Mattia Ferro

Before I designed a five-star property, I spent years taking other people's apart.

Miami. Las Vegas. Los Angeles. Dubai. Years of research into how the best hotels in the world are actually run, not how they photograph. Then I built my own version of it near Venice: Luxury Camp at Union Lido. Twenty suites, to 1500 euro a night, around six hundred families a year from Germany, Austria, the United States, the Gulf, and China. Forbes Italia called it "the first Italian five-star property of its kind." Il Messaggero, Il Giornale, and Libero Quotidiano have written about it since.

I have run it for eight years. I hire the staff, sign the shifts, pay the invoices. That is why I read a hotel differently than a guest does. Anyone can photograph a lobby. I look at the people standing in it: how long the concierge has been there, whether the same faces come back next season, whether someone on the floor can say yes without asking upstairs. A place that takes care of the people who work in it will still be taking care of you on the fifth day, not only the first. That is the part no photograph shows you, and the part you actually remember.

I learned that early. My uncle was a Golden Keys concierge at the Belmond Hotel Cipriani in Venice for thirty years. What stayed with me was not the famous guests. It was that he treated a stranger asking for directions exactly as he treated a Cipriani guest.

I plan travel in Italy, the U.S. and the Gulf. I answer my own emails, before, during, and after.