The First Cortina opens on 4 December with 76 rooms and suites, Zuma Cortina, a Velo pastry lounge and a thousand square metres of spa run by Revivo.
The date replaces an earlier plan to open in the last quarter of 2025. The first version of the project also had 63 rooms, so the hotel arrives with thirteen more keys than it was announced with.
That is a bigger change than a builder running late. The original timetable would have put the hotel in Cortina for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. It now opens at the start of the season after, and has to build its own demand without the Games doing it for free.
The old Splendid Venezia, at a larger scale
The building is the former Hotel Splendid Venezia at Corso Italia 209. Studio Marincola Architects has led the design, working in larch, Dolomite stone, marble, leather, velvet and burnished metal.
The first announcement described a circular-architecture approach built on reuse. The current pages keep the studio credit but publish no figures on retained structure, embodied carbon or how much of the old hotel survived.
So the accurate description is a conversion of an existing Cortina hotel. Better than a new build on fresh ground, and it deserves the numbers to go with it when the hotel has them.
Rooms start at 21 square metres
Deluxe View Balcony rooms run from about 21 to 24 square metres. Grand Deluxe from 27 to 32, Junior Suites from 35 to 40, separate-bedroom suites from 36 to 45.
Twenty-one square metres is compact for an Alpine hotel at this level, particularly for two people arriving with ski clothing, boots and a week of luggage. The hotel has dedicated ski and equipment facilities, which takes some pressure off the bedroom. Ask for the floor plan anyway, and do not let a balcony and a mountain view settle it.
At the top of the standard inventory there are two categories worth knowing about. A Jacuzzi Suite puts a private whirlpool inside roughly 40 square metres. The Wellness Suite, at 44, has its own sauna and steam bath.
Those suit a particular guest: someone who would rather have private recovery space than a larger sitting room. In February, in Cortina, at minus twelve, that is not a strange preference.
The Enrosadira Penthouse is the residence
The top accommodation is the Enrosadira Penthouse, 140 square metres, configurable with one, two or three bedrooms, with living and dining areas, a private kitchen, walk-in wardrobes and a large terrace.
The flexible bedroom count is the interesting part. It gives the hotel something to put in front of a family that would otherwise be pricing a staffed chalet, and it keeps housekeeping, restaurants and the spa downstairs.
Four things still need asking. Maximum occupancy. Whether a private chef can use the kitchen. What comes with each configuration. How private that terrace really is.
A kitchen in a penthouse is worth something only when the hotel has decided how it can be used. Equipment, stocking, chef access and private dining are not automatically in the rate.
Zuma gives the hotel a room people already know
Zuma Cortina will run the contemporary Japanese menu the group is known for: sushi, sashimi, the robata grill. It is the hotel’s principal restaurant, not a season-long guest appearance.
Commercially this is a shortcut, and a good one. Zuma arrives with an international clientele and a reputation for filling a room. That is exactly what a new hotel does not have in its first December.
It does raise a question about Cortina. A Japanese restaurant with branches in London, Dubai and Miami can be the busiest table in town without saying anything about the Ampezzo valley, its dairies or its mountain cooking.
The rest of the programme has to carry that weight. Enough local depth, particularly during the day, to stop the hotel reading as 76 bedrooms above a restaurant that could be anywhere.
Velo carries the daytime
Velo started at The First Dolce in Rome and comes north as a pastry lounge and bar: Italian pastry, chocolate, all-day food beside the more formal Zuma offer.
It may matter more to residents than its size suggests. A ski hotel needs somewhere credible for breakfast, for coffee, for four in the afternoon when everyone comes off the mountain cold, and for the meals that are not dinner.
It also gives Corso Italia a reason to come in without booking a restaurant. Whether that works depends on the hours, the street access and whether residents still find a seat at half past four in February.
A thousand square metres of spa
The Revivo spa covers roughly a thousand square metres: indoor pool, sauna, hammam, movement and fitness areas, treatments, and Starpool equipment including a Zerobody dry float bed.
Thirteen square metres of spa per key. That ratio tells you where the hotel expects guests to spend the middle of the day.
The recovery and nervous-system language around the dry float comes from the hotel and its technology partners. Read it as a description of the programme and not as a medical result, and ask who is actually delivering the treatments and with what training.
Practical questions for booking: what the room rate includes, whether pool access is timed, what the age rules are, and how appointments work over Christmas, New Year and the February school holidays. Those are the weeks when a thousand square metres stops feeling large.
Corso Italia is the town, not the piste
The address puts the hotel in the centre of Cortina, on the main street. The original announcement placed the lifts about five minutes away by hotel shuttle; the live site does not yet publish a winter shuttle timetable.
You get Corso Italia, the passeggiata and every restaurant in town on foot. You do not get to step out of a boot room onto a piste.
For most people that is the right trade in Cortina, which is a town before it is a ski resort. Families whose week is built around first lifts should nail down the morning departure system, the equipment storage, the driver hours and where the return collection happens.
Anyone planning a day out towards the Tre Cime should also read Holiday.it on the 2026 parking and shuttle rules, which have changed how that morning works.
The opening rate starts at 663 euro, and skips Christmas
The Cortina Premiere package gives 15 per cent off the best available rate, breakfast for two, afternoon tea at Velo, a welcome amenity, and upgrades or early arrival and late departure subject to availability. Rates start from 663 euro a night.
Minimum three nights, booked by 31 October 2026. Valid 4 to 20 December 2026 and 7 January to 3 April 2027.
Which means 21 December to 6 January is excluded. The offer fills the shoulder either side of the peak, and leaves the peak alone.
Worth comparing against the ordinary rate before committing. Fifteen per cent is less generous when it arrives with a three-night minimum and cancellation terms that do not suit the week.
What to confirm before December
- Room: the exact layout, storage and balcony in the booked category.
- Ski access: shuttle frequency, first departure, evening return.
- Zuma: whether residents get priority and which meals are served.
- Velo: hours, breakfast, afternoon food, access for non-residents.
- Spa: what is in the rate, pool timings, age limits.
- Penthouse: chef access, kitchen use, maximum occupancy.
- Opening risk: what happens if a facility is not ready on 4 December.
Luxury.it perspective
The First Cortina now has a date, thirteen more keys than it started with and a clearer idea of what it is.
Zuma buys visibility from week one. Velo gives it a daytime. The spa is big enough to shape how a winter stay is actually spent. Three real assets, none of them decorative.
The test is logistical rather than aesthetic. Whether a 76-key hotel on Corso Italia can move guests, skis and restaurant traffic through one building during the busiest fortnight Cortina has, which is the week it opens in.
Related guides
Continue with our report on the new luxury hotels of the Dolomites, the wider Hotels desk and the latest projects in Luxury Openings.
For opening-season rooms, the Enrosadira Penthouse, transfers and restaurant arrangements, contact Luxury.it Concierge.
