HotelsTorres del Paine, Chile
Fourteen standalone villas above Lake Sarmiento, each with its own outdoor hot tub and a straight shot of the Torres del Paine range through the window, and a private guide assigned to you alone for the length of your stay. That last part is the real reason to book this over the bigger lodges nearby: your guide builds each day around your fitness, your interests and the weather, not a group itinerary. One guest’s guide drove to a trout stream the morning after she mentioned she liked to fish; another’s carried a whiteboard on hikes to sketch out the geology on request. When the match is right, it is the best private guiding several longtime guests say they have had anywhere, on any continent.
The flip side is that quality depends entirely on who you get, and for a stretch under a previous management team it slipped badly. One couple’s first guide nearly ruined the trip before they were reassigned; a different guest arrived to find the kitchen’s default dinner menu heavier than expected and had to learn to ask for off-menu dishes. Current ownership has since replaced the seasonal manager model with a year-round GM and a new CEO, and the stay reports from the past year read close to flawless again, but this is a brand that had a real wobble recently, not a hypothetical one. The wood-fired hot tub is also weather-dependent: several March guests got one or two usable soaks across four or five nights because of wind, though a few recent stays report it piped with heated water and running regardless.
Book this over Explora or Tierra if the private guide and the villa itself matter more to you than being physically inside the park or having a full spa. The drives to trailheads run 45 minutes to 90 minutes each way, and there is no pool here at all. For hikers who want to walk straight out the door, or anyone who wants spa facilities included, the neighbors do that better. For everyone else, this is the villa, the food and the one-on-one guiding in Patagonia done right.
Each out of 20. The tick on every bar is where the collection starts.
Service 18/20
Guests get one dedicated guide for the whole stay, and the ones who got a good match call it the best guiding they have had anywhere.
Rooms & Design 16.5/20
Fourteen standalone villas with wood fireplaces, deep tubs and private outdoor hot tubs, built low and plain so the towers stay the view.
Location 18.5/20
Perched above Lake Sarmiento with the Torres del Paine range filling every villa window, though the park entrance itself is over an hour by road.
Dining 17/20
Guanaco tartare, an all-Chilean wine list and a kitchen that will cook off-menu on request, with a couple of guests surprised by heavier default options.
Wellness 14.5/20
No spa and no pool, just a wood-fired hot tub per villa that several guests found unusable for days at a time in high wind.
Strong endorsement
The guide is the make-or-break part of this place, and we got one of the good ones.
Apr 2025
Our trip had clients who called it the best lodge they had ever stayed at, with the guiding and food both standing out above everything else. The flexibility to build each day around what we wanted, rather than joining a group schedule, is really the entire case for choosing this over the bigger lodges nearby.
Strong endorsement
The decor is neutral and tasteful, and the setting still feels otherworldly even after everything we had seen before.
Emma Quinlan Mar 2025
If the daily dinner menu is not to your taste, they will make sure you’re fed properly for the day’s adventures regardless. The staff were accommodating and genuine across the board, and our guide Ricardo made every part of the week feel personal rather than scripted.
Lifts the score
Beds were comfortable and the heaters ran even inside the bathroom, which mattered in that cold.
Nutharin Phusitphoykai Apr 2024
The towers changed look every single day we were there, sometimes clear, sometimes clouded, once with a rainbow. We never had to ask twice for bottled water, since the tap water is not meant for drinking. Our private guide gave us a dedicated car for the full stay and made every outing feel worthwhile.
Strong endorsement
The rooms were top notch and the beverage program rivaled the best we have had at any Relais Chateaux property.
Aaron Wojnowski Apr 2024
A few of us stayed five nights and the food made heavy use of local ingredients, some of the best we have had anywhere in this category. The private guides made it effortless to do whatever we wanted in the park and the surrounding land each day.
Strong endorsement
We were slightly worried after reading about old service issues, but ours was almost perfect from start to finish.
Feb 2026
We stayed five nights and got what might be the best-placed villa on property, far from the others with an incredible hot tub view. Our guide Jorge was a perfect match for us, super knowledgeable about the wildlife and geology and even sketched geology lessons on a whiteboard during lunch breaks. Housekeeping was excellent and completely invisible, everything stayed immaculate without us ever seeing anyone come in. My only real complaint was a shortage of outlets near the bed for charging devices.
