Hôtel Lou Pinet, the 34-room Saint-Tropez hideaway run by family-owned group Maisons Pariente, reopens for the season on 13 May 2026, and this year’s headline addition is artistic.
Parisian gallery Aurélien Gendras takes up a summer residency at the property, while French sculptor Laurent Dufour installs his glazed stoneware works, among them his sculptural fireplaces, throughout the hotel’s pine-shaded gardens.
For UK business travellers, the timing is worth noting. The Riviera remains one of the most reliable settings for client entertainment and summer bleisure, and access from Britain improves markedly this season, so a discreet five-star base a short stroll from the Place des Lices earns a place on the shortlist for incentive trips and high-stakes client hospitality alike.
A quiet base with serious design credentials
Lou Pinet trades on seclusion rather than spectacle. Designed by architect Charles Zana, the hotel sits beneath pine trees just steps from the Place des Lices, with gardens of lavender, jasmine and aromatic herbs arranged around a generous pool. Interiors draw on the Provençal decorative arts and the painters who worked in the southern light, from Matisse and Picasso to Calder, Chagall and Cocteau, using natural materials such as linen, ceramic, rope, terracotta and raw lime. Every one of the 34 rooms and suites opens onto a large private garden, and Zana’s own furniture sits alongside original artworks and vintage pieces.
That scale matters for corporate use. With only 34 keys, this is a property suited to board retreats, small incentive groups and one-to-one client relationship building rather than conferences, and it joins a busy season of Riviera hotel activity that includes COMO’s revival of a Côte d’Azur landmark on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.
Sculpture takes over the gardens
The Aurélien Gendras gallery, founded in 2015 and based at the Marché Paul Bert in Saint-Ouen, specialises in modern and contemporary sculpture with a particular focus on ceramics, championing emerging artists alongside the rediscovery of twentieth-century studio practices. Dufour’s pieces, each one unique, treat ceramic as a structural element within a space rather than a decorative object, and guests will encounter them at their own pace while wandering the grounds.
Away from the art, the spa is carved in the style of a grotto and offers a signature treatment aimed at tension release and skin renewal, plus a Head Spa scalp ritual by Leonor Greyl. At La Terrasse, lunch is fresh, seasonal Mediterranean cooking beside the pool, while in the evening Beefbar becomes one of Saint-Tropez’s most sought-after tables, a genuinely useful asset when a client dinner needs to impress. Full details are on the hotel’s official site, loupinet.com.
Getting there and what to budget
Nice remains the main gateway, roughly an hour and a half from Saint-Tropez by road, but this summer brings a more direct option. BA Cityflyer will operate twice-weekly flights from London City to Toulon Saint-Tropez between 23 May and 1 September 2026, cutting the transfer considerably. Once on the coast, Uber Boat launches on the French Riviera from 26 June, a practical answer to the region’s notorious summer traffic.
The hotel has not published rates alongside the reopening announcement, so budget-conscious SMEs should expect peak-season five-star Saint-Tropez pricing and book early. The concierge team organises tailored experiences including visits to the Place des Lices market, private wine tastings with local producers, Champagne picnics among the vines, boat days to hidden coves, exploration by bicycle, electric car or horseback, and helicopter flights over the Gulf. Sister-property details sit with parent group Maisons Pariente.
