The performance of the Kempinski Pragelato Village Resort and Spa near Turin has led its Irish developers to plan a second hotel and spa with 150 bedrooms and a further 40 holiday homes, writes Jack Fagan
ONLY TWO years after completing a full scale ski village and five-star hotel in the Italian Alps, an Irish business consortium is already gearing up for a major extension to the tourist resort.
Encouraged by the success of the Kempinski Pragelato Village Resort and Spa near Turin, the group is now preparing to build a second hotel and spa with 150 bedrooms along with a further 40 holiday homes, a conference centre and a new retail street.
Eblana, the development company run by Dublin businessman Alistair Tidey, is promoting the master plan to integrate Pragelato with high quality hotel and residential facilities in two deserted villages only 1km away on the opposite side of the Praa Valley. Interestingly and unknowingly, the villages turned out to be owned by a Northern Ireland property developer, Denis Heaney of Brookville Developments, who is equally committed to turning the valley into an all-year round conference and holiday resort aimed at the top end of the market. That ambition seems perfectly achievable as Pragelato is already attracting large numbers of tourists, as well as a huge following of young Italian professionals, particularly at weekends.
Once the next two phases of the development have been completed, the Praa Valley will be in a position to offer its clients Europe’s first private ski area with 50kms of pistes and a range of other facilities. In the meantime, Tidey has secured permission to develop a five-star Laval Hotel and spa only 1km from Pragelato village.
Tidey’s good fortune in attracting the renowned Kempinski hotel group to operate the new five-star hotel in Pragelato, as well as a superb spa and leisure centre, has guaranteed the success of what is undoubtedly a classy resort.
The promoters have sold 10 executive suites to a mixture of European buyers since the resort reopened at the beginning of December. London ski specialist Investors in Property is now marketing a further tranche of one, two and three-bedroom suites.
The one-beds, which can sleep four, have a floor area of 69sq m (743sq ft) and are priced from €398,000. Two-bed suites, marginally more spacious, are selling from €440,000. There are also a number of three-bedroom homes which can sleep up to eight people and cost from €940,000.
Most owners opt to rent the suites through the hotel when they are not using them because of the good returns available. An example is the two-bed unit sleeping up to six which can be rented at €677 per night to include breakfast in the high season.
The units are fitted out to a high standard, from linen to a plasma TV, before purchasers move in. Residents also have the use of a basement store to dry boots and store ski equipment. The holiday homes are grouped in landscaped clusters around the hotel and village centre where there is a range of shops and restaurants.
Mr Tidey says the homes are aimed at people who appreciate quality and are prepared to pay for it.
Pragelato is in a stunning area deep in the Italian Alps beside a medieval town and close to the French border. It is about one-and-a-half hours drive from Turin which is serviced by Ryanair.
At an altitude of 1,560 metres, it is higher than better known resorts such as Verbier (1,500 metres), St Anton (1,300 metres) and Kitzbühel (760 metres).
Pragelato’s superb skiing facilities attracted international attention when it was one of the main venues for the Winter Olympics in 2006. The Italian government spent € 7 million at that time providing a cable car service directly from the centre of Pragelato to the main skiing area.
The huge network of runs in the Milky Way ski area attracts mostly Italians who enjoy a great variety of challenges as well as a good range of restaurants and bars. The venue will benefit from major improvements over the coming years, not least a plan by the local municipality to spend €100 million on constructing a state-of-the-art cable car infrastructure.
The superb style and comfort of the Kempinski Hotel is a tribute to the good taste of Tidey and his wife Jane who have a separate company specialising in hotel fit-outs. The company has already carried out a number of major hotel refurbishments overseas and is anticipating a growth in this business as hotels increasingly come under pressure to upgrade their facilities in a tough market.