Mixed read
Our biggest issue was the food leaning unhealthy until we figured out we had to ask for off-menu options.
Nov 2025
We went in September and had to push our guide a bit to get the hiking we actually wanted. The default dinner menu surprised me with how heavy it was, and it took a while to realize off-menu requests were an option at all. Boot cleaning also was not proactive for us; we had to ask each time, and once we left them out without asking and they just sat there uncleaned.
Lifts the score
Fourteen villas total, so even at full occupancy there are only around thirty guests on property at once.
Nov 2025
The lodge sits on a small hill about an hour or two outside the national park, mostly because of how the roads and land are divided, but every villa and the main lodge get a clear view of the towers. The exterior is minimal and blends into the landscape while the interiors feel cozy and cabin-like, almost Scandinavian. Villas can run warm in the afternoon since they face west for the view, but staff will ask if you want curtains adjusted. It felt genuinely well maintained throughout.
Strong endorsement
My guide switched our hiking plan around a knee injury without missing a beat, and the bartender became one of the trip’s highlights.
Apr 2025
We were part of a longer Chile trip and arrived stressed after reading a bad review online, but our experience across both Awasi properties was fantastic. Our dietary restrictions were handled with a custom menu every single dinner. Our guide at Patagonia adjusted the itinerary more than once after knee trouble from the W trek, and the bartender’s drinks stood out as a real highlight. It was our first stay at this level of hotel and we both agreed it was worth the money.
Strong endorsement
We stayed three nights in the shoulder season and the guide’s read on the weather made the whole trip work.
Apr 2025
The food was fantastic and our guide was extremely knowledgeable, taking us to spots only Awasi seems to have access to. Because the weather there changes so fast, having someone who could read the forecast and reroute us to the best conditions each day mattered a lot. We saw pumas from our own room most mornings, though we were told that is unusual. We never paid a cent extra beyond the room rate, and they even added free courses at meals when we asked.
Strong endorsement
Everything is included here, right down to laundry, and we packed in hikes, saunas and massages without ever feeling nickel-and-dimed.
Apr 2025
We stayed four nights and treated it like an activity-packed trip: hiking most of the day, then saunas, hot tubs and a massage in the evening. Food and drink were great throughout, and having laundry included was a genuine help mid-trip. Compared to other remote lodges we have used, this one does not try to upsell every extra experience separately.
Drags the score
We paid around 15k for three nights and ended up well over double that once every excursion was billed separately.
Apr 2025
This place reminded me of some Amans in India, where the room rate is only the start and every single activity adds real cost. We lost one non-refundable night to weather, and extras like a bear-watching boat excursion or a helicopter option ran into the thousands each. By the end a short stay had quietly become a very expensive one once gratuities were added on top. Everything else about the place was genuinely great, which made the billing more frustrating rather than less.
Strong endorsement
Our guide made the whole trip, taking my wife to Base Torres on day one and never once pushing back on a request.
Apr 2025
We spent five nights here and the villas blew us away, especially once we found out the hot tubs now run on heated water instead of the old fire-fed system. Our guide planned every day around us, no hesitation even when my wife wanted the long sunrise hike on day one. Food was good bordering on great for somewhere this remote, with guanaco tartare and off-menu options whenever we asked. One night the hot water cut out, but maintenance fixed it within ten minutes at 9:30pm.
Strong endorsement
After a rough patch under previous management, our week here was extraordinary from top to bottom.
Apr 2025
My wife and I had read about service issues before booking, but the staff and guides were outstanding for us. Zaith in guest relations checked in every day and had our hot tub ready whenever we got back from a hike. The restaurant staff gave us the recipes for dishes we loved, and the bartenders built drinks around our preferences with no menu at all, better than anything we had lined up in Buenos Aires. Our guides handled a brutal 20km hike to Base Torres with patience and real knowledge of the terrain.
Strong endorsement
Our guide Tomás brought extra soup on the hikes and was early to every pickup, even through heavy snow.
Emma Mayberry May 2024
From the airport pickup to the final goodbye, we felt looked after the entire stay. Tomás took us through genuinely bad snowy weather while sharing the geological and cultural history of the region, always hunting for a puma with us. What struck me most is that the property does not try to do too much. There is no over-the-top furnishing or gimmick chasing here, they just do the fundamentals extremely well.
