Last Word: One&Only Debuts Its First Nature Resort, in Rwanda

Like most editors, I receive a daily blizzard of press releases, most of which merit a cursory glance, followed by a sharp tap on the delete key. But, occasionally, one arrives that seems not only interesting, but also to possess some wider significance. A good example of the genre turned up just the other day. It came from One&Only Resorts, several of whose properties I recommend. (For many years, One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos has been a mainstay of the Andrew Harper Readers’ Choice Awards.) The release announced that the company had decided to create a new division called Nature Resorts.

Hitherto, One&Only has been known chiefly for beach properties, most of which are extremely lavish and lacking few of the conventional trappings of luxury: high-thread-count Italian linens, expansive baths clad in entire hillsides of marble, Michelin-starred restaurants helmed by globe-trotting culinary celebrities, and so forth. So what’s with the new nature thing? I wondered. My attention firmly grabbed, I read on.

It seems that the intention of Nature Resorts is to offer “once-in-a-lifetime experiences,” and its first property, One&Only Nyungwe House, will debut in Rwanda this October. The 22-room resort stands at the edge of the Nyungwe National Park, a tract of untouched rainforest containing 13 species of primates, including chimpanzees. In addition to the wildlife, guests are promised “interactive, immersive experiences with the local community.” In virtually all the travel trend forecasts for 2017, experts identified the most important development as being a move away from “luxury” to “experiential” travel. Apparently, now that the inhabitants of our global village go just about everywhere, bragging rights are increasingly hard to acquire; you have to do something one of a kind.

Furthermore, the near-universal obsession with Instagram requires “unique experiences” in order to facilitate the construction of a “personal brand.” So here it was: a real-life demonstration of the experts’ prescience. Personally, I am lukewarm about making predictions, not least because every year, I feel obliged to issue a groveling apology for having gotten them so abjectly wrong 12 months earlier. But presumably One&Only has done its market research. And as its guests tend to be my readers, I will have to consider what all this entails for the Hideaway Report. One&Only may be onto something. For a while now, I have suspected that the ultimate luxuries are no longer beluga and Cristal, but places with neither Wi-Fi nor a cell phone connection. So, back to nature it is.