This is the fourth in a series of profiles examining the families deploying long-term private capital into hotels, covering owner-operators, investment holding companies and family-controlled enterprises, ahead of R&R. You can catch up on the whole series here.
Valerio Antonioli, CEO of the Lungarno Collection, the hospitality business of the Ferragamo family, has been exploring sites in Venice and Naples with a view to launching new hotels.
While the Lungarno Collection currently boasts several properties in key Italian cities, the hospitality leader said in a recent interview that its portfolio is missing a couple of the essential “Grand Tour” stops. “Having already established properties in Milan, Florence and Rome, our goal is to complete the historic “Grand Tour” by expanding the Portrait Collection to include these remaining key cities, continuing to represent the essence of Italian hospitality at its highest level,” he said.
The Grand Tour of Italy was for many the architectural and artistic summit of the seventeenth-to-nineteenth century custom of taking a traditional trip through Europe. Wealthy patrons with their families – and sometimes a coterie of advisers including art experts and architects – would explore the sites of Naples, before passing through Rome, Florence and Milan, to reach Venice.
For Antonioli, leaning into Italy’s historic legacy is a crucial part of establishing Lungarno as one of the country’s leading hotel groups. The group, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, launched its first hotel in 1995 with the acquisition of the Hotel Lungarno in Florence. He believes, however, that Italy has lacked a “national hotel brand” since the 1980s. “In the past, that role was held by CIGA, the Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, which unfortunately went bankrupt and was later acquired by Starwood Hotels,” he added.
Now, the CEO of Lungarno sees a real opportunity for the hotel group – owned by the Ferragamo fashion dynasty and controlled by the Palazzo Feroni Finanziaria holding company – to step into that vacancy.
Family empire
The achievements of the Ferragamo fashion empire – including its real estate holdings – have aided the brand’s rapid recognition in the hospitality trade. When the Florentine family acquired a residential palazzo in the 1990s to create Hotel Lungarno, the Ferragamos were already steeped in the city’s real estate. In 1938, Salvatore Ferragamo acquired Palazzo Spini Ferroni on fashionable via de' Tornabuoni to create a striking home for his headquarters and main boutique selling his world-famous wares. The same year, he created the Rainbow shoe for Judy Garland, and opened his first directly-owned stores in Rome and London as well.
Today, in the basement of the store at Palazzo Spini, the Ferragamo Museum displays historic wooden lasts and hundreds of shoes designed for a century of stars. Guests of the Lungarno Collection hotels are, of course, given free passes to visit this unique site.
Ferragamo’s luxury – and celebrity – association, as well as the brand’s reputation for bespoke excellence, have served in shaping the group’s hotel empire too. After the launch of Hotel Lungarno in trendy Oltrarno, The Gallery Hotel Art and the Hotel Continentale in Florence were added in 1999 and 2002. A couple of years later, the business arrived in Rome and launched its Portrait brand with Portrait Roma. This hotel took shape in another owned asset – the residential apartments over the Ferragamo store on via Condotti. With rooftop terrace views of the towers of the Spanish Steps, this intimate five-star property comprises 14 suites designed by Florentine architect Michele Bönan.
In 2022, the group arrived in Milan, with Portrait Milano, a 73-key hotel located within a restored former seminary dating back to the sixteenth century. Today, there are five hotels in total in Florence, counting the Lungarno Apartments, a property which is dubbed a “private residence, with luxury hotel service”. The city is also the location of a handful of Ferragamo-owned restaurants and bars, including the one-Michelin starred Borgo San Jacopo with views of Ponte Vecchio.
Branding and ambitions
Despite the Ferragamo name having considerable global pull as one of the last great independent Italian fashion houses, the hotels have steered away from using the fashion icon’s name, preferring to align with the vocabulary of the arts. For Antonioli, this reflects a deliberate choice that shows an understanding of the different “speeds” of hotels and fashion. “In the fashion industry, you change your shoes every six months. In hotels, you may need to keep the same curtains for years. A hotel requires longevity, therefore rather than leveraging the Ferragamo name, we leverage the family's core and cultural values,” he said. Despite this, there is often a locational link to the Ferragamo boutique in each city, with hotel guests rarely required to take more than a few steps to buy new shoes.
While the firm looks to growth, the Lungarno Collection management has admitted it may need a partner or partners to do so. For the Ferragamo family, hotels are seen as an important diversification play alongside the sometimes-fickle world of fashion; but new hotels require capital.
In 2025, Ferragamo’s annual revenues dipped below the €1 billion mark achieved in 2024, with turnover at around €977 million. A decline in the firm’s Asian market share and sluggish wholesale receipts are reported to have contributed to the shortfall.
According to the Italian press, Ferragamo has now appointed an Italian investment bank to look for a long-term investor to work alongside the family in managing the hotels business. The preferences are, according to reports, for a minority investment from another family office, or a sovereign wealth fund, and the participation would concern only the hotel operations, and not the ownership of the real estate.
Perhaps the firm has observed peers such as Armani, which also recently acquired a wealthy backer for its international hospitality arm, Armani Hotels & Resorts. In Armani’s case, as of January 2026, the fashion and design group is in joint venture with Dubai-headquartered Symphony Global to further develop a portfolio of hotels in selected international locations. Symphony Global, the private investment firm of Mohamed Alabbar, was also the partner of choice for the launch of the first Armani Hotel in Dubai in 2010, located in the Burj Khalifa tower. The property was followed by a second in Milan in 2011.