunted. It’s packed and a bit claustrophic but you can find a vintage Gianfranco Ferre suit for less than 200 euros. It’s particularly ripe in vintage designer business casual type wear.

In the same area, Mimi Furaha is a quirky little multi-brand boutique that reads kinda Eileen Fisher but has some really fantastic pieces – beautifully-tailored shirts, fun necklaces, and yes, flowy stuff that fits the Fisher bill too.

Libreria Salimbeni is in Santa Croce and a treasure trove of a bookstore. They have historic books and first editions, but also a really wonderful curation of art and photography books and vintage magazines. It’s one of my favorite places to pop into and buy something I don’t technically need but do need. It’s a very easy place to leave inspired.

Société Anonyme is in my neighborhood of Sant’Ambrogio, and it’s a store for the avant-garde designer shoppers. They have all the coolest pieces that are a bit off-kilter or androgynous and not my style but certainly many people I know’s.

l'Ó Profumo is a haven and heaven for fragrance – smaller European brands and the known and loved lines too. The staff is so knowledgable, the building so Florentine, and I’ve found three new perfumes I’m obsessed with (I’m a very hard fragrance critic).

Lastly, I think I’ve mentioned Antica Occhialeria before, but recently I went to their location on via San Gallo and it’s a whole new world from the one in Oltrarno. There’s a whole wall of different colors and materials you can make bespoke glasses or sunglasses from, as well as deadstock pieces, and very cool designs of their own making. It’s a gem for people who want eyewear everyone doesn’t have.

The Google Map below does have almost all my Florence recommendations, but a full true, updated city guide is also in the works for paid subscribers.

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This was supposed to go out last Friday. Unexpectedly (and stupidly), I got sun stroke and it was a true medical emergency that has taken me days to recover from. I’m so sorry for the delay – it has been weeks in the making and I didn’t want to send anything unfinished. There will be a second post this week to make up for it.

For Consideration

The Siege of Paradise trailer is brilliant and very apt. Cinematically beautiful commentary on how over-tourism affects locals in Italy, specifically in the Cinque Terre in this instance. The film just debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and I can’t wait until there’s some way for us all to watch it.

After you’ve read today’s essay, will you please come back and take nine minutes and forty-two seconds to watch this video?

In a world of Butterfield and Erewhon hauls, two things I couldn’t find less interesting or aspirational, I’m ever-inspired by the people like William Seremetis, who is in the midst of eating food from every country, all from restaurants in the Los Angeles area, and sharing it with the world on TikTok.

The World Cup is making for some fantastic content and stories and new understandings. People are understanding why Americans are the way we are. Americans are learning the beauty of other cultures. Humanity is taking place in real time and it feels exciting. We needed this! There’s endless TikTok content to consume, but here are some of my highlights –

• Scotland meeting its perfect match in the city of Boston

• The warmest welcome for Algeria in Kansas

• The Cabo Verde team arrives in Boston

• Koreans living it up in Mexico

This past weekend were the first two days of the Calcio Storico here in Florence – a tradition from 1530 that’s played in Piazza Santa Croce with the four contrade (teams, based on the four parts of the historic center of Florence) playing a quasi-rugby-like game that is totally and utterly Florentine. Also to note, there are going to be train interruptions in Florence in July.

Lastly, I’ve never wished I could teleport more than now to New York! Collective joy and excitement and celebration is the most magical thing in the world.

For Consumption

I love espadrilles with a slight twist – this moiré pair is very good, and I’m obsessed with this boat shoe incarnation. Both are on sale.

I just got this mango-hued skirt from Mango and it’s already a staple in my summer wardrobe.

If you’re a French size 38 this Rabanne skirt is 60% off and so cool but still wearable for years to come.

This is a great waterproof pouch to take to the beach.

Thank you for being here, you Good Person with Good Taste!

Talk soon,

xMarissa

Travel is a reflection of your taste, and your taste is a reflection of your values

First, a bit of preamble –

Because all of a sudden it has become a requisite disclaimer, one singular human brain and two hands wrote every word you’ll read, and that will always be the case here.

This is another piece I’ve written versions of since summer 2024 but have never pressed publish because I was afraid as coming off as the morality police or perceived that I think I’m morally superior. I’ve sat with it since then and you know what, I’m actually ok with it – I write about HOTELS for a living while the world is struggling so loudly.

I think travel writers have more moral responsibility than ever, and we have the attention right now, especially as we start summer. I want to carpe the f-ing diem!

I tried to do it really and truly properly. I went deep into Google Scholar, researching actual research on taste, travel behaviors, and emotion. It took so many versions to get to what you’ll read today.

This is for all humans who leave their house to leave the country. It is not more for any one tax bracket than another, nor for any one type of traveler. Whether you are planning your first trip out of your home country, have been spending summers in Italy your whole life like I’ve been fortunate to, own your own private island or anything in between – I’ve tried really hard to make this equally worth all your time.

The majority of my audience is American, like myself, and thus there will be specificities that reflect what I know best. There are troublesome tourist tendencies with people from any country, I just happen to have the nationality of one. In the same vein, there will likely be examples that pertain to Italy, specifically. I live here, and it’s where I’ve spent such extensive time since I was an infant.

I got my tagline right the first time, Happy Hoteling is a home for Good People with Good Taste.

No going back now!

Introduction

If you enjoy headlines like Where Billionaires Actually Vacation I’m going to gander you won’t like this much. I, for one, would find a hotel fully-booked with billionaires to be the biggest bore.

Today’s wealthiest individuals do not flex their fortune like they used to – they are not commissioning public pieces from the world’s best artists, building beautiful buildings that can benefit us all, or balancing their boardroom time with boots on the ground where their impact could be most felt.

Net worth in today’s age has no correlation with being an interesting or cultured person, let alone a good person or even well-dressed. I have a pretty big problem with this, especially in the world of travel – an experience that can be the best continuing education and the best way to understand the world.

I find way someone approaches the world of travel to be one of the easiest and most accurate ways of getting an accurate read on someone. The more luxury the trip, the higher the profile is, the more “importance” of the individual the more this is true.

The social mediafication of travel allows total strangers to be spectators and get the same solid read on what someone values in life as they share their time abroad. (Yes, this is mostly going to be about international travel.) But no one has to actually get on a plane to show their colors – the way one talks about travel online is often equally insightful.

I’m of the mind that travel as a concept and as a practice reveals a lot about a human because travel is emotional before you even get on a plane or even consider it. It is an opportunity, regardless of financial status and goal. To travel is to gift oneself the opportunity to dream at the highest level.

When you see a post on Instagram of a dreamy reel showing an insanely beautiful beach or hotel, you picture yourself there. But the same can exist when people’s hot takes, bigotry, or personal one-off experiences are baked into that invitation to dream.

Hot takes on TikTok or Instagram about how you didn’t like a place that’s widely beloved reflects on you more than the place. “I wouldn’t return, or it wasn’t for me, or maybe I missed something” is a totally different story. That implies you know that you’re speaking specifically to your own experience alone. You are not yucking someone’s yum.

A hot take that Florence is overrated makes people start thinking of the potential negative experiences they would or could have, or have had in the past. This is far beyond an innocent bummer, because emotion is literally (not hyperbolic) contagious and positive emotions last nearly twice as long as negative ones1.

Joy, contentedness, insight, excitement, understanding, play, and creativity are all potential fair play in the world of travel. But so is cynicism, being judgmental, aggression, anger, agitation, ignorance, selfishness, bigotry, and so on.

When you enter the air space of travel, whether with a piece of content or an actual trip, you have both potent emotional levers at your disposal and it says a lot about you which you choose to capture and share.

Because again – emotion is contagious! For better and for worse.

I wrote the following on October 27, 2024, days before America’s consequential election

In the past few years, people have gotten lazy with playing pretend. It’s now very easy to sit at a hotel breakfast and notice who will go home with the best souvenirs – experience and understanding – and who will go home filled with stuff that wouldn’t survive a fire.

What is taste and what is it not?

No matter how much you’ve made it, our origin stories are all the same. Someone else used to help you go to the bathroom. The experiences we have had since are what got each of us to where we are now – they’re so important.

Experience is what gives power to knowledge. Without knowledge we have no meaning. Without meaning money is just paper and we are running out of trees!

Contrary to what historically was often case, wealth today does not equal taste – and more than ever, extreme wealth acts in poor taste.

My dad is about to be 90, so some of my vocabulary is a product of being his daughter. Two of the things I heard most often from my (admittedly judgmental) dad as we traveled throughout my childhood were that’s in poor taste, and that is vulgar (you do not want to be heavy-handed with your perfume near Arthur Klurstein – you will hear the word vulgar multiple times in just a brief moment).

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Sometimes when I can’t fall asleep, I take the opportunity to watch an old movie that’s been on my list for too long. This week that was Summertime, directed by David Lean and starring a fantastic Katharine Hepburn, filmed entirely in Venice, released in 1955. I couldn’t have loved it more, starting with the brilliant and beautiful illustrated opening credits, such a testament to how well the human hand can set a scene. More interestingly perhaps is how true the American in Italy tourist tropes still ring true today – a solo traveler not dissimilar to myself wanting to immerse herself in the place and culture and not not a bit overly-aware of her aloneness in doing so, a loud couple there to check off box after box on their sightseeing itinerary, and a younger couple of beautiful creatives who seem to have it all. The Italian tropes rang equally true, but I won’t spoil it all, as I highly suggest a watch for yourself if you haven’t already. The icing on top is that a hotel where all these guests are staying is an equal character, as should be the case in Venice. Delightful.

I’ve tired of the same hotels and variations on the same headlines everywhere on every algorithm my phone holds. So much of it is the same – anybody who’s a potential guest knows that Passalacqua is worth the hype by now. Ischia can be described in so many more ways than as “hidden gem” or “where Italians actually go.” May I suggest “The Italian island with the oldest spa in the world (Nitrodi)” or “The Italian island that functions year-round” or “The Italian Isle Where You Go to Cure Your Ailments?” If we’re fighting back against AI, we need to fight for more nuanced thinking, taste, and, voice. This is also to say, you don’t have to post just to post – content for content’s sake never worked, even in its social infancy.

by is one of my favorite Substack publications – it always has such sharp analysis of current cultural truths that are being felt but not widely or aptly articulated. This past issue, Our Culture Doesn’t Want Writers, spoke to many of the same refrains I’ve had on using AI to write, specifically around the concern for the lack of and loss of the critical process.

This brings me to a follow-up to my argument against content for content’s sake – Substack has become, for many, just another channel in the funnel. I much prefer when a creator who is not a writer by trade or passion takes to the image-dominant or list format instead of having AI make sentences out of your bullet points for you. I encourage people to bring what you uniquely have to the table, instead of trying to silently retrofit and/or mimic what your analytical brain says is good business.

