Chile · Patagonia
The ranch that sits at the start of the W
On a former cattle ranch inside Torres del Paine, Hotel Las Torres puts the start of the W outside the door — family estancia culture, baqueanos, and the softest bed by the towers trail.
The stay
Why this lodge, for this traveller
Remote Frontiers is not looking for another lodge that day-trips into Torres del Paine. It is looking for a stay that already lives where the trails begin.
Hotel Las Torres does that. According to Las Torres Patagonia, the hotel sits inside Torres del Paine National Park, in the Las Torres Reserve, at the beginning of the world-famous W and O circuits — including the trail that climbs toward the granite towers themselves. The property grew out of a working estancia, not a resort brief: baqueanos still work the stables, horses graze the pastures, and the family that once ran cattle here now runs a reserve.
If you came for the towers, the wind, and a night that does not start with a long transfer back to town, this is the argument for sleeping at the trailhead.
The place
A family ranch inside the park
The setting is estancia country inside the park — Cerro Paine Ranch, purchased by the Kusanovic family in 1979 and later turned into Las Torres Reserve after livestock left in 2013. Official materials place the hotel at the start of the most famous trail to the towers, with wildlife on the grounds and the massif in the daily weather.
Keep reading if you care how a Croatian-Chilean ranch family turned hospitality into conservation, and why the social currency here is not a spa menu but proximity to Base Torres and a living baqueano culture.
The form
What you are actually looking at
Las Torres Patagonia describes seventy-four rooms. Junior Suites take a king bed and a window on the Paine Massif; Superior Rooms sleep small families or groups with mountain or garden outlooks. Wood and warm colour are the stated design language. The day is framed as Patagonian estancia life — stables, open pasture, wildlife not a glass-box design lodge.
Programmes include all-inclusive hotel stays with adventures, and a half-board option with breakfast and dinner. From the hotel, guests can visit the regenerative kitchen garden and horse stables, or book tours from the Excursion Center. The wider Las Torres operation also runs trekking circuits and mountain refugios that grew from the mid-1990s hostels (Albergue Las Torres, now Refugio Norte, then Cuernos and Chileno) — the hotel is the soft bed at the centre of that trail network.
Getting here means entering Torres del Paine to the Las Torres / Cerro Paine sector. Transfers, circuit permits, and which valleys are open still change with season and park rules. Check current conditions. Do not treat an old itinerary as a promise.
The culture
A family conservation story
The exclusive thing here is not a longer amenity list. It is sleeping at the trailhead on land that stayed in one family from cattle ranch to reserve.
Official timeline: Antonio Kusanovic Jercic left Croatia for Magallanes around 1905; his son Antonio Kusanovic Senkovic was born in 1926. In 1979 the family bought Cerro Paine Ranch and ran more than six hundred cows for decades. Around 1990, Antonio and his wife Amor Eliana Marusic began offering tired travellers a warm bed and home-cooked food. On 12 December 1992 the hotel was officially inaugurated with ten rooms and a kitchen. Mountain hostels followed as backpacker traffic grew. In 2001 the property took the name Hotel Las Torres Patagonia. In 2004 AMA Torres del Paine was founded for research and environmental programmes renamed Las Torres Patagonia Conservancy in April 2025. In 2013 livestock left the ranch land so the focus could shift to sustainable tourism; in 2016 the Welcome Center opened; in 2020 the wider brand unified as Las Torres Patagonia.
What you cannot get on a day-bus schedule: a night inside the park at the foot of the towers trail, baqueanos still working the stables, an organic garden beside the hotel, and a family conservation story that began when the cattle walked off the land.
This is not imported resort gloss pasted onto a postcard. It is trailhead light, massif weather, horses on the pasture, and a bar where tomorrow’s walk still starts from home.
The light
First light on the massif
The photograph of the Towers is easy. The stay is for the hours when you are still inside the park when the wind turns at the trailhead, not on the road back to town.
Why visit
Go if the trailhead is the point of the night
Visit Hotel Las Torres if you want Torres del Paine to remain large at night: inside the park, at the start of the W and O, with a family estancia culture that still shows in the stables and the reserve. The lodge is interesting because the trailhead location is structural, because the cattle-to-conservancy arc is real, and because the soft bed sits where the granite walk begins.
Skip it if you want a walk-from-Puerto-Natales hotel, a design-forward glass lodge, or a private-guide villa with its own 4×4. This stay asks for park entry and for days spent outside. Arrive with time. Leave with mud on your boots.
Photographs on this page are Remote Frontiers destination landscapes of Torres del Paine / Patagonia, not interiors of the hotel.
Highlights
What defines the stay
Go if the trailhead is the point of the night?
Visit Hotel Las Torres if you want Torres del Paine to remain large at night: inside the park, at the start of the W and O, with a family estancia culture that still shows in the stables and the reserve. The lodge is interesting because the trailhead location is structural, because the cattle-to-conservancy arc is real, and because the soft bed sits where the granite walk begins.
Skip it if you want a walk-from-Puerto-Natales hotel, a design-forward glass lodge, or a private-guide villa with its own 4×4. This stay asks for park entry and for days spent outside. Arrive with time. Leave with mud on your boots.
Photographs on this page are Remote Frontiers destination landscapes of Torres del Paine / Patagonia, not interiors of the hotel.