- 🏔️ Where · Hafling (Avelengo), terrace village at 1,300 m above Merano, in the Italian South Tyrol
- ✨ New name · Hotel Viktoria becomes Viktoria Alpine Hideaway following its 2026 transformation
- 🛏️ Terra suites · 18 new rooms and suites, including 12 with sauna, whirlpool, private pool or freestanding bathtub
- 🌤️ Hylēa Sky Experience · new adults-only wellness floor: rooftop infinity Sky Pool, 360° Sky Terrace, Sky Lounge
- 🧖 Spa · 6,000 m² Hylēa Pure Element Spa, four pools, eight saunas, six relaxation rooms, separate family and adult areas
- 🍽️ Board · three-quarter board: breakfast, afternoon snack and multi-course dinner
Above Merano, on the sunny plateau of Hafling, Hotel Viktoria has changed its name and scale. Rebaptised Viktoria Alpine Hideaway, in 2026 it adds eighteen Terra suites, an adults-only rooftop wellness floor and a redesigned facade centered around a large V. The Hylēa spa, already one of the largest in the region at 6,000 m², gains a new sauna garden.
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From Hotel Viktoria to Viktoria Alpine Hideaway
The name change speaks to their ambition. Hotel Viktoria was a family-run four-star superior hotel; Viktoria Alpine Hideaway positions itself as a sanctuary, where guests come for space, silence and the mountains, in line with the addresses that have made South Tyrol Italy’s premier wellness region.
The facade has been rethought with this in mind: wood, green roofs, low lines that blend into the slope, and a large V-shaped structure that defines the building without shouting it. The house motto, meanwhile, remains unchanged: arrive as a guest, leave as a friend.
Eighteen Terra suites, twelve with private spa
The core of the expansion is the Terra category: eighteen new rooms and suites, designed as cocoons. Light woods, earthy and mineral tones, sliding glass bays that erase the boundary between the room and the peaks. Nothing is purely decorative; everything is about materiality and light.
Twelve of these suites go even further. Each features its own wellness amenities: private sauna, whirlpool on the terrace, private pool or freestanding bathtub. Guests can spend an entire day here without heading down to the spa, which is precisely the point.
Hylēa Sky, the rooftop reserved for adults
The major new addition for 2026 is at the top. The adults-only Hylēa Sky Experience brings together a rooftop infinity Sky Pool, a Sky Terrace with 360° views of the valley, and a cosy Sky Lounge, extended by a new indoor relaxation room. Guests swim facing the peaks·in winter in wonderfully heated water·with the snow-capped Dolomites in their sights.
On the garden level, the sauna world extends into an outdoor oasis: a landscaped pond and a natural plunge pool for the contrast ritual following a dry sauna. The entire complex now bears a single name, Hylēa Pure Element Spa, which unites architecture, treatments and outdoor activities.
| Hafling altitude | approx. 1,300 m |
| Hylēa Pure Element Spa | 6,000 m² |
| Pools | 4, plus the Sky Pool |
| Saunas | 8 |
| Relaxation rooms | 6 |
| New Terra suites | 18, including 12 with private spa |
| Adults area | from 16 years old, adults-only Sky Experience |
| Board | three-quarter board included |
Hafling, the terrace of Merano
Hafling (Avelengo in Italian) is a village of meadow-fringed balconies perched above Merano, renowned for its breed of blonde Haflinger horses and its abundant sunshine. The hotel is a quarter of an hour from the Merano thermal centre, one hour from Bolzano, and at the foot of the Merano 2000 trails, a skiing and hiking domain.
Dining follows the Tyrolean tradition of three-quarter board: local-produce breakfast, afternoon snack and a multi-course dinner with changing themes, blending alpine tradition with light cuisine. The garden, with its outdoor pool and daybeds, remains the focal point of summer days.
Our perspective
South Tyrol invented a genre, the village spa hotel, and Viktoria offers its 2026 iteration. The key concept here is the separation of worlds: a rooftop adult floor, family areas downstairs, autonomous suites for those who wish to cross paths with no one. It is the local response to the demand for quiet that drives the success of adults-only properties, without turning away families.
The price of this ambition is that of the region: hotels in Hafling, Schenna and Dorf Tirol now compete fiercely on spa square metres and rooftop pools, and Viktoria enters this race with a major argument in its favour, its 6,000 m². It remains to be seen whether French clientele, still rare here, will follow in the footsteps of guests from Munich and Milan.
Practical information
- Viktoria Alpine Hideaway, Falzebenerstraße 9, 39010 Hafling, Italy · hotel-viktoria.com
- Access: Brenner motorway, Bolzano South exit, then towards Merano and the Hafling road
- Skiing and hiking: Merano 2000 domain, Falzeben cable car just minutes away
Photo credit Viktoria Alpine Hideaway