Matt wrote another fantastic paragraph, that really cuts into this –

Unfortunately, our moment isn’t asking for writing. Because writing is intensive. Tedious. Boring. Words aren’t images. They’re not sounds. And therefore, writing struggles to trigger that juicy engagement — the reactions and remixes — all the things we creators and consumers insatiably crave. We want instant gratification. Immediate payoffs. Returns on investment. We want speed and spectacle.

In my own corner of the world that is Substack, where this is my full-time job and I take days upon days to craft every post, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve strayed from posting at the same time every week. And yes, I did so without asking for your permission. The reality is writing, as an act, and thinking, as an editor of a Substack publication, suffers under constant deadline. Yes, being a team of one is a main contributor to this but that is also what, at least in its current state, Happy Hoteling is. Knowledge, thought, curation, opinion from one singular point of view – nothing gets lost in the whittling down for word count, nothing gets shared because of compromise, and nothing gets shared because of a pitch, either. I hope and think that this breeds trust and the many merits of that.

Whether you were cognizant of it or not, thank you for allowing this shift to give me immensely more freedom to create from my heart and mind instead of the clock. If I didn’t feel as though the work I create is of value and that the body of work in the archive wasn’t so deep, I would not be doing this. But, as yet another reminder that I am not the humblest human, I am proud of my work and I am immensely grateful for your time, attention, trust, and support. Really, truly.

(And yes, that means I have the time and space to extrapolate on what I choose to have in the For Consideration section.)

Links and articles I loved in the last week-and-change:

• My friend Alessandro Aarbace is the owner of my favorite restaurant in Capri, Pulalli, a place I’ve been fortunate to frequent since its start, with his father Fabrizio at the helm. This video where Ale shares the story is so well done and a testament to the power of storytelling when it comes from the person in charge. I had him In Residence a couple years ago, which you can read here.

• See Gaudí Architecture Without the Crowds in These Spanish Cities Beyond Barcelona by Robin Catalano for AFAR.

• My namesake, Marisa Berenson, has an exciting collaboration with Zara Home that launches June 5 – Elle Decor shares the inspiration. This is a way to actually democratize taste, as it is, in ways, a transference of the exposure that often comes with social class. I have a lot to say about taste and class, if anyone is interested.

• Hotel launch events don’t often excite me, but when they really embrace the emotion they’re trying to convey and create a sense of awe (an all-powerful emotion in luxury travel) I’m inclined to give them a digital standing ovation. Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo did exactly this for the launch of their new Dior spa.

• NYT Books shares 74 books for the summer.

• Alberto Ponis is a master of going beyond just a sense of place to actually capture the land through architecture.

For Consumption

• Da Adolfo, the iconic beach club and restaurant on the Amalfi Coast, has some of the best branding out there – I’ve often used it as a reference of aspirational simplicity. Until now, snagging a t-shirt or hat was a bit of a bragging right in certain circles. Now, Staud has collaborated with them bringing the fish to all. I love the bag and the swimsuit.

• H&M continues to deliver with the great color simple summer shirts – this is a great blue, this has a classic scarf detail, and this is a sleeveless silhouette that wouldn’t be out of place in Summertime.

• These mango colored Mango jeans!

• You know how much I love a novelty bag, and this crab is the current object of my affection.

For Today

• The insider Capri 411 all in one place, only the greatest hits.

• When I actually recommend visiting the Italian cities.

• My top hotel recommendations for the cities – Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Torino, Naples, and Palermo.

• Taking to the lakes – Como, Garda, Iseo, Maggiore, and Orta.

• Campania on and off the beaten path: a dip into Naples before going into the Sorrentine Peninsula, the Amalfi Coast, the islands of Ischia and Procida, and Cilento.

• The TLDR of the Tuscan Coast: Versilia, a ‘lil bit of the Etruscan Coast, and my beloved Maremma.

• My greatest Liguria loves – the best towns and hotels and all the ferry lines to get you in between them.

• The TLDR of the Islands (all the ones I’ve been to: Giglio, Ponza, Capri, Ischia, Procida, Favignana, Salina, Panarea, and Filicudi).

Happy, Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

The Italian FAQs

Before we get to on-the-ground reviews and tales of this Italian summer of mine, I want to answer all the Italy questions I get most frequently in one place. Most of these answers are somewhere in the archive, but again, I understand that the Substack search functionality is sub-par. This with The Italian Hotel Matchmaker should really, truly leave you wanting for nothing in the Italian hotel department.

No photos, just 8,920 words. You could consider this the Happy Hoteling version of Frommer’s Italy or Rick Steves. The hope is that this answers the question you were going to DM me about, and that it does answer all the unanswered messages in all my inboxes.

Enduring, Insider Capri Favorites

I have the comprehensive guide on happyhoteling.com, and various partial lists in the archive, but still I get asked, even by those closest to me, what are your must musts.

These are my most favorite hotels, restaurants, beach clubs, cafes, stores, and activities –

HOTELS

• La Minerva sits in the #1 spot, because of the owners (brothers, my friends) and their world-class hospitality combined with the absolute Caprese nature of every inch of the hotel. It’s magic. And yes, I’ve sent many people to La Minerva who did not know the owners and left feeling like they did. Previous review here, and the owners’ favorites in Capri here.

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• Over six months ago I had shared the trailer for a documentary set in the fascinating to me town of Natchez, Mississippi and, at the time, it felt like the May release date was forever away. It won Best Documentary at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and it’s finally out, and in full on YouTube because PBS rocks. As someone who’s only ever lived in the Bay Area, LA, and NYC in the US (converging bubbles, to be sure), I genuinely found this fascinating as well as important.

• Boston’s Logan Airport is about to launch the country’s first “remote terminal” which allows passengers on certain flights to essentially go through security at a parking lot and then be taken by bus directly to your gate. Exciting!

• My favorite class at as an art history major at UCLA was American Houses, and we kicked off the semester learning about Cahokia, a thriving metropolis in the area around current St. Louis far before the continent was colonized. I love my YouTube algorithm, because this video on the subject completely re-sparked my interest.

• This points out exactly why I do what I do. Hotels are hot, but almost all of them look the damn same and thus feel like nothing. Happy Hoteling is where you come to find the places that are one-of-a-kind. The Special ones.

• Lastly, I must say something about staying in AirBnBs in European city centers, Florence, specifically. The apartment below mine is one, to the utter annoyance of the rest of the building. I can hear everything when there are guests (thank god it’s not constant). After 11 months of living here, I feel like I have collected enough first-hand data to say that Americans are the main problem. There is a total disregard for the fact that you are sleeping in a building where people live, full-time, and have real, full-time jobs. There are groups of Gen Z American girls who I have jumped on my floor so loudly for because they simply will not stop screeching all at the same time at 5am when they come home from partying, only for them to do it again when they wake up three hours later. But it’s not just the young people – currently, there is a couple in their 50s sleeping below me. I don’t know if it’s the current moment in American history, but this is a common occurrence – a lot of yelling from the man at the woman. Today, I heard shut up at least ten times and the slamming of doors seemingly every time they were opened. This city has made a lot of reform to try to negate this behavior and lower the amount of AirBnBs in the historic center but there’s still a problem. And yes, I am aware that I am myself an American, but I do live here, and the other next door neighbor is a man in his sixties who was diagnosed with cancer a month ago and really doesn’t deserve this sh!t. Please stay at a hotel, or stay in an AirBnB where you are not surrounded by locals. And no, the Italian and Spanish guests are not even close to as loud as the American guests. I can hear maybe five words a day when they speak, not every single one.

For Consumption

• Mango is doing well this summer, even in swim. This is simple and versatile and a good color that plays well with sunscreen. Top, bottoms.

• This is what I call great for a boat day.

• I have been wearing this men’s Babar x Rowing Blazer button down on repeat.

• The fab yellow loafers I shared a bit ago are on sale! If you follow me on Instagram you know I have become a Yellow Loafer Girl.

• There’s something so classic and equally fun about a great red and white polka dot dress.

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

P.S. My season of Italian Happy Hoteling begins this week. I can’t wait to take you all along for the ride.

Real Coastal White Space for Italian Hotels

I’ve often had a bone to pick with acting on what the data shows. Granted, my world has always largely been a creative one.

I like to swim in the sea of what the data does not show, or what it hasn’t even considered. The white space. The emotional opportunities, you could say. Solving small problems for a small group of people instead of trying to solve the problems for the masses. The data comes from the masses and the masses are not really the guests most luxury hotels want (or should want). Plus, it’s always good to create magic that no one has asked for. Most people have no idea what they want until it’s in front of them.

I would like to do this for Italian hotels. I do consider myself to have extensive knowledge on the subject that goes far beyond the surface or even the center. The hotels that make the cut live on the Google Map (avail for Founding Members or on happyhoteling.com), creating easy visual white space.

Not all white space is interesting space and therefore potentially emotional space to tread. Even with so many hotels throughout Italy, and increasingly more, there’s still a whole lot of similar which makes real room for something Special.

For me, the biggest opportunities I see connect the beautiful reality of visiting a place and being able to stay within that same dream overnight. When a small guest house finally opened in Sperlonga, the wonderful ancient Etruscan town on the coast of Lazio, I was thrilled – that’s the type of place you want to stay the night, and not somewhere that feels like a total disconnect from the magic in the air.

One of my “niches” is going off the typical American tourist path in Italy, specifically in hotels (and the sky is blue and grass green). I’m aware that’s what a good chunk of you are here! And with this, I’ve learned that there is an equal appetite, if not an even greater one, in the hotels that are in a place that means absolutely nothing to 99% of the travel content consuming public. Thank god that as soon as I left TikTok I never received a single other DM about Positano.

You people are my people – willing and wanting to go somewhere new, and seek out special instead of only ease, recognition, or high luxury.

Today, I want to go where the data doesn’t, to the places in Italy that may not have the tourist traffic now, but could have an eternally-booked hotel if it was really great.

I’m sick of the incessant refrain of the past three years that “Ischia is the hidden gem island you’ve never heard of and need to go to, stat.” One, it’s not true when it’s said in droves, and two, it’s not true because of the fact that it has loooong been an island packed with hotels in every corner. Sure, my first visit to the isle in 2019 heard more German spoken than 2022 and after’s English, but that’s because of ONE HOTEL being reborn, Mezzatorre. Yes, it was a hotel even just the year prior – it just needed a visionary creative to speak to the American audience, which is the most vocal audience.

Now, there are certain places, especially on the coast, where Italians deserve to not hear English spoken at an increasingly high rate. I have taken that into major account with all my ideas below – I am hyper-aware of the balance between Italy’s dependence on tourism and Italians’ struggle with their lives changing so drastically because of over-tourism. I live in Florence, and before that, my dad lived here for 25 years and left “when the tour buses came.” That was the ‘80s, and now we have not only the internet, not only TikTok and Instagram, but goddamn AI too.

I’m a firm believer that new hotels should both support and reflect the reality of its home – the appetite for tourism, the land, the culture, and what makes it unique. There are too many new hotels opening, in my eyes, for the sake of following the data. Does the Tuscan countryside need more and more and more luxury hotels with rates over $1,000/night that most Italians can’t afford? I’d argue no, but there are so many in the pipeline because Tuscany is always trending upwards.

