Miami Beach is hotel heaven — if GMs carry shivs in the afterlife.
Four Seasons, Ritz, Fontainebleau … Collins Avenue is where the finest flags grapple for glory against upstart indie innkeepers in the guerra for guests. It’s prison-yard rules, and if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere — even NYC.
Argentine hotel honcho Alan Faena is ejemplo número uno. His maximalist, theatrical blend of high-end hospitality, flame-kissed fine-dining, naughty nightlife and mammoth artworks (literally) made him the big noise of Buenos Aires and a star on Miami Beach.
More than a decade later, Faena is still the most original and authentic hotelier in the biz. Now, he’s hung his whopping white hat at the base of Chelsea’s most notorious new building. A boutique best-in-show, or the beginning of the next mega-brand? The Post checked in to see how Faena’s Latin locomotion looks in its third location one year in.
High Line hoopla
It was supposed to be a Six Senses. Drawn up by starchitect Bjarke Ingels, the twisted twin towers at 11th Ave. and W. 18th St. were designed to be the most splendiferous addresses on the lower High Line, with prices for condos surpassing the $50 million mark.
Then, the building’s developer, HFZ, went bankrupt, Gambino crime family kickbacks were exposed, construction stalled and Six Senses said sayonara. Billionaire Trump envoy Steve Witkoff stepped in and cleaned up the mess with bags of cash from big cheese Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries. That was good luck for feisty Faena, whose hotel group just so happened to be founded in partnership with Blavatnik.
Six Senses’ Zen’d out minimalism was scrapped for Faena’s tropical red-carpet aesthetic — which drew celebs like Cher and Nicole Kidman after its September 2025 opening. Today, the hotel’s soaring lobby feels like it was always meant to be.
The 18th Street entrance is guarded by snappy doormen in bygone bellhop garb — paired with a Faena signature top hat. Inside, a winding central staircase is surrounded by maxed-out murals by Argentine artist Diego Gravinese.
It’s conceived as a cathedral, and his monumental work — a cousin to Juan Gatti’s metaphysical murals in Miami — is dubbed “The Sefirotic Journey.” It’s got to do with Kabbalah, the planets and possibly a psychedelic freak out, but don’t try too hard to understand it; it’s stage setting.
Rooms with a clue
Faena’s signature symbology extends throughout the hotel’s 120 upper-floor guest rooms and into the Living Room lounge, Tierra Santa Healing House spa and La Boca restaurant.
Artwork featuring cosmic eyes and eggs, animal prints, deep dark hues, velvets, travertine marble floors, sunbursts of Art Deco glamour, luscious live performances, and a hallway-length Keith Haring: it all mixes into a supernatural success.
It’s a clued-in cacophony that comes together because the aesthetics are more than surface deep. The suites are comfortable — even practical. The Francis Mallmann restaurant, somewhat tamed in this indoor setting, is rich with date-night sophistication.
In the cocktail lounge, waitresses wearing little red dresses beneath red half-capes drop drinks that would put the big bad wolf at ease.
The spa opened in June, and it’s just about unlike anything else in NYC. It’s a gigantic 17,000-square-foot sanctuary with a hammam, five plunges, eleven treatment rooms, an infrared sauna, fitness studios, and South American treatments loaded with “potent indigenous ingredients.” How potent? That’s between you and Faena.
If it sounds outré in an era of streamlined and samey-samey snoozing spots, you don’t know the half of it. Faena doesn’t open hotels; he builds “districts” and even in real estate-restricted NYC, he’s realizing his own magic kingdom.
Soon, a speakeasy will open in the hotel (we won’t tell you where), aptly named El Secreto, with, we’re told, a door bitch determined to segregate the fashionable wheat from the chuddy chaff.
If you’re lucky enough to slip inside you’ll discover a room like a deconstructed disco ball designed by conceptual artist Sebastian Errazuriz. That opening will be followed by a street-level Faena Theater. Much like his Miami venue, this cabaret venue will vibrate with artwork by Andrés Resinger and Old Hollywood glitz.
It’s zestful, luxurious, out-there — rat-a-tat-tatting away like jungle jazz rhythms. But what’s it all about? Alan says it best: “New York City has historically been the center of innovation, creativity… [This hotel] embraces and amplifies that spirit, offering a touch of magic …”
Let him put a spell on you, starting at $1,395 a night.
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