If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR622.73), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Grand Hotel Son Net is the cherry on top of – or at least set enticingly afloat in – the mountainous waves of the Puigpunyent Valley. The 17th-century castillo’s scorching blush frontage makes it easy to spot in its vast estate in the southwestern Tramuntana range. Sister stay to lavish Marbellan property Finca Cortesin, Son Net leans into its historic grandeur: rooms boldly decorated by designer Lorenzo Castillo are matched with a star-studded art collection (plus the odd suit of armour), the spa is (body-is-a) temple sized, and a sprawling vineyard keeps the Malvasia coming. And from this privileged perch, top-of-the-world Tramuntana views abound.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A 50-minute massage each; a room upgrade and late check-out or early check-in, both subject to availability
12 noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £586.39 (€685), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional government tax of €4.40 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include à la carte breakfast, and guests get a tapas plate on arrival, welcome drink, seasonal fruit bowl and hand-cut flowers in their room. Some dates require a minimum stay of two or three nights.
Also
Common areas are accessible for guests with mobility issues and some rooms are specially adapted too.
At the hotel
Spa (opening late 2023), vineyard and orchards, farm and kitchen garden, courtyard, private chapel, concierge, butler service on request, launderette, high-speed WiFi. In rooms: TV, minibar, air-conditioning.
Our favourite rooms
Those Puigpunyent Valley views are worth stumping up for, the suites have the best of them, and you’ll likely have original fixtures (beamed ceilings, decorative fireplaces, terracotta-tiled floors and mosaic tiling). For that dash of extra privacy, the Pool Cottage House is ensconced in the grounds, and is ideal for families and small groups.
Poolside
If the hotel’s rouged facade doesn’t catch your eye, the turquoise wink of the terrace-set 30-metre pool will for sure. Placed so the Puigpunyent Valley seems to stretch out ad infinitum, there are cosy covered cabanas from which you can pick out a hillock for that finca you’ll buy one day. And to give some gusto to those daydreams, there’s a snack bar dishing out cocktails and house wines (plus tapas) close by. And, in the spa you’ll find a peaceful pool in a Moorish-style setting, with stone arches and ochre walls.
Spa
The hotel doesn’t just rely on the sheer force of nature to instil a sense of wellbeing in you here. No, 1,000 square metres of the estate will be dedicated to pampering, with a sympathetically designed complex comprising five treatment rooms, a sauna and steam room, beauty salon, pool and thermal circuit. A pop-up spa will run until the main spa opens in late 2024. Work-outs on the Technogym machines are made all the more inspiring with mountainous views, and personal trainers can tailor work-outs or take you out into the wilds to pound through leafy jogging tracks.
Packing tips
That depends, are you team ‘do sweet FA’? Or are you team ‘pump up the ‘puig’? The former, bring your swim and spa wear and cleanse your palate; the latter, bring sturdy footwear and breathable fabrics.
Also
If ‘Going to the chapel to get ma-a-a-rried’ is on your agenda then you’re in luck, Hotel Son Net has a charming private chapel for special occasions.
Children
Children will love going free-range in the grounds and lifeguard-watched pool (indoors things are a touch shush-ier), and there are plenty of interconnecting options, plus a family-size cottage. Babysitting can be arranged too.
Sustainability efforts
The hotel is extremely considerate of the environment. Building methods used in restoration and expansion have been eco friendly, water is purified through aeration filters and warmed using heat-recovery methods, energy-saving lighting is installed, and climate is controlled using aerothermal systems. The kitchen gathers much of its fruit and vegetables from the organic kitchen garden and orchards onsite (and a vineyard keeps the wine flowing), and everything else is sourced from as close by as possible, using a 0km ethos. And recycling and composting are duly done.
You could flip-flop into Gazebo, but you’ll need to strut your stuff at Mar&Duix and the Green Bar.
Hotel restaurant
Grand Hotel Son Net has two restaurants, each of them served by the onsite vegetable garden, vineyard and orchards (everything else is supplied in neighbourly fashion and – where possible – within 0km of the stay) El Gazebo is a casual poolside eatery where you could throw a kaftan on over your costume and enjoy Mediterranean dishes while ogling the peak terrain. Mar&Duix is Son Net’s showpiece diner, set in a soaring beamed room with a 17th-century olive press and a chandelier several could swing from. Or you could have your refined Mallorcan fare out on its candlelit terrace.
Hotel bar
The Green Bar has a patio lounge with yet more mountains to muse on – believe us, it doesn’t get boring – and a fireplace-warmed salon for cooler months, plus the Chimney Room, which has access to the courtyard and live music of an evening. There’s a sophisticated cocktail list, and a cellarful of the hotel’s own Malvasia wines.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 7.30am to 11.30am and dinner from 7.30pm to 10.30pm in Mar&Duix. Lunch in Gazebo is from 1pm to 4pm.