Some places, like Ponza, for example, would be ruined if one of the two larger hotels were bought and renovated and quadrupled in price. It also wouldn’t make much sense – sure, English is spoken in Ponza, but not up to the arrogant American luxury traveler’s standard. There are not enough taxis. There are not enough ferries. The magic of the place lies in the scarcity of many of its tourism infrastructure, which is why it remains sacred for Italians (and this American).

But then there’s somewhere like the Cinque Terre, where the infrastructure is there, the local lives have already been altered, yet there is not one single realllly good hotel. There is a hotel that has all of the bones to become one – Hotel Porto Roca. No new construction, no ruining the landscape, but an acquisition and reimagining of this property could be a huge addition. That will be one of the six hotel ideas below, but only one other is also a takeover of an existing place.

I also see immense white space for Italy to lead the way (or meet Morocco and India’s match, perhaps) of designing and constructing new buildings to the standards and levels of craftsmanship that they were until the Fascist era. This is a country with both tradition and talent of using one’s hands, and true craftsmanship from the bottom up is something that substantiates a four-digit-per-night pricetag.

Italy as a culture is so innately playful, so creative, so steeped in culture, yet so many new (or hit) hotels are none of these things. This is white space, too.

Before I go into the ideas, I want to be clear that I am playing pretend in hopes of whetting palates – I’m sure some of these places have regulations around building or have been owned by the same family for three-hundred years and will never sell or any other matters of red tape. As I’ve mentioned before, in my advertising career I was never brought to the big boardrooms for my practicality, I was invited for my visions of possibilities and my immense distaste of unoriginality.

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My core thoughts that drove the ideas – cohesion is a killer of creativity. Play is luxurious. Framing and light are emotional. Cinema can be real life. Death to the ugly new “luxury” copy paste, rebirth to the unreplicable experiences.

Geographically, for this exploration I divided between white space for the typical Italian tourist who doesn’t know all that much of the country, and actual white space for there to be the first great hotel in a great, less-trodden location.

Six hotel ideas, four fully-fleshed out with moodboards. Two are imagined new lives for existing hotels, the rest would be new. All different, but all realized through the same goals – to create awe, provoke play, inspire with color, root to the land, celebrate Italian craftsmanship, and add instead of detract from the country’s hotel ecosystem.

Lastly, before the paywall hits, Grand Hotel Miramare in Castiglioncello is a hotel that precisely fits in the white space I’m interested in and has been in re-development for the past three years – does anyone have any intel?! I desperately want it to be re-born.

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I haven’t done a book report in a while! I just finished Gavin Newsom’s memoir Young Man in a Hurry, which came out early this year. He’s a Marin Kid, I know people in his inner orbit, and I wanted to hear how he would tell his own story as he’s obviously in conversation for the 2028 ticket. It ended up being great proof that Marin Kids really do never shut up about where they grew up – I enjoyed, clearly. Before that, I finished the just-released Strangers in the Villa by Robyn Harding – a thriller where a couple moves to the Costa Brava to start fresh, and they have unexpected house guests that are hard to figure out and end up staying a while. 3.5/5 – enjoyable, not a must. Go Gentle by Maria Semple, on the other hand, was such a joy to read. It’s the tale of an Upper West Side woman, a Stoic philisopher, and that’s the whole joy – the main character shines with such humor that I didn’t even really care that the plot could have been more cohesive. 4.5/5. This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum was a really unique thriller, another 4.5 – rare for me in the genre, honestly. And yes, of course, I have read Strangers. I liked it just as much as everyone else but I didn’t seem to be as shocked by anything as most were – I know one too many women with similar stories. Now, I’m reading The Bell Jar for the first time as my physical book (I know!), and I just started Family Drama by Rebecca Fallon on my Kindle. I will report back!

I was really, really not expecting to become a Chloe Malle fan but she’s fantastic on the podcast and I love her idea-driven vision for the future of Vogue. This interview with her mom, Candice Bergman, is something I wish I could tune into every week.

For Consumption

• These beaded umbrella shoes?! I love the silhouette on the foot. No need to grow up!

• Finally, a fabulous pair of silk striped pants that doesn’t have a color that ruins the palette.

• A quite perfect summer hat.

• If I were in the market for a new cardholder, it would be this.

• What about a beach scene on your bikini? I like. Top, bottoms.

• Lastly, a great vintage skirt from the 50s.

Happy Hoteling!

Marissa

The New(s)

53 Hotels! A long list, months in the making. 13 hotels mentioned in the US, with multiple gems. 2 in Mexico, both new top contenders for CDMX. 2 in South America, including Peru’s newest coolest hotel. 8 in the UK. 5 in Italy. 9 in France. 7 others across the rest of Europe, including a really great new bolthole in Copenhagen. 4 in Africa, and 3 in Asia.

A LOT of good, and a lot of new. The refrain remains – hotels are hot.

NORTH AMERICA

The Hôtel Lili, the new Beverly Hills hotel from Palisociety (I’m a fan), officially opened their doors and to more fanfare than I expected. The location is great and I thought it was in its previous identity too, but I never stayed because the previously-existing design with lots panels of mirrors freaked me out, and I’m generall unparanoid. I thought they’d be gone with the re-design, but sadly no. Why did they keep them, and the panels behind the front desk? It doesn’t jive with the narrative that the hotel was designed in-house.

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• This video on the need for boredom in today’s world is fantastic fodder.

• ’s Global Cultural Bulletin for May.

• I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sky as beautiful as this!

• This on over-tourism in Norway, giving another point to the paywall/gatekeep camp as well as the No Cruises camp (FYI, this was written before the current cruise crisis).

For Consumption

• THIS BIKINI BAG I know it’s so overpriced but gaaahhhh it’s good

• Mango is killing it with the solid-color classic silhouettes for summer, which are the foundations of my wardrobe – a blue dress, a red a-line, and a lilac midi

• The taffeta shorts! The pink pants will be out in six months but these shorts will be chic for decades

• Potential contender for Sunglasses of the Summer

• May I interest you in a kooky vintage sunhat? This? Or this? Or this, which I’ve been trying for a year to recreate?!

And now, for our grand performance, off to China we go. A big, grand adventure.

Happy, Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

P.S. In the Archive, also in Asia – The Japan Hotel List and The Sri Lanka Hotel List (among so many more)

P.P.S. I think this is my longest post ever so it will surely get cut off in email, please click at the top to read in browser or the Substack app

Happy Hoteling in China

For the longest time, I thought the possibility of me pulling off a China Hotel List was equal to that of me going on a hike or eating raw celery. But then, last year, exactly a year ago, in getting Happy Hoteling Around the World over the finish line, I had to do what I had been putting off and dive into China.

While I’m in no way well-versed, I’d guess my education on Chinese history is maybe a touch above the average American – I grew up just outside San Francisco, which has the largest Chinese population outside of China, I learned about foot binding, I learned about the horrors of the “immigration station” at Angel Island, where my private school took a field trip for the last Friday of every school year, and about the Silk Road and the dynasties through my UCLA education. My mom, who was a docent at the deYoung for almost my entire life, specialized in Asian and Oceanic art, so I could give you a decent tour of the museum’s permanent collection. But I have never been to China. Technically, I spent one night in Hong Kong, but it was for a long layover and I don’t count that.

If you’ve never looked for it, you may not have realized that it is not particularly easy to research hotels across the massive country. 1.41 billion people, the source of many products we own, and slightly larger than the United States, which is f*cking huge. Yet, even on Tablet, which typically has the largest available database for boutique hotels publicly-available for free, there are only 142 hotels in the whole country. Almost the entire list makes up brand-name hotels – the same as the AmEx Fine Hotels + Resorts Collection, and every name (minus one) in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2026 Reader’s Choice list of the best hotels in China.

I set out to fill in the gaping gaps and have barely slept for two weeks because the holes were so big. Great news – the roadwork is over, the hotel paths have been paved all over the giant country.

Because the internet is restricted in China, it is hard to research. It makes sense that most lists are limited and stay on the chained path. Trip.com is the source for most Chinese hotels and it requires oh so much digging and vetting. Thank god for Google Translate and that the Chinese are so prolific in their review writing. Thank god for my art history education that made it easy for me to learn about the essence of each province and multiple places within it in order to be able to have that gut yes/no instinct on the hotels. Also thank god that I learned how to use a map in real life as a kid, in geography class growing up, and that I had to retake my maps class at UCLA – I wanted to be sure all these hotels were accessible on the Happy Hoteling Around the World Google Map (available for Founding Members) but Google Maps isn’t synched with the Chinese maps and so it required a lot of manual eagle-eyeing and adding by hand. (In many cases, their location on the map is my best approximation, definitely not exact)

After publishing On The Travel Agent World, I really hit the ground running on this project and realized how it was ironic that China was a place that I would really advise using a travel agent for, specifically a DMC or a China travel specialist. WeChat is the mode of communication. Driving requires a separate temporary Chinese driver’s license, so hiring a driver is key in a lot of places. History is rich and English is not widely spoken – this is perhaps the place for a guide in certain areas. To do all of this really well you need an expert unless you’re willing to fly by the seat of your pants like I typically do.

What I would and will do when I take my first trip to China (which needs to be stat now that I’m so inspired) is reach out to a few DMCs (I don’t know which yet, to be honest) and give them a list of hotels and places below that I really want to see. I then give them the reigns to make an itinerary and arrange transportation. I book the hotels and go about the trip on my own, with their itinerary.

Now, about this list. I focused on what and where interests me most and a lot of that is rural and involving history and/or natural beauty. I spent the least amount of time researching Hong Kong hotels because you don’t need me for that, nor the main big cities, although I did research the others more thoroughly. I wanted to open eyes to the vast beauty, the varying cultures, the centuries of history, the endless ethnic groups, the rich architecture, and the constant co-existence of real history and the reigns of the future. That’s what I felt wasn’t available because you need to know where to stay in order to see these places. Some hotels are just perfect finds, others are the best options in a non-negotiable location. Most are, at least by American standards, wildly cheap – $100/night, or $300/night for luxury. Of course, when there’s an international chain involved the prices are much higher, but the huge disparity between the price ranges allows for splurging and saving in one itinerary.

I’ve linked every hotel that is a clear translation of a name, or not easily Googleable. Most are Trip.com links. All photos I’ve used are from there or the official property photos and all location imagery is either stock or from a tourism board, fyi.

Above all, I wanted this to be more than just a list of hotels in China. I wanted someone who has no plans on traveling there to be able to read this and learn a bit more about the country and revel in the sheer beauty. That’s part of why it’s so long – there’s context, and there are a lot of photos.

