Raffles Hotels & Resorts is preparing to enter Italy with a Lake Como resort scheduled for 2027. The project will transform the Grand Hotel Imperiale in Moltrasio into a Raffles property following a full renovation.
The previously announced development brings together Raffles and CL Hotel SPA, with financial support from UniCredit. It is planned for the western shore of Lake Como, where the existing hotel’s Art Nouveau villa dates to the 1920s.
Plans call for 84 rooms, including 18 suites and two villas. Guests are expected to have access to a private dock, while the proposed facilities include indoor and outdoor pools, a spa, a fitness centre and a beach club. Raffles’ butler service and its Long Bar and Writers Bar concepts are also part of the announced proposition.
The scheme is a conversion rather than a newly built resort. That distinction matters: its appeal rests partly on adapting an established lakeside hotel and historic setting to the service standards and identity of another brand.
A later Accor announcement about Raffles’ planned Courchevel property continued to identify Lake Como as a 2027 opening. That provides a more recent reference for the timetable, although it does not amount to confirmation of a precise launch date.
For Italy’s luxury hotel market, the project adds another international flag to a destination where location, heritage and highly personalised service are central to the guest proposition. For Raffles, it represents a country debut and another step in its European expansion.
This is a preview of a planned opening, not an announcement that the resort has begun welcoming guests. Facilities and timing remain subject to the development programme.
Source: Accor project announcement.
