Excess Venice, the « excessive » hotel by Elisabetta Dotto where to look for freedom (even from home)

«A place to escape, to dream, where to live a few different days, where to dispose your professional and personal role and wear a mask of freedom». This is the second hotel Elisabetta Dotto, « innkeeper » always: daughter and grandson of hoteliers, began to help her father at 14 years of age by filling in customer cards with coal card in a hotel on the Venetian coast and just over twenty years old she found themselves managing the first structures alone.

« When I hear phrases like » you make guests feel at home « I say no », it is the learned reaction: « The hotel is an extraordinary place where you can find what is not at home », even more so « thinking about the female figure that is often under pressure at home ». And so toExcess Venice – 5 -star Boutique Hotel (Adults Only « because children need dedicated spaces ») In the quiet Sestiere Dorsoduro in Veniceoverlooking the channel – Nothing is left to chance: from rugs to alternating chromaticism on the stairs to Photography, fashion and pop art books Leaving near the armchairs, chosen based on the mood of the room and often replaced (in addition to the swell of the suites), the attention to detail is evident in any corner falls the eye.

It must be that Elisabetta Dotto In the hotel it grew upliterally. And for better or for worse (because « it’s a tiring life », he repeats several times) The hotel entered it.

Since he was a child, having arrived the summer, the whole family moved from Treviso to the hotel, to the sea. « We were in the worst rooms – he remembers – because the best were for customers ». Not because they were kept hidden, on the contrary: the family, including the four children, was always present in the daily life of the structure, as well as in the brochures. With the style code What derives from it: the learned parents – Elisabetta, primogenita, speaks of it for a long time in some of her publications – they dressed in an elegant way and even children were asked to be always appropriate: there was the dress for Easter, the one for Easter Monday, there were those for the weekly parties organized in the evening in the hotel, there would then have been the « right » uniform (not the jeans) to start working near the dad.

Attention that over the years have joined the passion of Elisabetta learned for fashion: While she grew up forming a personal style, this was also troubled in her work. Coming to overturn the family habits: even now it lives practically always in the hotel, but it is no longer necessarily on the low floors: « I always try my rooms, » he says.

Moves Between Venice and Cortinawhere there is its other structure, theAmbra Cortina – Luxury & Fashion Boutique Hotel: arrived in 1989 as an employee, in 2006 he bought it and redesigned it in glam style.

There have been architects and designers, of course, next to Dotto. But everything, every room, passes from her: when it was to choose what to do with the walls of the main suite of the excess Venice, for example, « I wanted to give a slightly disruptive impression – he says – and I did not want to follow the tradition of the fabrics, then I chose strips of changing paintings which have inside the metal and reflect the external light: they give the hot effect of the fabric but with a twist, a touch, very strong « . When he then had to choose the fabrics, « they proposed to me one who recalls the Venetian gates, I thought it was perfect for the ground floor, entry and towards the garden, while for the main floor the fabric called Ruskin was more suitable », inspired by John Ruskin, a very tied English poet and painter in Venice. Fabrics also used for read of the beds, each different from the otherwith a design reminiscent of the shape of the Basilica of San Marco.

The excess has 15 rooms, of which you are suite, one Private spa and a garden «Secret» – internal and rare For Venice – 500 square meters, with fountain, colored wrought iron sofas and Palladian -style statues combined with dark brown heads that learned brought from his travels to Sicily: noble palace Inhabited first by the Greek consul then by a family of owners, since the 1980s he has been transformed into the hotel (it was called San Sebastiano Garden, named after the church opposite).

Elisabetta Dotto took him managed in 2019 and revolutionized him. It was theyear ofGranda water in Venice: all the furniture on the ground floor has been lost and after days spent pushing the water out « I tried not to despair », remember. And the collection of antiques Of the father came to her rescue: many antique furniture, including a large mirror of the 600 of Ca ‘Dario, are thus ended up on the excess.

And the name? «It came as the decorative language grew, with 69 Different color pantons – Smile learned – I was for lunch with my coach, on the pack -colored paper tablet we wrote assuming names as long as he said: « You are an excessive person ». And me: « Ah yes? Then let’s call it excess » ». Understood as « excess of detail, of decoration, The idea is that when you enter you don’t expect what’s inside.  » A surprise effect with originality: «We have never sold to enter the chains, I think it is different. In hotels I have put all my stuff, this is my way of doing hospitality, « says Dotto.

Who is sometimes called in schools to tell his career: «I always talk about spirit of sacrifice: You can’t think of getting to success by doing only what you likeyou get there after years in which you do what you have to do. I am now here but I have been made years and years of hotels with different standards. And then the saying always applies: before earning you have to lose a lot ». And remember, Immediately after the high water, the two waves of Covid.

Fatigue is a word that repeats often. His is « A tiring life: never sleep more than 2/3 nights in the same place. But it is also extremely wealthy of contacts, stimuli, meetings. And if I am at home a weekend I don’t know what to do ». Yes, because Elisabetta Dotto, in addition to hotels, « recently » has a house in Cortina: « He has 4 bedrooms and 8 beds, I’m thinking of organizing someone in B&B … ».