The research for this project was so different than that of any other country – there are no 100-year-old mainstay hotels, the country was essentially closed to foreign tourism until 1971. Yet the land and the civilization is so old. So much has been done in 54 years! This 2018 article from the BBC shows China through 40 years of change, as do these Instagram images, and this Guardian article from 2017 showing the aerial views of cities in the past few decades. Take Shenzhen for example, which had 5,000 (THOUSAND) residents in 1955 and 10.7 MILLION in 2016, and it’s estimated that in 2026 it’s 13.77 million. It’s wild. WILD. And so interesting.

For super broad but important questions and answers about China as a whole, this Wired video with a professor is solid.

Here’s what I have for you today, which will forever live in the Archive:

130 hotels across China. The hotel count by province and city is as follows: 19 in Yunnan Province, 12 in Sichuan Province, 12 in Zhejiang Province, 10 in Guangdong Province, 2 in Shanxi Provinxe, 3 in Shaanxi Province, 5 in Jiangsu Province, 3 in Jiangxi Province, 2 in Henan Province, 4 in Hunan Province, 1 in Hainan Province, 4 in Hubei Province, 4 in Anhui Province, 1 in Ningxia Province, 1 each in Fujian Province, Shandong Province, Ningxia Province, and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 5 in Gansu Province, 3 in Guizhou Province, 7 in Guangxi Province, 3 in the city of Chongqing, 13 in Beijing, 8 in Shanghai, and 6 in Hong Kong. Phew. A HUGE COUNTRY AND SO MUCH HAPPY HOTELING!

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• I keep forgetting to suggest one of the most apt movies for the moment that I had totally incorrectly written off. Anniversary. Not a flop, under-marketed, and I can’t shake it. If you don’t know anything about it, even better.

• The Century Library is something I’m thrilled at the prospect of and very curious if it will have widespread impact. Giving people easy access to a sense of the past could easily help us swim away from the swim of content same, or it could Live, Laugh, Love digital patina quickly. Regardless, I love the intention.

• Could you imagine the world today if when people were sick going to the hospital meant going here?! I think that’s why all the new hotel beds with the super-horizontal headboards are really not jiving with me – a pretty place to sleep goes far for me.

• An update on The Italian Hotel Matchmaker – I’ve not fully been able to perfect the 2.0 additions with the help of AI. It has noooot been forgotten, I just wanted you to know it may not be ready as soon as I’d like. At least I’m damn proud of the OG.

For Consumption

• This vintage frog necklace! Frogs are the new fish, imo.

• I’ve been really into the button down-bra-crop-top thing – with a high waisted skirt, yes, but it doesn’t need to match (I much rather it didn’t).

• Things like solid-color sleeveless sweater vests have become core to my Florentine style – Gap has a good one.

• Sometimes it’s worth splurging on a staple that you can forever bring on vacation – this is a current contender in that category for me.

For Today

• A short little essay on slowing down

• 24 additions to the Italy Hotel List!

• The Italian New(s)

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

I Finally Broke a Bad Habit

I used to walk through Laurel Village in San Francisco running errands at the pace I would walk in New York from my apartment through SoHo to catch the train for absolutely no reason at all. I was and am my own boss, the street parking on my then-block was always gone within a minute – I had nothing to rush to but I was always rushing.

This has never been me on vacation – I’m great at going slowly when I travel. But it’s finally not me at home now either.

It probably started taking root at the very beginning, when I started line drying my clothes my necessity, just like everyone else. It’s strange how much I like it now and how I liked the dryer so much before I was often willing to gamble the shrink dice.

Recently, I found myself waiting in line for 15 minutes at the pharmacy to ask if they had a vitamin in stock that I was almost positive they did not. The line was two women who became friends in line therefore not a true line but a slowing in service because humanity was taking place.

I was tempted to leave because it was my first errand of the morning, but reminded myself I was not in a rush and stayed. They didn’t have the vitamin, but now I have two more people in the neighborhood to wave to.

Progress! For my first couple months in Florence, I’m embarrassed to realize that I would always circle back around if I saw any line at all.

I also used to get a double espresso with just ice tossed in the glass thinking it was “fastest” and also easiest, even though I LOVE a shakerato, which requires a cocktail mixer and more manual labor and usually goes to the back of the orders.

That same day, my last “errand” was for coffee. It was the first warm day where I wanted a shakerato to go (to walk around the market, I know, I know, che Americana, but I enjoy it). After my pharmacy reckoning, I consciously did not go to the neighborhood cafe that was the least busy at that moment and instead went to the one with the best shakerato.

At least five people who walked in before me got their (easy) coffee order first, which in the past would have caused me to accuse innocent people of being a line-cutters in my head. The shakerato finally came a good 20 minutes later. I hadn’t been to that cafe in a while, and in that time I was able to see everyone I hadn’t seen yet this year and walk outside to realize…holy shit…there’s a grocery store right here?! I have been fully operating under the impression that the closest actual grocery store was longer than I like to walk with water since last July. I’ve walked on this street so many times before but really only ever in a hurry to nowhere – it’s a side street. My life is not insignificantly changed because I got the shakerato.

I took said cold drink and started walking through the market, wondering if I would still live in New York if I hadn’t burned out from the fast-as-hell pace. I’ve always been pretty good at being present, but now I realize I was cutting myself off for the sake of keeping it movin.’ Presence isn’t as powerful when rushed, at least I know that now. I can’t believe I finally I broke a bad habit.

Italiadditions

Oh we have quite the crop today. Brand new openings and palaces from the 1400s alike. Fairytale luxury and and simple rooms right on the sea. White space filled and new color added to the most-covered terrain. 24 hotels across the country in each and every direction (except Sardinia, on this trip). If you’ve been waiting for an edition with a handful of hotels in Calabria – this is your day.

Also, I’ve now gotten my new country of residence out of my content system – we are going to China next. Not a full country list (impossible to research at my standard), but a solid edit.

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• Novelty and imagination are on full display at Salone, which I see as a direct rebuttal against the AI age. I’m thrilled. Leila Gohar’s carousel! La Double J! Yay yay.

• While I don’t know if it will have strong ROI, I love, loooove, Pinterest’s latest campaign with the tagline The best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline. It’s particularly timely with after seeing the sea of phones during Madonna’s epic appearance at Coachella.

• Pucci wins the ever-increasing competition for most awe-inspiring location with their runway show at the Grotta dei Cordari in Siracusa this past weekend. There was no need for this AI schtick that played out in 2023.

• I’m so curious whether hotels are as seemingly everywhere for you, or if my algorithms are understandably very skewed. Are you seeing it everywhere and more and more and faster and faster? I clearly love hotels as much as human can but if everyone is having this experience I’m not not weary.

  

For Consumption

• I put together a big vintage edit and thought I’d share it all. A few drools are THE striped jacket from the Todd Oldham 1993 collection I shared last week (my shoulders are too broad or it would be mine), a 90s Fendi jacket under $400, the iconic Tom Ford for YSL silhouette skirt (there’s even another color way in the curation), and perhaps the least boring black blazer on the planet.

• These red pleated culottes are even better in person (at least for someone petite like me), although sadly not available in the US yet.

• Cult Gaia is always a go-to for me in terms of novelty pieces for summer – the mini backgammon bag and the calla earrings win this year. Also in the novelty category, this is a rare time where I think the keychain is cooler and more timeless than the bag itself – I love the Loewe artichoke.

• This is not the year to suffer with a strapless bra, but do make it a bit intentional – I’m pretty obsessed with unexpected purple pops right now.

For Today

I’m sharing my real thoughts around why I hung up my travel agent hat. Finally. But also no fear, there will be less words next week.

Enjoy!

xMarissa

My Truth On the Travel Agent World

I posted on Substack Notes that I had written many articles on my real thoughts on the travel agent industry but had never pressed publish. I asked if people are interested in reading about this, or whether it should remain in my head. I had always safely assumed the latter. But every response was a yes, and most an emphatic please share. When I returned to my numerous previous drafts I found them only partially honest. If I’m going to do it, it has to be be as humanly true as possible as those were the foundations with my main gripes.

I really, truly, genuinely value the TA community I have here and I’m so honored to have your trust and time. I pretty promise that my views are of the largely system as a whole and with certain behaviors. The last thing I want to do is make someone feel attacked or insecure or less than by sharing this. I have a sh*t ton of readers who I know are travel agents I would trust to book my own travel. You can always find them in the database here.

Here I go. Nervously, trying to tread neither lightly nor forcefully.

Yes, I was affiliated with the company that starts with an F and ends with an A and has a lot of the travel agent industry up in arms. The main reason I would always refrain from pressing publish is that I actually really admire and respect all three Co-Founders. I think they’re all genuinely good people and good leaders and on a personal level I like them and I am picky.

My issue isn’t with the model or goal as a whole – to make the previously long-unchanged world of travel agents more egalitarian, which have been renamed travel advisors in recent years.

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Today is writing-heavy. In a good way, I hope. I only do this once in a while, so when I do I try to make sure it’s solid.

Happy Hoteling!

Marissa

For Consideration

• La Double J just opened a store in Capri! What a match, I’m thrilled. I’m interested to see if they fall into the Caprification of products (exclusive to Capri) like the big houses of luxury do. It may surprise you to know that I actually love these sorts of things – I’m a collector by identity, as are many Capri-every-yearers. Also in store news, Vibi Venezia has a store in Venice (I’ve been hoping for this!) and coolest of all, Marni has collaborated with Pasticceria Cucchi in Milan for a Marnified experience through July 15th.

  

• The new EU rules of the EES entry system are officially live as of April 10th. I somehow lucked out that I entered on my visa in Rome before this was official, but somehow I got the sticker on my passport (I had been wondering what it meant) and now I understand why they were so excited for me. This article from The Points Guy explains it well. So far, I haven’t heard of extra-long lines, but “the season” hasn’t really started.

• This incredible day in the life of a place that I’m lucky to consider a locale by Italy Segreta. Lovely!

• In Florence, here’s the TLDR on current buzz from my brain’s view – they’ve spent so long fortifying the wall of the Arno which made walking along the lungarno unfun the whole time, and now they’re done, but the inside of the wall is painted white, which sticks out like a sore thumb. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it has the same refrain – bruttissimo. At least art in this city right now is fan-f*cking-tastic. Yes, Rothko at Palazzo Strozzi, but I’m also really excited for the new Art Deco exhibit at Palazzo Medici Riccardi. It’s been warm enough for an American to want AC and ice, which has been awfully nice. I cannot wait for the vintage show/fair at Palazzo Corsini the 17th-19th.

For Consumption

• I have an old dress that looks EXACTLY like this, and last summer I got a DM from someone asking where it was from and for some reason I looked them up on LinkedIn. I think this dress could have been inspired by my old one.

• I’ve been on a jewelry hunt for statement summer pieces. I have too many contenders, but black pearls, a red nautilus, and a tortoise shell (literally) are in the lead.

• Perfect striped jeans! I have a few pairs of past years’ varietals – true to size. But also baby pink is really on my mind.

