Why are guests spending more than $1,000 a night to stay at this Elora, Ont., hotel? | Canada Voices

Kristy Hillis sits with her back to the front window in the lobby bar of her four-suite hotel in Elora, Ont. She’s talking about what inspired her to restore the heritage property and create one of Ontario’s top boutique hotels, charging between $1,280 and $1,680 a night.

She grew up in Wellington County, eventually moving to Thailand where she worked in the jewellery trade and met her husband, Don Kogen. Just before the pandemic, she returned with her family to Canada, settling in Elora. That’s when Hillis noticed the 1840s stone building we’re sitting in now was in ruins. Saving it, she says, was a “passion project.”

Hillis can’t see the many passersby who lean into the window to get a better look inside this restored building. The doors are locked – invited guests only – but the looky-loos have likely seen the Kat Florence Hotel on their social media feeds since it opened more than a year ago and noted the discreet signs indicating tastemakers such as Condé Nast Traveler have given it a seal of approval. And if they read the local papers, they’ll know about the chaos and crowds last Christmas when the hotel hired online influencers to promote its winter market.

Kat Florence guests are not just paying more than a grand a night (two-night minimum on weekends) for a room. They’re buying into a lifestyle: And it’s a curiously indulgent one to find in southwestern Ontario.

Elora is in Mennonite country. The village is surrounded by rural farming communities and is renowned for its deep limestone gorge and picturesque main street of 19th-century stone buildings. In 1926, Group of Seven painter A.J. Casson was beguiled and began capturing the sun-warmed stone in oil and watercolour (one of his works sits in the hotel lobby). Today, Elora throngs with daytrippers as it is less than a two-hour drive from Toronto.

The eyebrow-raising fee is the new norm in the luxury market. In recent years, travel trade magazines have reported a big jump in the number of pricey hotels in Italy, France and the U.S.

A report by CoStar luxury analytic group noted that, between 2019 and 2024, Italy saw a jump of more than 50 properties in the thousand-dollar-daily-rate bracket. In France the number grew from just more than 20 to nearly 50 in the same time period. Prices have only gone up since – currently, the Orient Express La Minerva hotel in Rome starts at US$1,900, the Raffles in London starts at US$1,300 (breakfast not included), the Ritz in Paris starts at US$2,600.

But Elora – pretty as it is – is not Rome or London or Paris.

And so new hoteliers Hillis and her husband, Don Kogen, sweeten the deal. Their rack rate includes amenities such as daily hour-long massages. (“After living in Asia for so long, it’s just part of your regular routine,” Hillis says.)

Guests can also expect Veuve Clicquot chilling in a pewter Champagne bucket upon arrival, chauffeured rides in a Rolls-Royce and Bentley, pastry-basket breakfasts, a five-course chef’s tasting dinner for two, and gourmet cakes and bonbons daily, what the hotel calls its “infinity patisserie.” These are just the tangible inclusions.

Staff also pay attention to what guests say ‐ or maybe just intuit – then cater to those whims. Or whims you didn’t know you had till, say, a bowl of tiramisu shows up in your room, unrequested but welcome. It’s the kind of service found in top luxury hotels around the world, and Hillis points to resorts such as Thailand’s Chiva-Som Hua Hin and Soneva in the Maldives as influences.

“A lot of people might walk into a space and not know why they feel calm,” Hillis says. “I think you can achieve that by layering natural materials,” she says, explaining how Elora’s limestone, local wood and Ontario marble were important in the hotel décor.

The hotel’s suites, plus a three-bedroom home a block away, are full of high-design pieces, both eye-pleasing and comfortable, not chic and brittle. Beds are made with top-notch linens, while the fluffiest, whitest towels hang in the bathroom. Gas fireplaces feature five different flame settings and enormous flatscreens offer plentiful streaming services and perfectly tuned sound systems. And each kitchen was built with expensive appliances, with pottery and glassware that make them more elegantly stocked than most homes.

You can tell the rooms were designed by a woman, too – pull open the knife drawer and there’s a first aid kit, and in the bathroom, one finds individual-sized packets of organic lubricant, discreetly stored.

The hotel name (Kat is Kristy’s nickname, Florence her middle name) is also the name of her jewellery brand, and the couple return regularly to her workshop in Bangkok. Two of her enormous sparkling rings – a glittery rubellite and large blue zircon surrounded by diamond studded bands – are on display in the lobby living room (for impromptu proposals perhaps?). Amongst the polished decor, a recent issue of Hello! Canada magazine lies open at a 10-page spread on Hillis, Kogen and their hotel.

Hillis says she’s spending more time in Elora now to earn her hometown’s trust as the couple continues to renovate their properties: The old cinema behind the hotel is now closed for restoration and reinvention. A shop across the street from the hotel with access to the river becomes a guest lounge later this year. And a bar at the bottom of the town’s flat iron building reopens this summer as a Spanish tapas restaurant.

The goal, she says, is to attract quality so Elora can be known as more of a food destination, instead of just “that place with the gorge where you can go swimming and tubing.”

But Hillis says she has learned her lesson about growing too fast, assuming Elora will embrace the world-class luxury offering she brings.

That sometimes small towns might just enjoy being small towns.

“I was naïve to the fact that change is always hard for people to digest,” Hillis says. “We’ve stepped away from the influencers. We definitely do not need them. Elora is too busy already.”

But that doesn’t mean the neighbours mind seeing a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost tooling about with guests living their best life. Locals, too, may have learned not to raise their eyebrows but smile indulgently instead.

The writer was a guest of the hotel, which did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.