Somewhere between Malmedy and the Hautes Fagnes nature reserve, hidden inside a forest in the Belgian Ardennes, there is a neon sign on a building facade that reads: We Love You. It is the first thing you see when you arrive at Daft Hotel, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.
Daft is equal parts boutique hotel, recording studio, glamping site, outdoor kitchen, vinyl library, honesty bar, and home cinema. It has 14 rooms, 12 tipis in the surrounding meadow (from late April through September), a heated indoor pool with underwater music, a sauna, more than 5,000 m² (54,000 sq ft) of wild garden, and one of the largest recording halls in Europe sitting right next door.
It draws musicians, race fans, hikers, families, couples, and anyone who has grown tired of the kind of hotel where everything is beige and you feel vaguely judged by the front desk. Chef JF cooks. The bar operates on the honor system. The wild boars in the forest do not care what you look like.
Location
Daft sits near Malmedy, a small town in Belgium's Eastern Cantons, roughly an hour's drive from Liège and about 9 km (5.6 miles) from the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. That proximity makes it a natural base for Formula 1 weekends, the 24h of Spa, WEC, ELMS, and the various other motorsport events the circuit hosts through the year - though you would never guess it from the setting, which is all tall trees, rolling hills, and the kind of quiet that makes you realize how loud your regular life is.
The surrounding landscape is anchored by the Hautes Fagnes Nature Reserve, Belgium's largest, covering 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) of forest and 10,000-year-old sphagnum bogs. Hundreds of kilometers of hiking and cycling trails start practically at the hotel's door.
How it Started
The project is the work of Stijn Verdonckt, a mix engineer and producer, and Tine Blondeel, who manages the hotel. The two moved to the Ardennes about two decades ago when a position opened at the nearby La Chapelle Studios, one of the region's established recording facilities.
They eventually took over La Chapelle, then realized that musicians needed more than a great room and a good technician - they needed somewhere to actually live during a session. When La Chapelle needed renovation, Verdonckt and Blondeel decided to build something new on a vacant lot nearby, so that studio and accommodation would finally share the same address.
The result was Daft Music Studios and, right next to it, the hotel. Local architect Christophe Stembert designed the buildings, drawing on pared-back Scandinavian principles - raw materials left unfinished, clean lines, nothing cold about it. Interior designer Tine Blondeel combined streamlined furniture with wooden paneling, animal hides, and printed cushions. The idea, as Verdonckt put it, was something "pure and warm, not Spartan."
The Lounge
The common areas at Daft are where the hotel's philosophy becomes tangible. The lounge is generous with natural light, good sofas, a fireplace for winter, strong coffee at all hours, and a panoramic view over the garden. It is the kind of room that rewards lingering.
Music plays - playlists drawn from artists who have recorded at the studio next door. Framed photographs and other nods to bands line the walls. The effect is less "hotel lobby" and more "the living room of someone with genuinely good taste who also happens to own a lot of vinyl."
Speaking of which: there is a vinyl corner. Real records, a proper turntable, and the particular pleasure of choosing an LP and hearing it the way it was meant to be heard. This is not a decorative gesture. The studio next door has been recording music for decades and that seriousness about sound runs through the whole property.
The Kitchen
Daft Kitchen operates on its own terms. There is no seven-days-a-week restaurant service. Instead, Chef Jean-François runs a pop-up restaurant on a rotating calendar - no fixed menu, dishes designed to share, classics reworked with a modern and locally sourced sensibility. When it is open, it is worth rearranging your plans for.
When it is not open, you are not left to fend for yourself. Chef JF prepares complete meals in jars - fresh, made from scratch, available year-round from the honesty bar - for nights when you want to eat well without going anywhere.
From May to October, the outdoor kitchen comes into play: pizzas, burger kits, chicken wings, and popcorn, prepared by you on the OFYR barbecue or the pizza oven, under a covered marquee stocked with everything you need. The bar handles drinks.
The Cinema
The home cinema at Daft seats a proper crowd, runs Netflix on an XXL screen, and uses a Bowers & Wilkins audio system. It is not a hotel afterthought with a laptop propped against a pillow, but a room built for watching things properly.
Every hotel room also has a projector (or TV) with Chromecast, so you can pick up whatever you were watching without any of the usual fuss of adapters and cables.
The Rooms
The 14 hotel rooms divide into singles (13 m² / 140 sq ft), doubles (15 m² / 161 sq ft), and two kinds of family configuration: one for four people across two adjoining double rooms (28 m² / 301 sq ft total), and one for two adults and up to three children aged 10 and under (21 m² / 226 sq ft, with a bunk bed).
Rooms are deliberately compact. Blondeel has been clear about the reasoning: small rooms push you into the communal spaces, which is where the interesting things happen.