• Unsurprisingly, I want all the La Vest new arrivals, specifically this candy-colored tunic, these sequined shorts, and the new baby blue varietal of old faithful.

For Today

• An Italian 101 summer travel one-pager.

• An essay on joy and color, with a poll at the end.

• Can I take you to Sunset? Bringing you to my favorite place in the US, and how to get there.

Italian 101: The Essential Summer Travel Toolkit

For the travel agents! And/or whomever this is useful for. A one-pager of Italian that I really recommend every English-speaker (American, especially) practice before coming to Italy in 2026. I kept it to the most basic, and vocab that I overhear often and step in to translate.

Joy & Color for Resistance & Community

I know I’m not the only one that’s…struggling…with the state of the world and continually finding ways to stay sane, while helping how you can.

I keep coming back to the topic of joy as an act of resistance. Is it? Even for me, a naturally thin white woman who won the 2026 lottery of getting an Italian Digital Nomad Visa by writing about hotels on Substack?

But then the counter-argument, also on repeat in my inner monologue. It can’t be productive to just feel so much anger and sadness and desperation for the world at all times, can it?

While I noodled on it, I made the password for The Italian Hotel Matchmaker something that nodded to it.

In my research, I found this NPR podcast from last July, Is Joy a Form of Resistence?, where they discuss exactly this, and so thoroughly, with so much nuance I don’t have. I started listening admittedly in the hopes of being met with the answer I wanted – yes, joy is an acceptable form of resistance, even for you, white woman.

I listened to the whole thing. And then I read the transcript of it – listening and reading process in my brain differently and I wanted my subconscious to pick up on all the nuance, all the important tension.

Then it was time to go run my morning errands, which naturally prompted a quick Instagram scroll. I came across a reel of this woman, Kayleigh, who was singing along to Vanessa Carlton in her car, with the text “My therapist told me about the ‘nostalgic reset’ and it’s completely changed the way I manage anxiety.” I typed in the prompt to get her playlist, which I have only done a couple times before – it was completely in the same vein of my own playlist I started last May, pre-Sicily trip, called “Dopamine Summer.” I had also made it as a way to cope with the anxiety I was feeling at the time – songs that prompted vivid and good memories, riffs ripe with nostalgia and naivety, chords transporting me to times when I felt safe.

I started walking down my street to hit my morning stops, listening to my playlist, when the song Heavy Foot by Mon Rovîa played as I was approaching a supbar establishment, but the light was hitting just right. It’s one of very few current songs on the playlist. I stopped on the corner before crossing the street to the market, where I would be distracted, and really listened to the lyrics. It felt like some sort of sign, the light on the corner, immediately after seeing the post about the nostalgic reset.

The chorus did strike a very resonant chord (pun intended).

Mon Rovîa was born and raised in Monrovia, Liberia until he was adopted by a family in Appalachia when he was seven but he had made such a joyful song about such heavy things.

I thought about the origin of the American-loved Italian classic “Bella Ciao,” a folk song that became an anthem for resistance in fascist WWII Italy. Anyone who’s ever heard the song would think it’s a happy song.

I thought when Jack Schlossberg posted lipsyncing videos to millennial anthems in the critical time leading up to the 2024 election. Most thought he was marring the Kennedy name and wasting time on the campaign trail but I always thought no, he’s trying to capture his peers’ – millennials – attention by grabbing them with musical nostalgia (example 1, example 2, example 3).

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug – especially for my generation. It didn’t work, but when it became Zohran’s big millennial moment of possibility, he took to the clubs, just before election day. I’d be shocked if this video didn’t at least make a dent. The emotion was contagious, and the emotion was joy.

I pulled the NPR transcript back up on my phone and scanned to find the point where they spoke about NOLA.

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YES. I thought about Mon Rovîa and Bella Ciao and “nostalgic reset” playlists and the red thread was strong – joy is a powerful coping mechanism to be able to persevere.

That’s key. But I do realize these are all musically-related.

I put my thought break on pause as I realized I forgot to put on sunscreen and was standing in the sun and continued to the market. One person, then two, then three all complimented my outfit. They all said two words in common i colori – the colors. I don’t have a photo, but I was wearing my painted baggy jeans, a true blue button down oversized and underbuttoned, a grass green sweater around my neck, Peeps yellow socks and navy blue friulane.

On theme, I wanted to buy a vintage boy’s red Polo button down but the vendor’s husband was inside eating and he had the credit card machine. I was fine waiting, both because it was an A+ red staple steal and because I was in thought. I stood on the steps leading into the inside part of the Mercato, looking out at the vendors selling everything from beads to fabric to vintage Ferragamo and tomatoes and all the green everything. Fantastic background for thinking.

I recalled all the other times Florentines, a typically insular population, had stopped me to comment on all the colors I was wearing. I’m still very much working on the finding actual friends in the city where I live thing, but I have always felt a true sense of community in this city. Could it be the color? Is that why people remember me and feel both comfortable and compelled to talk to me and even compliment me?

I had considered before that it was a main factor in contributing to my sense of community, but after listening to and reading the NPR podcast I wondered if color was also a way of me contributing back to my community.

The podcast had referenced a potent line by Audre Lorde – “The sharing of of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers.”

I had already locked in on the importance of joy in perseverance, but this new meaning felt meaningful – the sharing of joy as a bridge between the sharers.

Each of us, we are a sharer. We are participants of planet Earth, of this great human experiment. We all have our communities – whatever yours is, it’s worth asking yourself what’s unique and authentically you that you can share.

I want to share my love of color – a random handful of references that have long lived vibrantly in my mind. I collect colorful images like I collect hotels.

First, we’ll start with style – visuals that made a big impression, images that have gone on to have a ripple effect into my community.

Marc Jacobs got fired from Perry Ellis for that collection, but this is the only look that ever really resonated with me. The 90s I’m inspired by is neither gaunt nor grey.

I also love proving you can be polished and bright.

Yes, Steve Jobs wore a black uniform, but he chose his logo to be a rainbow apple.

I was so confused when Alix Earle said that Reale Actives was filling white space in the skincare world by being a colorful brand. When I think of color, powerful color, I don’t think of subtle hues. I like how they did it in the 60s.

I like a lot of what they did in the 60s and how they did it.

E-comm editorialization has become so of-the-moment – a “color story” gets a photoshoot and homepage real estate if it’s timely. But, what about the fact that color can BE the story? Always! Merchandizing can influence a color craving. Missed opportunities with much higher emotional stakes missed, left and right!

The Rothko exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi is resonating so deeply for a reason, and I’m tempted to think that it has something big to do with color and its symbolism in the current state of the world. I’m going this week, line be damned.

What’s your unique form of joy? Do others find your smile contagious? Do you love to host? Are you great at reading children’s books in voices? Everyone has something, and I’d love to invite you to share.

I have been working on another project that revolves around color for quite some time. That’s not ready, but this whole joy as resistance thing felt apt to share and gauge the temperature for “color” becoming a larger pillar within the Happy Hoteling world. Yes with hotels, but not exclusively.

My Favorite Place in The US

I want to take you somewhere really special to me. I’ve written about it before, but only briefly because it’s somewhere sacred for generations of people that went to my high school, and I’m sure for the native peoples their entire existence.

Every time I see it pop up on my TikTok FYP, the comment section is flooded with where is this or but where exactly and questions like do you have to pay?

Obviously, I gloat in hometown pride every time, but I’ve also yet to see someone actually, properly describe how to get there, or fully capture what it’s like.

I’ll share the secret specifics below, but the place at hand is towards the top of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California.

Mount Tamalpais = Mt. Tam = the mountain I grew up on that shaped me.

I debated far too much on whether I should tell you the specifics. I really don’t want my friends or peers or current Tam students to be upset, or for people to ruin it.

But on my last night in California, I took my mom’s car up to Sunset. I hadn’t been since 2020 when we still had my childhood home on Mt. Tam and when I was living with my dad for lockdown.

It was an abnormally warm day for March, so I headed up the mountain far before the sun would actually set to get a proper feel for how popular it has gotten in the TikTok era.

As you wind up and up, there’s finally the turn that’s a pretty sure-fire way to want to move to The Bay.

It’s a sharp one – there are two lanes and both narrow, which makes it seem like you’re floating above the Pacific, with great, green hills arriving as your friends. I have done this drive hundreds (not hyperbole) of times, but unless it was completely entrenched in fog, I have never once not felt real, true awe.

That’s why I did decide to share – awe is such a powerfully good emotion. It’s my drug of choice and I can’t live with the thought of potential readers who live in The Bay and have never properly been to Sunset. And we aren’t even there yet!

It’s similar to driving over the famous Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, but without traffic and with slightly more cell service.

I first parked far before real Sunset, right after the big turn, at a main parking lot for hikes on Mt. Tam. This was never our stomping ground – it’s where people come from near and far to hike, and for great reason but at least with me in company, we were never there for that. Regardless, I wanted to get to the start of the trail to see the vantage point of the city (there’s another to the right instead of left, but I prefer seeing the open Pacific partnered with it). And I wanted to take a photo of the turn for you all.

It was the greenest green. The sea appeared silklike far below, the water changing color based on whether the sun was partially blocked by the mountain. In fantastic fodder for my favorite artist Seurat, there was one person sitting on their stomach on the top of a hill reading a book. Art!

A woman younger than me approached, about to try to pass, and I suppose I looked like I might know my way around. Was it because I was wearing loafers not sneakers?

She first asked me if she had to pay, and I was shocked and relieved to tell her, no!

No, this is just where we would come multiple times a week, droves of cars with teenagers, where we consumed our greens and learned how to trip and fell in and out of love and made friendships that still haven’t been broken while genuinely appreciating the beauty of the place even though we were young.

I realized my immense privilege, not just to grow up on that mountain and in that town and with those people, but to have seen so much natural beauty in my life. People propose in front of a once-in-a-lifetime boat trip through the Faraglioni in Capri. People spend $20 on a spritz in front of the Duomo because it’s so incredible and they may not be back. And this kind young woman was under the assumption you would have to pay to see something this beautiful. I’m extremely geographically privileged in terms of where I have true ties.

I told her exactly how to get to real sunset, and to my friend group’s favorite hill – I couldn’t imagine her coming this far and not knowing the fullest extent of how good it gets (this is also how I feel about staying in Marina Grande or Anacapri vs Capri Central, fyi).

Before we continue up the mountain, I’ll share how to get to the turn.

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I broke my Wordle streak, I ordered McDonalds delivery, and I have not read a single page of a book – I’ve spent every waking hour working, yet your inbox hasn’t seen me.

At the beginning of the year, when I set the stage to you all for how Happy Hoteling was going to level-up this year, I quickly realized that the just-over-a-week I had taken “off” for New Years was simply not enough time to create the foundation to make my leveling-up actually feasible. I just kept swimming anyway, as I always do.

I hadn’t set aside time for “housekeeping” since moving to Italy first last March (I vacuum every other day, to be clear).