“so many places try to deliver ‘luxury’ with over-the-top furnishings” in their words
Awasi Patagonia is a Relais & Châteaux lodge set at the edge of a private reserve near Torres del Paine National Park and Lake Sarmiento, in the Chilean Patagonia region. The property is arranged as standalone cabins and villas rather than a single hotel block, with reports citing 14 to 15 units on the grounds. Villas are described as spacious, with private outdoor hot tubs, fireplaces, and views toward the Torres del Paine mountain range and surrounding estancias.
Each stay includes meals prepared with local ingredients such as Patagonian lamb and guanaco, a wine list drawn from Chilean producers, and a private guide and vehicle assigned for the length of the stay, allowing excursions such as hiking, horseback riding, and fishing to be arranged individually. The lodge sits within reach of the national park’s trails and viewpoints as well as the Sierra Baguales area outside it. On-site facilities mentioned include a dining room, bar, and outdoor hot tubs at each villa, with additional wellness offerings such as saunas and massage available to guests.
At roughly $3,000 to $4,000 a night all-inclusive, it is worth it if what you want is a private guide shaping every day around you and a villa with its own hot tub facing the towers. It is a harder sell if you want to walk straight from your room into the park or want spa facilities, since neither is on offer here.
December through February brings the longest daylight and the most dramatic skies but also the strongest winds, which can shut down the wood-fired hot tubs for days. March and April bring softer light, autumn color and generally calmer conditions.
Travelers who want a guided trip built entirely around their own pace, whether that means an early sunrise assault on Base Torres or a slower week focused on wildlife and horseback riding. It suits people happy to skip a pool and spa in exchange for a private vehicle, private guide and a quiet villa to come back to.
Awasi Patagonia holds Three Michelin Keys in the Michelin Guide’s 2026 hotel selection, announced in September 2026. Three Keys is the guide’s highest hotel distinction, given for what it calls an extraordinary stay. It has held Three Keys in every selection since 2025. The Keys come from the guide’s own anonymous inspections and are separate from the Fat Score: Fat Voyage rates it Fat Favorite, 17.5 out of 20.
Two routes, and both end with the reservation sitting at the hotel in your name. Direct on the hotel’s own site is the fastest — the Reserve button on this page goes straight to it. The other is through a travel advisor with consortia access: you pay the same rate the hotel is charging publicly, the hotel pays the advisor’s commission instead of you, and an amenity package comes attached — breakfast for two daily, even on room-only rates, $100 property credit for food, drink or spa, room upgrade, subject to availability, early check-in and late check-out, subject to availability. We handle that side ourselves for readers who ask.
Through a travel advisor with consortia access, for almost everyone. You pay the hotel’s own public rate and an amenity package comes on top that direct booking doesn’t include — typically breakfast for two daily, even on room-only rates, $100 property credit for food, drink or spa, room upgrade, subject to availability, early check-in and late check-out, subject to availability. It costs nothing extra, because the hotel pays the commission rather than you. The one real exception is brand loyalty: advisor rates don’t always earn nights toward status, so if you’re chasing a tier or points, book direct. Short of that, there’s no version of booking direct that leaves you better off. We’re advisors ourselves, so you can just ask us.
Never guaranteed — it depends on what’s still unsold the day you arrive, and anyone promising one is guessing. Two things move the odds. The reliable one is booking through a consortia programme, where a room upgrade is written into the amenity package subject to availability; it costs nothing extra and it is the closest thing to a lever that exists. The other is telling the hotel in advance that you’re celebrating something, which works more often than people expect. The first part is already handled if you book it with us.
Fat Favorite, 17.5 out of 20. Ranthambore, India · Similar score Aman-i-Khas Compare 
Fat Favorite, 17.5 out of 20. Hangzhou, China · Similar score Amanfayun Compare 
Fat Favorite, 17.5 out of 20. Porto Heli, Greece · Similar score Amanzoe Compare 
Fat Favorite, 17.5 out of 20. London, United Kingdom · Similar score COMO The Halkin Compare The occasional note
When something worth knowing happens in fat travel — a verdict that shifted, an opening worth waiting for, a hotel that earned its place — we write.