What the rooms do have: beds made up in organic cotton, en-suite bathrooms with Rituals care products in refillable dispensers, fast Wi-Fi, and - the detail that earns its place - a projector in every room (except the singles, which have a TV). You connect your phone, stream whatever you want, and the wall becomes a screen.
Glamping in the Tipis
From late April to early October, Daft opens a basecamp in the wild ground surrounding the hotel: 12 tipi tents, each 20 m² (215 sq ft), each sleeping up to four people on proper beds with comfortable mattresses, soft sheets, bath linen, and plaids for colder nights.
There is electricity, Wi-Fi, string lights, and a private terrace per tipi. Shared indoor showers and toilets are nearby. A covered communal terrace of 180 m² (1,940 sq ft) serves the whole basecamp. Breakfast arrives in a basket.
Three tipi categories are available. The standard Tipi Classic keeps things straightforward. The Tipi & Swim adds access to the hotel's indoor pool and sauna during public hours. The Tipi Zen & Swim goes further, adding a private wood-fired hot tub.
The Dutchtub Original by Weltevree is a Dutch design object - a round, wood-fired bath that sits outdoors and heats itself through a coil system, with no pumps or electricity required. At Daft, the Tipi Zen & Swim guests get their own, positioned with a direct view of the forest.
You light the fire, pour a drink from the honesty bar, and wait roughly an hour for the water to reach around 38°C (100°F). Then you get in and listen to the trees.
Wellness
The hotel's heated indoor pool sits at 30°C (86°F) and plays music underwater - a detail that seems gimmicky until you are floating in it with a song coming through the water around you, at which point it seems like an obvious and permanent improvement to swimming.
Access is included for all hotel guests and Tipi & Swim and Tipi Zen & Swim guests during daily public hours: 08:00 - 11:00 and 13:30 - 19:00. Private sessions of two hours are available for those who prefer not to share, and can be booked even without an overnight stay.
The sauna sits alongside the pool as part of the wellness area, available during the same public hours. Private wellness sessions include two hours of exclusive access to both pool and sauna, a bottle of cava with soft drinks, fresh fruit, extra towels, and sauna scents. Three sessions run per day: 11:15 - 13:15, 19:00 - 21:15, and 21:30 - 23:30.
The Garden
More than 5,000 m² (54,000 sq ft) of garden surrounds the hotel, and it is genuinely wild - not manicured, not landscaped into submission. Lounge chairs are scattered through it. There is space for yoga, for doing nothing, for an afternoon nap with a view of the valley.
In the evenings, the campfire draws people together in the way that campfires reliably do. It is also where some of the best conversations happen at Daft - between musicians finishing a session, hikers in from the Hautes Fagnes, race fans cooling down after a day at Spa, families who drove here from Brussels for the weekend without quite knowing what to expect.
The outdoor kitchen runs from May to October and operates on a simple principle: Daft prepares everything, you cook it. The weekly selection typically includes pizzas in the wood-fired oven, DIY burger kits, chicken wings, and popcorn.
The OFYR barbecue and pizza oven are reserved exclusively for these pre-prepared dishes. Under the marquee, pots, pans, plates, and cutlery are all laid out. Drinks and snacks come from the honesty bar.
Daft Music Studios
Daft Music Studios is not a hotel amenity. It is the reason the hotel exists. The main recording hall covers 200 m² (2,150 sq ft) with an 8 m (26 ft) ceiling - large enough for a full symphonic orchestra, and acoustically precise enough for jazz, rock, or pop.
There are four isolation booths of varying sizes and acoustic character, a 70 m² (753 sq ft) control room on the first floor (a layout reminiscent of Abbey Road Studio 2), and a gallery overlooking the live room. The console is a Rupert Neve Designs 5088 Shelford Limited Edition, described by Verdonckt as "the Rolls-Royce of analogue sound recording consoles."
The studio has hosted Belgian classical ensembles and international EDM productions, writing camps organized with Sony ATV, BMG, Universal Music, and Universal Music Publishing, film scoring sessions (including orchestral work for an Orson Welles Netflix release and a Korean Disney+ series), and TV productions including X-Factor Italia, The Voice, and Liefde Voor Muziek.
A four-bedroom penthouse sits on top of the studio building, housing up to eight artists. When larger crews arrive - up to 40 people - the hotel next door absorbs the overflow.
For everyone else staying at the hotel, the studio is simply part of the atmosphere: audible in the playlists, visible in the photographs, present in the fact that the people at the next table at dinner might be halfway through recording an album. It is an unusual thing to have next to a hotel, and it makes Daft an unusual place to stay.
Rte de Waimes 19b, 4960 Malmedy, Belgium