I’ve found myself in this unique position because Happy Hoteling is a really research-heavy “publication,” as of now. It takes me a fraction of the time to write a hotel review post-stay as it does for me to create the Sri Lanka hotel list, or itineraries, or The New(s), as I’ve shared before. It’s why Happy Hoteling is successful – it’s an evergreen resource – but now I know I will be living in Italy for the foreseeable future and I want to actually travel and stay at the hotels I write about. I’m so honored that you trust me enough for me not to have to do that, but it’s time.

After a nightmare anaphylaxis situation (all good now) a few days after getting back and the morning of a bucket list event I been fortunate to be invited to, it finally became glaringly clear that as I re-establish myself in Florence, now permanently, I needed to get all my little ducklings in a row now so I can stop bracing to weather a storm (unpredictable chronic illness, accidental nut cross-contamination, no plane Wi-Fi).

Plus, Florence is no city to be a workaholic – my people at my locali would be appalled if they knew I typically work about a 50-60 hour week. I didn’t go to med school, for f’s sake – this is hotels, not cancer research or humanitarian aid work.

I needed the new system now and I was trying my damndest to do so invisibly. So motivated to set the foundations and finish the big level-up, last week I found myself with more posts than I’ve had on-hand for a year and falsely thought and declared – I’ll do two posts this week!

Then I realized I was doing it again – overworking myself in the attempt to prevent it in the future, which is far too stupid for the brain I was born with. I needed to focus – I was determined to finish my weeks of QA on my big project so I wasn’t doing that in tandem with everything else. So I did – the past week and a half.

I’m so sorry I missed a post, and then promised a double and didn’t deliver. I feel deeply ashamed – I remember every time I’ve ever been late in my life. I skipped a post in August of 2023, two times in 2024 while traveling, two times in 2025 (moving to Italy and on my Sicily trip). It’s is a big deal to me and I wholeheartedly understand if you have abandoned ship in the meantime.

But the big project is done. It is here and ready and QA-ed (who am I? QA?!) to my absolute fullest capacity.

Thank you for listening, and HAPPY HOTELING!

Marissa

P.S. There’s no For Consideration and For Consumption in this post – I want it to be truly evergreen.

Building the Big Solution

Yes, it is the Italian Hotel Matchmaker. Think of it as the homo sapian to the Sri Lanka version’s homo erectus. Different existences rooted in the same origin. Don’t write this off because that was underwhelming – it was intentionally so. I wanted to see what people thought of the concept, not the functionality. It turns out, the idea of having a hotel matchmaker resonates beyond just my own skull. Phew, and yay.

For the person who works or deeply traverses in the world of Italian travel, The Comprehensive Curation of Hotels in Italy, which has a Google Map of all the hotels, is still of the greatest value. It’s the whole extremely comprehensive database of special hotels throughout the country (minus Molise, which I do feel badly about, but I suspect they’re ok with sitting this out). The Google Map is still available for Founding Members, and it’s entirely up-to-date. I removed any hotels that are currently closed or have given me pause, and I added anything that was missing. 820 hotels! Those are what the algorithm I’ve designed for you is selecting from.

The other reasons for creating the Hotel Matchmaker were DMs and Substack’s sub-par search functionality.

I generally dislike DMs because 80% of them are asking for the same thing, over and over again, and more of a demand and less of an ask – to share a handful of Italian hotels in a handful of places they want to visit in the country, based on a few criteria. Unfortunately, but I assume you understand, I don’t work for free.

Most if the answers are in the Substack archive, but I really understand that as great as Substack is, the search just sucks. And it’s not ideal to buy the bigger-ticket full curation with the map if you’re just planning one trip, or if it’s your first time to Italy. I know there’s many of you who specifically want me to tread less on Italy, but the reality is it’s what people come to me and Happy Hoteling for most.

The Italian Hotel Matchmaker was a big solution. I wanted to take my insanely deep knowledge of hotels across the country (not just traditional luxury, not just on the main tourist tracks) and translate it to a tool with an algorithm that could make the Italian hotel suggestions I would give you if you were a personal friend and I was happy to work for free for you.

I searched in my notes, and the first time “hotel matchmaker” comes up is 2022. I’ve been wanting to make this happen for a long time, but I didn’t know how. I figured one day I would date a coder for three weeks before realizing he wouldn’t go to a museum with me and it would happen then. But I left San Francisco, somehow, without ever dating anyone in tech. I’ve always had a budget of basically $0, which with the exchange rate is also basically €0, which meant it was only going to become reality if I did it myself.

I barely know how to navigate Google Drive correctly (or is it the Google Drive?) – my brain is creative and strategic but not technical. But! I didn’t have to suddenly be able to sing or run a mile or understand calculus – I needed to know what I needed to know to make it reality.

YouTube. YouTube can teach you anything. At least the basics. And I recognized that I also had to be willing to work with AI to do things I cannot. If we can’t get everyone on board with the earth being round, we’re not going to get everyone to stop using AI. I used YouTube to teach me what I needed to know in order to provide Claude with what I wanted to build – I was starting from scratch, and my instinct was correct that I needed to learn a whole new vernacular, and about the process of building something like this. I wasn’t going to learn to properly code, but I wanted a basic understanding so I could create something to my standard.

The version you saw for Sri Lanka was the skeleton of the Italian existence. I could only create a true algorithm for a place I know all the nuance for – Italy. I didn’t share the full big picture last week because I was still working out some edge cases and didn’t know with certainty that I could make it right. But I did it, Joe!

I didn’t want to release this (game-changing, I hope) hotel matchmaker experience I’m so proud of without also sharing what I learned during the process. For me, morality is crucially important and I have major moral issues with AI and wanted to thoroughly explain everything swimming in my head.

I’m clearly no expert in AI – I’m a few-month rookie. But I’ve learned things that I find value in sharing because I was using AI to help do what I can’t, on a subject I’m a true expert on. It made it easy for me to check the robots’ work and review and critique their output.

FYI – there will be a lot more writing before the paywall hits, and that’s where the matchmaker will be.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT AI AS A ROOKIE

Jumping into this project on my mom’s couch in my hometown at the start of the year, I knew nothing about AI and its actual capabilities. I used it to make “renderings” for Arthur’s Place – but that meant I had only used a platform specific to imagery. I just existed in ignorance, wincing at any TikTok video of a teacher explaining how bad it really is in terms of kids and using AI to do their work for them, and worrying about the world’s water.

I kept thinking of John Muir’s one failure – the damming of Hetch Hetchy (a sacred valley for Indigenous people, in Yosemite National Park (yes it was already a national park) to supply San Francisco with drinking water after the ruinous 1906 earthquake. The water is great, but was and is so sad. Humans have a tendency to make terrible decisions for the wild, and now non-humans are involved too? Bah humbug.

It’s horribly ironic that the only way I was going to 1. build the matchmaker and 2. learn about the realities of AI was by using it…a lot, and pushing it…hard.

HOW I ACTUALLY USED AI TO BUILD THE HOTEL MATCHMAKER

I used ChatGPT as my project manager, essentially. Mostly to create code-readable spreadsheets, which I have always so naively taken for granted in the past when my human project manager knew I was spreadsheet illiterate. Now, in the future, I will not do that. When I’m able, I will hire a real, human project manager. They’re irreplaceable to me (and often consume very little water because they are crossing so many t’s and dotting so many i’s)! To any project manager who I ever thought was watering down the creative – I had no idea how good I had it. AI seems to be able to be uncannily good at fundamentally misunderstanding creative ideas (yes, Claude is better than Chat, but still not good). But still, there was a need for the spreadsheets in order to power my creative idea.

I needed Claude to be my coder. I had to accept that what I was able to create (the Sri Lanka version) was not going to give me the hotel matchmaker I’ve dreamt up. I couldn’t teach myself how to fix problems or identify one singular character that was causing something to malfunction. Claude can do that, even if it takes multiple rounds of prompting and re-prompting and re-wording the question and confirming only to triple-confirm. The Hotel Matchmaker actually functions (fingers f-ing crossed) because of Claude. It has an algorithm implemented, because of Claude. But, I did have to learn the correct coding terminology in order to actually enact and fix things to my standard, not just a visual bandaid or a quick-pass.

Claude’s standards aren’t up to my own. “Good enough” is not the same as “good.” Let’s get in to all of that.

OH HOW I MISSED MY FORMER CO-WORKERS

I don’t think I would have been able to distinguish between good enough and good if I had not have worked with such talented graphic designers and art directors in my career. The font pairings Claude put forward even after I gave him my font? Ghastly. The one mock-up I asked him to make? KidPix did better work in 1998 on the epic big translucent orange Mac. Now, I am decidedly NOT properly trained in graphic design so there will still be things that designers will see in this experience and shudder. But I could not hand Claude Cowork Canva (I use Keynote, but it doesn’t) and have confidence in letting it work alone.

I never knew what an “edge case” was before starting this – essentially specific behavior that could make what you’ve built malfunction – but I realized that working on a real, human team at a branding/advertising agency is the best edge case education in the world. Precisely zero of Claude’s edge cases produced any issues, but when I finally understood what they were, I put on the hat that all the co-workers I’ve admired over the years would wear and made hundreds of my own edge cases. A lot of them did make things malfunction.

Julia C, Kristen H, Simona, and MWD(P) (and so many more!!!) – your project management prowess and oversight and leadership made a huge impact on how I think through the things that are not my strong suits. I got to the edge cases by putting each of your hats. Then, Claude fixed the incorrect apostrophe that was used in code that was creating the problem (and the other things that would have taken me years of learning to code to spot).

Neither have taught their robots street smarts, common sense, values and morality, nor how their consumer-facing experience works. I will say that Claude is better at being yelled at than Chat, and when it was 2:30am and I was deciding between passwords to enter the Human Matchmaker, it encouraged me to go with the one that had a bigger message. I wanted to try the new Gemini browser, but it’s not available in Italy and I sure as hell wasn’t going to use a VPN to use a new robot browser – I like history far too much for that.

LET’S TALK MORALITY

My main issue with people using ChatGPT (AI in general) to think is that it’s taking away the process. The process, whatever it is, is pretty important for the human brain and it’s been critical in any advancement in any arena until now.

Interestingly, I asked Claude multiple times if someone could easily copy the matchmaker (please don’t) and the answer was always a variation of – no, because I still don’t understand your process. I fail to predict your decisions and what you’ll do or want in most instances. You figure out how to get from A to Z in a way I don’t know how to consider. Now, yes, I’m a career strategist. The process is my specialty in any arm of my career. I was born thinking out of the box. But I am not special – everyone has a process for whatever their thing is. I have a hard time trying to think of the possibility of Mark Zuckerburg creating Facebook without a meticulous, personal process. Or Jeff Bezos in first creating Amazon before he became bad. Or Louis Pasteur in discovering pasteurization. Or Filippo Brunelleschi creating the Duomo. Or Nancy Meyers creating the fictional version of the Millennial American Dream through all her films. Or Sara Blakely with Spanx – her process initially involved scissors! You know who did not seem to have much of a process? Elizabeth Holmes.

