Five Flowers Hotel & Spa Formentera

The next Balearic island down from the famous Ibiza is the smaller-scale, lower-key Formentera — which, now, has a rather surprisingly luxe hotel, the Five Flowers Hotel & Spa Formentera. It’s inspired by the Sixties, and specifically, in the hotel’s words, the “hippie lifestyle” — which makes some sense, as the era that birthed the Balearic travel boom. But don’t expect yurts and ramshackle, bohemian decoration. Five Flowers is five-star luxury, for one thing, and aesthetically seems to borrow as much from swinging, modernist London as from the Woodstock variety of hippiedom.

The hotel is oriented around the central pool deck, surrounded by lounge chairs and shaded daybeds, all in a soothing white-on-white. More colorful are the interiors, from the lobby with its gold-and-pomegranate upholstery and graphic daisy motif to the rooms with their own accents in ultra-saturated pink and yellow. “Whimsical” just about covers the in-room atmosphere, with two-dimensional clouds floating above the beds and a curvaceous space-age quality to the fixtures and furnishings.

A second pool hides away on the rooftop, and the spa and fitness offerings are first-rate. There’s a fine-dining restaurant named Janis, after Janis Joplin, and a second, more casual one called Imagine, and a cocktail bar on the roof with a panoramic view of the island and the sea.