Mallorca Mandarin Oriental Punta Negra – opened 1st June 2026 - could define three-dimension. All MOHG properties have a bespoke fan, but this one (above, with hotel GM Duarte Correia) is really special. Local artist Natasha Zupan – a Yale fine arts grad - made leaves from torn pages of The White Goddess by Robert Graves, one of Mallorca’s most famous names – apart from a decade break caused by the Spanish Civil War, the Wimbledon-born writer lived in Deià from 1929, when he was 34, until his death in 1985. Zupan has painstakingly painted each fan leaf cobalt, green, turquoise.
This is the 131-key hotel that thinks it’s four adjacent sand-coloured blocks, all no more than four floors high. They’re joined by subterranean service tunnels. At ground level, building three harbours the superb, if compact, 24/7 Technogym, and the spa, standard-bearer for the future of wellness. Designed by Paris-based Laura Gonzalez (Cartier boutiques et al), the sand-coloured spa seems almost Mayan. Reception’s undulating display walls, looking as though they're carved out of sand, hold extremely well-displayed products. There’s Augustinus Bader, evolved from the German’s recent stem cell research. There’s also natural botanical Wildsmith, the brand that inexplicably took over British Airways’ London Heathrow Concorde Lounge from early November. Interestingly, although Wildsmith is officially only associated with a Monaco-based solicitor, Peter Edwards, Girlahead suspects it’s funded by reclusive Hongkongers Gerald and Beryl Chan, owners of similarly off-radar Heckfield Place – Harvard grad Gerald Chan, who inherited from his father, Hang Lung founder Chan Tseng-hsi, has a particular philanthropic interest in Life Science and one of his endowments established Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health
The spa’s display also has a hint of merch, a bikini here, a pashmina there. A glass-topped waist-high table is explicably educational - look down at 20cm-diametre crystals, with crudely-typed homilies and drawings. Past the relaxation room, where the beds have medieval kind of jousting curtains, just giving a hint of privacy. Past the swimming pool, which is honestly one of the most beautiful ever, with half its long wall holding sand-coloured protruding sculptures (see photo). There are nine treatment rooms, again sand-coloured, with a bit of relief in the form of sand-coloured tiles. Along one of the corridors, there is colour, a Natasha Zupan artwork, a metre-square framed piece of torn-edged hessian, dark sand-coloured, torn across from one side to the other brilliant blue of the Mediterranean, painted behind.
The next generation of wellness, is next door to fitness, again a herald of tomorrow. Two of the gym walls are windows, ceiling high, looking straight out into the countryside with pine trees. Half the floor is one big cork surface. The equipment ranges from Hyperice guns through to latest Technogym (fortunately black – the beige pieces just do not look serious), and a variety of weights. There are nuts, and fruit in perfect condition (no browning bananas here). There’s electrolyte lavender water, infused with sea salt.