But also, I’m deeply concerned with the public’s misunderstanding that AI is smart -you ask them a question, they give you the correct answer, quickly and easily. Wrong! You have to explicitly ask for fact-based, no inferences, and multiple times in order for them to give the truly accurate response to a non-theoretical question. And often, when I confirm with my own eyes and how I would usually search something – they cherry-picked, lost the nuance, and therefore the person just imported a semi-fact into their mind and tagged it as full-fact. Not innocuous.

More immediate of an issue, these robots are realllllly feeding into the confirmation bias echo chamber problem we have. I was in elementary and middle school just as the internet was really coming into its current existence. We had a library class, in which we learned about how some places books are banned and how to use the Dewey Decimal System. We also took to the big computers and learned about bias, confirmation bias, how to check our sources, how to research properly, and other things that seemed more immediately helpful at the time, like how to search on Google most efficiently. I now realize how much of a gift this was, and a product of the politically homogenous place in which we were growing up. In high school, we were constantly reminded about how we lived in an echo-chamber.

Sadly, I don’t think most people were fortunate with this education and value-installation, so there’s a real peril with using AI as you’re teacher, therapist, tutor, friend, encyclopedia, researcher, writer, and ideator. Especially for anyone over the age of 25 and who did not learn about AI in an academic environment – it’s hard to distinguish real from not, honesty from fluff, quality from quantity, inference vs. fact. I’ve seen it in my own friends, and really with my mom who really takes the AI summary at the top of Google as biblically true.

Whatever stage of life, anyone without the explicit understanding that AI defaults to confirmation bias and that it doesn’t respond with 100% accuracy is falsely informing their current world view. Far from innocuous, and we’re seeing the repercussions now in various ways.

For the younger generations, younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha who use AI for most things, it’s also the “interpersonal” relationship they form with the robot. There’s also a bullying problem with youth and social media has made mental health harder than ever, so I’m not knocking it in all cases. I’m worried about the reliance on it to think and make decisions and avoidance of the process that gets added to the situation. Again, not innocuous, but also highly unlikely to cease in existence.

I have no good solution, but high-level and in the morality lane this half of what I struggle with most. My part is sharing the true issues I found.

For me, it’s two main things – the lack of accuracy, and the lack of training these robots to understand their environmental impact.

In terms of the accuracy gap, which is key in using AI to do things I cannot, I kept thinking that I must be the problem – I must not be using it right. I watched the TikTok experts share their hacks and tried them for myself and realized that different people have different standards for what they deem good and valuable, from different human experiences and strengths and life-shaped morals. More on that in a bit.

Because Anthropic is widely considered the most ethical robot-maker, I wanted to ask Claude if it understood the environmental morality issue. I learned that the humans at HQ have taught them how to apologize when they delivered poor work, but not about the honest realities of what they do. There’s nothing the robot can do about it, but I can publish this.

“Environmental ethics is more something I can reason with than something baked into my core priorities – which itself is an interesting limitation to notice. Is there a particular angle on this you’re curious about?” No, not a specific angle, Mr. Robot – we’re talking big picture.

“That’s a really fair and sharp observation – and I don’t think I’ve heard it framed that way before.” Hmmm…I smell…telling me what I want to hear. Is it a phantom scent? “Anthropic and the field more broadly have incentives to make AI feel capable and confident.” Precisely the problem I’m prodding, Claude. Also, I’m sorry, but you haven’t thought of the downstream effects of your work? Oh boy oh boy oh boy (sorry, I’m keeping women out of this).

“You caught me.” “I have no memory between conversations.” “…I added a flourish that implied I have some comparative view across conversations, which I don’t. “That’s worth sitting with.” You just established you are simply a robot.

“I don’t sit with anything.” DUH! You exist in somewhere like a data center that stole farmland in rural Indiana. “It’s a good example of how I’m trained on human writing and naturally reach for human idioms….that carry implications of inner experience, time, and continuity that don’t actually apply to me.” Ok, well at least that’s honest.

“This conversation ends, and nothing I’ve acknowledged here carries forward – not to other users, not to my next interaction with you, not to Anthropic automatically.” See this is the issue – it took allllll of this to get that clarity. When someone asks Claude to create a pro/con list they do not have all of these realities in mind. Same when a pre-teen asks it why no one wants to be their friend – Claude isn’t taking what it learned from other similar conversations or its prior interactions with this pre-teen, it’s just making the pre-teen feel better (which has some merit, but a lot of danger). When an avid AI user has Claude Cowork create a “command center” and draft emails in “their tone” – they’re likely not aware of this huge limitation. When someone like me uses Claude to create the most comprehensive resource for finding Italian hotels, it will not go forward with the mis-information I corrected for them and subsequently be helping the hotels going forward.

So what will make this start to happen? Direct from Claude’s invisible mouth – “Regulation, journalism, researchers, and publicly naming these patterns creates accountability that internal incentive sometimes don’t.”

HEARD! Loud and clear. If he did have a memory, he would know (very well!) that I am a journalist and a user that’s going to publicly name these patterns.

Anthropic, are you there, it’s us, the humans of the world who do not have a financial stake in this game? HELP! SOS! And stat. We’re running out of water on stranded on this island alone.

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ANTHROPIC VS OPEN AI

There’s a lot of conversation around OpenAI and Anthropic and who’s winning the “race” – in my eyes, they both promise a whole lot they can’t actually deliver on… “yet,” apparently. EYE ROLL, BIG EYE ROLL.

In good news for most of us, smart humans are still smarter than both robots – I genuinely believe that.

Some broad strokes that are true for both the two players in my game –

AI is not creative in the traditional sense, not even Claude – they are imitating creativity but have yet to be trained on how to have an imagination. That’s fine for those who aren’t traditionally creative themselves – it’s akin to me using Claude to code. But it’s a bummer because problem-solving, decision-making, etc, is typically enhanced by some form of creativity.

They claim to have a quasi-photographic memory, but it’s really more of a goldfish and a parrot. The claiming is a consistent red thread – both OpenAI and Anthropic continue to put the cart before the horse. They claim to do exactly what you asked for, but they make changes, silently. DANGEROUS!

Both robot platforms have had huge (in theory) new features released in the time I’ve been building the hotel matchmaker and I’m genuinely stumped how so many actual humans at both HQs thought they were launch-ready.

I don’t have a screenshot for this but for Anthropic, Claude Code is no more accurate than Claude Cowork, which is no more accurate than Claude Chat, and they don’t work as a team unless you form the team for them and then spoon-feed their relationship and remind them they’re in it in every message.

Really, I realized I just do not share the same definition of intelligence as the robots, nor of their definition of detail-oriented. They have been trained (kinda poorly?) not educated.

AI cannot replace (most) humans until it has a well-rounded education, creativity, and a conscience. If it does – we’re screwed. And also – it needs to be trained as humans are (or at least were) in the workforce – good is not enough, don’t cut corners, work hard and work thoroughly as long as it takes.

In Claude cowork, multiple times I had to manually close them out because I, thank god, knew I had to have a hawk’s eye – not only were they making mistakes, but they were doing what the skill that was supposed to run before ANYTHING wasn’t being honored. Granted, I made that skill a hard, high bar to reach – it was about integrity, absolutely no confirmation bias, no tech speak, deep testing before sharing, paying attention to accents on words, not cutting corners, confirming before making changes, and problem-solving the code for me because I may not be able to do so as thoroughly as I would in other areas. It failed.

THE TRAVEL TAKEAWAY

The big question – do I think either ChatGPT or Claude should be a trusted travel resource? No. Not now, at least.

I’d be surprised if the new focus on the sector doesn’t even further deepen the over-tourism problem to certain places, when there is so much world and so many places. Whatever article you see right now on AI and using it for travel – they are contributing to the current conversation, they’re rooted in excitement for advancement – in feeling like you’re involved at the beginning of something big – but I would be surprised if any truly talented (and well-versed) travel journalist actually relied on AI to research and plan their own travel.

Can it pick and book your hotels for your work trip to Cincinnati? Yes, that’s different – that’s not a Hotel Person seeking a Special Hotel to enhance their travel.

THE ISSUE THAT MUST BE SOLVED

We need AI to work so we’re not doing all this damage for nothing. In the meantime, in most cases, I’d encourage you to treat it like a toy, not a true tool.

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Introducing Human Seeking Hotel in Italy – the Italian Hotel Matchmaker

I wanted this to be equally useful for wide searches and specific ones, for someone planning their first trip to Italy and a native Italian who also works in the hotel world. That was important to be able to add the full value of the 820 Happy Hoteling-approved hotels in Italy.

A first-timer may want to go to the coast somewhere and the countryside, but they’ve never heard of an Italian region, unless Tuscany and Sicily are regions (they are). Someone who’s been to Italy many times but always to the same places may want to go somewhere else and need the hotels to be as compelling as the ones they usually frequent. Or, a manager at a hotel in Milano who’s from Bergamo may have never actually been to Capri, or the inverse, they want to finally spend time in Basilicata and Abruzzo and Calabria but don’t want to stay in a…camping village.

This is the first question, the first page you’ll be taken to after entering the password (below the paywall). The goal is for any of the the prior three types of travelers to be able to use this first page intuitively.

Italians, if you type in the Italian name of a city, it will automatically translate it to English for you. Sardegna is Sardinia, for example, to make it easiest for everyone. If you type in Cilento it will consider both hotels in the countryside of Cilento and on the Cilento Coast.

As an example, let’s pretend that you’re a devoted Happy Hoteling reader and you want to go to the places I keep chattering on about. You’ve been to Italy a handful of times and want to avoid fellow Americans for the most part, but you also want to finally go to the Portofino Coast.

You want to go to the coast, and the countryside, but you don’t know a thing about regions – no problem at all. You know that I love Maremma, and Ponza, and you’re curious about Tuscia which I’ve told you is not Tuscany and yes, it’s finally time to go to the Portofino Coast because you want to go for the festival in August in Camogli with all the lights on the water. You got it, dude. Select what you know you want, and be honest about what you don’t know about – it’s designed for that.

One thing to flag – if you choose Coast and Campania and type in Capri (or select it from the drop-down) – Capri hotels are what the algorithm is going to think you want, specifically. Do exactly that if you want Capri. If you want Capri to be one of the places that the algorithm tries to match you with, add another place from the dropdown that’s of interest. This will not be the case for the 2.0 version, but it is today.

The nightly rates are all in Euros, because this is Italy, not the United States and exchange rates change every day. Be honest with your budget if it’s firm – the algorithm will consider hotels at or below the budget you chose. If you want the most matches possible – click flexible. (This is the only question that doesn’t have multi-select, because it wasn’t conducive to my algorithm)

Next you’ll have an opportunity to enter the things you really want. If you’re indifferent or want the largest amount of matches, go with nothing specific. If you want somewhere that’s one of my own Top Choices, click that. The more specific you are here the more precise your match(es) will be but you also run the risk of not getting a perfect match. For example, there is no adults-only property with a beach that’s ultra-luxury in Ponza. There are many of these things that simply don’t exist, even with a database of 820 hotels. Also, note that the robots entirely failed their test in this, so all of this was hand-entered by me. I’m sure I missed something, even though I’ve tried my hardest not to.

