WRITER: Nadia Michel PHOTOGRAPHER: Jan Novak
Offering much more than your usual five-star accommodation, cuisine, and even destination, Oetker Collection’s collaboration with Somewhere Else is going to completely alter the way you view travel.
In a bid to make your average luxury vacation more spectacular, Somewhere Club and Oetker Collection have partnered up to create unique travel experiences that can have you diving in St Barths with world-famous freediver and underwater photographer Fred Buyle while staying at the island’s iconic Eden Rock hotel, or skiing in the French Alps with three times Olympic and World Championship medallist, and 15-times champion of France Florence Masnada, before curling up with hot cocoa in front of the fireplace at the L’Apogée hotel in Courchevel.
It’s the result of a partnership dreamed up by Stephane Brunner, the co-founder of Somewhere Club – an experiential travel company already known for offering amazing once-in-a-lifetime getaways like swimming with humpback whales in Antartica, flying with birds on their migratory journey or kite-surfing in Corsica – and Frank Marrenbach, the CEO of Oetker Collection, an ambitious hotel group now encompassing nine properties that has risen from the Oetker family’s exceptional property holdings (including the legendary Hotel du Cap in Cap d’Antibes).
In addition to action-packed adventures like climbing Black Forest rocks next June with world-class Spanish climber Daila Ojeda during a stay at Germany’s Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa, there are more cerebral experiences like tasting wine, spirits and cigars with world-champion sommelier Markus Del Monego at London’s stately Lanesborough hotel – Oetker’s newest addition to its portfolio – or the chance to learn how to decipher the notes in that perfume you love so much with a world famous perfumer while staying at the historic Le Bristol in Paris.
“What I discovered on a trip around the world was the capacity to throw away my watch and have a different sense of time than what society imposes,” Brunner says about the captivating nature of these kinds of experiences, where guests get to do extraordinary things and meet passionate masters of their field.
To make it all even more unforgettable, in case you decide to forego your iPhone and watch, Somewhere Club will provide a professional camera crew so that you can record your extraordinary vacation in high-quality HD video. It will give a new meaning to the phrase “it was like something out of a movie.”