Grand Hotel Son Net has a vast tract of land across the southwest Tramuntana Mountains, overlooking both Puigpunyent Valley and Puigpunyent Village.
Planes
Palma Airport is an easy 30-minute drive from the hotel. Transfers (in luxury vehicles on request) can be booked, and the drive offers tantalising glimpses of Tramuntana scenery.
Automobiles
The hotel sits on a 56,000-square-metre estate – that’s a hefty hike, so wheels will definitely come in handy. Hire at Palma airport and you can explore Mallorca’s more rural climes and swoop scenically along the coast. There’s free valet parking onsite.
Other
Ferries cross from Barcelona, Valencia and Dénia in Spain to Mallorca, but crossings can be long (at least five hours) and you’ll still need to drive from port to Puigpunyent.
Worth getting out of bed for
The unique name of the ecstatically scaled Puigpunyent Valley, which Grand Hotel Son Net rests in, and the dramatically smaller village close by, comes from a Latin phrase that roughly translates to ‘pointy mountain’. Well, those Romans were observant indeed, because all around and largely across the hotel’s 56,000-square-metre estate are the pine- and oak-whiskered peaks of the Unesco-beloved Tramuntana range. And, the point of coming here is mostly to look around at nature’s largesse. But, sometimes best laidback plans go awry, especially when there are hiking and biking routes with life-affirming scenery, an enormous stay-all-day spa, hidden beaches to sail to, and Bronze Age talaiots (megaliths) to spy enroute. The necropolis at Casat Nou further cements the area’s rep as one of the oldest settlements on Mallorca, while La Reserva Puig de Galatzó feels like a huge leap back in time with its untouched vegetation (which, at 2.5 million square metres, dwarfs even the hotel’s estate), although zip wires and an adventure circuit make it feel a little less Land Before Time. La Granja museum (around a 30-minute drive away) in Esporles is roughly as old as Son Net, and tells the history of the island through cultural objects. And, you can taste your way through the timeline with tours to the historic olive mills and vineyards dotted over the slopes – beloved Bodegas Son Puig is perhaps the best known, but there’s also Celler Son Vich de Superna and Bodega Son Artigues. For day trips, ask the hotel to arrange a classic car, and head into Palma, where you can take guided tours of the Old Town and Cathedral, or the city’s art galleries and artisan shops; or sunbathe on Soller’s cosmopolitan stretch of coast; or take in the views from hilltop Deià – which has attracted many creative sorts over the years for its old-world beauty.
Local restaurants
In the near vicinity, the hotel’s restaurant holds court as the finest of diners. But, there are traditional treasures to be found nearby, such as Cafè Sa Plaça de Galilea, which has a visceral approach to Mallorcan cuisine, serving whole suckling pigs in a pan, be-tentacled stuffed squid and lobsters by the paella-pan load – but take a chance, they can’t bite anymore, but you can. They also happen to make the chunkiest of cakes too. Tuck into traditional dishes on the Tramuntana-framed terrace at Restaurant Sa Vinya; and Bar Restaurante Es Pont is stylishly rustic with a rambling tapas menu and hearty mains: pork tenderloin in parmesan sauce, veal stroganoff, a raft of seabass loaded with prawns. Follow up with homemade ice-creams.
Local bars
Cool off with a frozen daiquiri at Restaurante Ca'n Jordi.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this 17th-century castillo nestled in the Tramuntana range and unpacked their bottle of freshly tapped olive oil and scrumped citrus fruits, a full account of their king-of-the-hillock break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Grand Hotel Son Net in Mallorca…
So, Grand Hotel Son Net’s name doesn’t refer to the poetic form, but rhapsodising comes easy here. It’s surrounded by the sort of mountainous scenery (courtesy of Mallorca’s Tramuntanas) that could serve as an opening ‘extreme long shot’ for a Balearic action movie, with the 17th-century castillo’s blush frontage and sparkling pool beckoning seductively amid the green. Look closely and you’ll spy fruitful orchards, stripy vineyards, and a vast spa complex. You’ll get very well acquainted with those views, whether from your room’s windows or the two dining terraces, but what’s inside counts too – towering wooden doors, weathered beams, stone fireplaces and mosaicked floors have all been beautifully restored, designer Lorenzo Castillo has ennobled the rooms and suites once more, and the owners’ art collection has many very important works both antique and modern. And then there’s the butler service, the ancient olive press in the restaurant, the private chapel for weddings… It’s hard to put our feelings for Son Net into words, but maybe we can do it in iambic pentameter, so let us compare thee to a top-notch stay.