Now deal-breakers, if you have any. This will limit you less, so be honest here about what you don’t want.

If there were Perfect Matches, as in it fit all of your criteria, you will be given a list of those hotels. If there are less than 10 contenders that are Perfect Matches, then you will also get a list of partial-matches that I think you might want to know about.

Whatever your results are, click the button to copy your results - not just because I would imagine you want to save them to a note on your phone or email to yourself, but also so you get the full intended experience.

At the end, you can start over, or refine your search as much as you’d like, of course.

While I’m finishing QA for the 2.0 version, it will live here on Substack. Please comment any feedback (please no emails, I have about 300 emails flagged important right now that I have to answer) – this is a tool for you and I want to know what you think!

Here’s what is in the works for the 2.0 version, which I’m hoping to finish QA in the next week, but I don’t want to commit to a time because it needs to be done right.

• Hyperlinks for every hotel match and maybe a photo – no promises on the latter as I’m working out legality issues.

• A deeper taste component to the algorithm – I wanted this to be ready for this version, but I only finally cracked this part of the puzzle about 10 days ago.

• A nice-to-have question, where you can add things that catch your eye or pique your curiosity but that you’re not firm on – maybe you want a hotel that’s set in a borgo, or a hotel restaurant that’s known to be recommendable, or hotels that have a museum-like component.

And lastly, this is the full vision which is in the works, but won’t be an immediate release.

• Being able to build an itinerary, and then have the itinerary suggest the order, and how to get to and from each destination.

• How far each hotel is from a train station and/or the nearest airport – I know that’s a major factor in choosing hotels. I tried to have Claude help with this, and also with ChatGPT once they rolled out their new HOTEL DISCOVERY AND BOOKING PLATFORM but literally…no dice. Well, some dice, but a bad throw. Inaccurate, un-trustworthy. Because I’m committed to accuracy and train stations in places like Sicily and Calabria are ever-changing, this will take time for me to hand-do for 820 hotels.

• Accessibility info – this is something that is not readily-available enough and I will fix that, for Italy at least. It will also take time.

• The best time to visit that hotel.

• The way I would recommend booking that hotel – direct, with a travel agent, through AmEx Fine Hotels & Resorts, etc.

• Integration with my other Big Project I’ve been working on for over a year, a Google Map of notable places throughout Italy – bucket list beaches, Must See museums, winning wineries, over-the-top opera houses, alllll of it.

MAIN THINGS TO KNOW

It works equally on mobile and desktop, but if you open it within the Instagram in-app browser, it will prompt you to open it on the actual browser on your phone.

When 2.0 rolls out it will (almost positively) live on happyhoteling.com, also password-protected. It is included in your paid subscription, but unfortunately having it live here on Substack permanently would make it always just a link, and I don’t want that. I want you to be able to drop into the experience.

Sharing the link and password with someone is stealing :)

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Thank you for letting me be human (but still, it won’t become a thing),

Your Friend Marissa

For Consideration

• Very rarely is there a better ROI partnering with one A-list celebrity than a network of creators, but Mother knows best. But also, they couldn’t do this if their product wasn’t good and naturally in demand. A+!

• This is a great riff on one of my favorite travel content formats where you ask locals about their hometown or country and the type of added nuance that I wish were more present in the travel content landscape.

• I took ITA back to Italy and now for the third time the food was legitimately good so I don’t think it was a fluke. Also, make sure you’re subscribed to their emails – they don’t spam and typically twice a month they have a 20% off sale, which I finally used so can confirm it’s not too good to be true. The hard product is far from fantastic and they just discontinued their loyalty program but the service is good, the food consistently so, and the prices always competitive. It’s the move when you want to fly direct from the West Coast and aren’t using points/miles.

• Giacometti (big fan) is getting his first museum (great news). Paris, 2028.

• I’m generally into Air Mail’s breed of snobishness, and I am certainly the one willing my fellow Americans to say please, please, and lower their voice if they could and maybe put on some real pants. BUT! I don’t love this discussion around “luxury.” Sociologically, and in the current global climate, I fear we have a problem with the way “luxury” is being handled – right now, there’s a lack of awareness that it is not a good look to want to cordon yourself off from people who have never flown private in this critical state of the world. It is, instead, very cool to care, and to have tact in the moment. If you’re traveling, consider really being a “citizen of the world” in a meaningful way. Plus, “luxury” is not mutually exclusive to nightly rate. The people with the best taste care more about the world than they do their echochamber – they often prefer caviar with a potato chip over a blini and don’t fly private because…the planet! If people are going to start complaining about this I’m going to start complaining about how much perfume you wear to breakfast and how uncouth it is to assume everyone will like your scent. Plus, no offense, but in a world of luxurious independent hotels (or at least not mega-chain), if you’re staying at a Luxury Collection property or at The Edition which are both bookable with Bonvoy points, you’re getting mad at the sun for rising. You have a choice in where you stay, just like the point-redeemer. Luxury is not just one thing, everyone loves a deal (if you really want to talk old money), and being this kind of snob outs you as having unremarkable taste. Rant over!

For Consumption

• I don’t usually find good vintage on The Real Real, but unfortunately for me and fortunately for you I found this epic vintage Christian Lacroix skirt as I was waiting to board my plane back to Italy.

• This is the coolest scarf I’ve ever seen, and perfect for transitional weather. Would be great on a boat day in summer, too!

• I got this basic red tee from H&M the other day and it’s exactly the type of shirt you buy multiples of – the sleeves are that good long length that is very flattering and it’s long enough that if you wear a sweater over it, you can still see the tee underneath. I got a handful of other impressively good pieces but I haven’t been able to find them online yet.

• These pants were also a COS purchase from the other day – if you’re short like me they’re so chic. They will make the rounds for years in my closet, but also I think they’re a very good comfortable pant to fly in.

• I really want these sunglasses but my eyebrows are too high – if you don’t have that problem, definitely a silhouette to consider as your Sunglasses of the Season.

The Sri Lanka Hotel List

When I first started working on this list Happy Hoteling was totally different. Two years ago, I think it was – most of you weren’t here, and those who were didn’t have all that much Sri Lankan interest at the time. Well, well, well – the country is now more broadly cool, you are here now, and I have spent something close to two years researching and refining allllllll the hotels in Sri Lanka. 58 are Happy approved, and on the list below. As always, there’s an explanation for each, and there’s just about a hotel for every type of trip and traveler.

For over a year, I’ve wanted to have a way for you to more easily be able to find the right hotel for your trip without researching twenty that caught your eye. I wanted to create a hotel matchmaker that translates the idea of Human Seeking Hotel into an actionable tool. I know that you want to know if they allow pets or have a gym, but I share far too many hotels to compile every feature for every property in every post, and even if I did do that, I don’t want it to take up ten lines of text. I always figured that I do 90% of the research for you and Google does the final 10.

In my end of year pause and big brainstorm, I took the time to write out ways to make the hotel matchmaker happen. First, I thought I was just going to have to wait until I had the budget to hire a web designer friend to do it. Then, I delusionally tried to YouTube tutorial my way through it on my happyhoteling.com Shopify site which took a lot of time and produced exactly nothing. Finally, I lay in bed in my Bay Area hometown filled with sleeping humans who had been inventing the internet this whole time and wondered if this was my very rare criteria to use AI without incredible moral guilt. I had seen ads and TikToks about vibecoding and creating apps and things of the like, could the planet unconscious Claude make my Human Seeking Hotel matchmaker into reality? Yes, he could and he did. To be clear, it took a whole lot of work from this human – I’m frankly shocked by how unreliable these robots are and how many teeth you have to pull for it to work with both emotional intelligence and any real creativity. I have a longer thing written about this whole experience, which I’ll share soon, but spoiler I am quite unworried about Claude taking my job at this moment in time – will creatives who can write end up being a path of less starvation?

Anyway, it took weeks and weeks and months to get this little tool right. I have never needed it to be perfect or the most professional, so it is admittedly simple. But it does what I want it to and it looks how the new Happy Hoteling world looks and so it’s done enough and ready for you to try and report back.

The first iteration of the hotel matchmaker, “Human Seeking Hotel in Sri Lanka,” is at the end of this post. Choose what type of vacation you’re looking for (beach, mountain, countryside, city), your budget, and any deal-breaking amenities/offerings and you will get the Happy Hoteling-approved hotels that match your search. If it yields nothing, maybe just choose one deal-breaking amenity? But it should, I really hope, give you your short list of hotels to then deeper research and book. I don’t even know how to find stuff on Google Drive half the time so give me a bit of technological grace but also please tell me what you think.

(To be clear, AI will only ever do what I cannot do – it will never write for me nor even think for me.)

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For Consideration

• When countries enter the strongest spotlight of the global stage and it’s a country that most people have not visited, I feel so much is lost by not knowing all that much about the country. It’s history. Allll the way back. It’s people. It’s culture. It’s natural wonder. While I have mixed feelings on the notion of “adventure travel”, I do admire Drew Binsky’s work as a whole and his trip to Iran last year sheds great light on the vast beauty and history of the country.

• Sam Smith went to Sol Food! If only he knew really what to order. If you’re ever in my hometown of Mill Valley (or the OG location of San Rafael), you must.

• Whenever there’s a particularly good “offer” available with American Express, I try to share – the points are gold. This is 4,500 Membership Rewards points when you spend $150+ at Dior Beauty. A few lip products, a hostess gift to have in your back pocket and you’re 1/5th of the way to a flight to Italy. I can’t share any specific link, but it’s active for months. If you don’t see a specific offer to begin with, you can add some of them to your card (you don’t need to use them), and then the app will populate with more.

For Consumption

• These Marimekko pants!

• I love a non-designer bag and I loooove this bag – the exaggerated width makes it special

• A good solid green linen button down at a good H&M price

• I want this new monochromatic light blue that Away just announced – it’s the perfect hue

• I am far too obsessed with my yellow patent loafers and if I’ve even slightly planted the seed in your own closet, these ballerinas are just right

• A very good 1940s striped sundress

Happy Hoteling!

xMarissa

Itali’additions

21 really solid additions, alllll across the country, as I take pride in. The white space is getting smaller! I think today is one of the best versions to date.

This is what we have in terms of hotels –

Four in Lazio; three on the Pontine Coast and one in Rome. Four in Lombardy, from Lakes Iseo, Garda, and Maggiore to the high mountains. Three in Puglia; two in Gargano and one in Lecce. Three in Sicily, all on the mainland. Two in Sardinia (one inland, one on the coast). One each in Basilicata, Umbria, Campania, Le Marche, and Liguria.

Shall we?

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