Las Dunas Shared Ownership Scheme

FEW places in the world do serious glam quite like Marbella. Shops are designer, yachts are gargantuan, and cars are super: no fewer than 250 Jaguars, 34 Bentleys, and 15 Ferraris, Maseratis and Aston Martins graced Marbella?s golden streets in 2004, according to the local Oh Là Là magazine. But with prices for top-notch properties in prime locations more often in the millions than the hundreds of thousands, most people can only dream of joining the jet set there. Until now, that is.
Tomorrow Premier Resorts is launching its newest shared-ownership scheme, where owners can buy a deeded one-twelfth share of an apartment for ?130,000 (£87,500). Attached to the beachfront five-star Las Dunas hotel, which is an hour?s drive from Málaga airport, Las Dunas Suites will have all the usual five-star services: daily maid service, valet car parking, 24-hour concierge, bespoke catering, babysitting, and access to two restaurants, spa, pool and gym. Owners will even be collected at the airport by a chauffeur, and their pictures can be hung and fridge filled before arrival.

The Las Dunas Suites? marketing material describes the scheme as ?lifestyle ownership?, and if it is the Marbella lifestyle you are craving you can find it by the luxury-liner load: breakfast at the hotel?s Beach Club eatery is all starched white tablecloths and silver cutlery ? chilled champagne sits next to bottled water on the buffet table.

The hotel?s Michelin-starred Lido is reassuringly demure, while at the Felix restaurant entertainment is put on nightly and the atmosphere is lavish. Bejewelled guests twinkle expensively, impossibly glamorous women glow in Dior and Valentino, the men in pristine pressed linen suits. Arrive in smart shorts and you will be turned away: this is continental sophistication, with a twist of Marbella excess.

Even when out and about, Las Dunas Suites owners will be able to live up to Marbella?s polished image: a privilege card will give them reduced rates on a range of supercars that wait temptingly in the hotel garage. Those wanting to cruise in style can pick up a Bentley Continental GT for a week for ?5,915. Or, for maximum posing potential, a Ferrari F430 Spider costs ?9,800 for a week?s hire. (More modest models are on offer.) Yachts can be chartered in Puerto Banús, about a 15-minute drive up the Costa del Sol; suite owners get a 75 per cent reduction on the normal rate of about ?2,500 a day. The concierge can also get owners into exclusive golf courses, such as Valderrama, on special rates.