You just get so much more. Instead of turning up at a half-restored, mostly-empty and possibly mildew-touched holiday home that delivers a morale-sapping string of bills the rest of the year, a proper fractional ownership scheme allows you to turn up at a palatial home that feels like home yet shares the ambience and serviced ease of a five-star hotel, including a vast range of amenities, concierge services, maintenance back-up and gorgeous Tuscan cooking.

Better still, your fractional share gives you exposure to a bricks and mortar investment - and freehold bragging rights in one of the great property destinations in the world.

And so it is at the Castello di Casole estate in Tuscany. Situated just 30 minutes west of Siena and an easy rental car lope south from Florence, the estate is majestically proportioned at 1,700ha, and centred on a castle that will open next year as a fully fledged, suite-only boutique hotel and spa.

Scattered around the green, oak tree-clad hills are 30 restored casali, or farmhouses, of which around 20 have been sold so far by American owners Timbers Resorts.

A 1/12th interest starts from €290,000 while full villa ownership is priced from €7.5m. The annual maintenance bill for a 1/12th share is €6,745.

Project director Gary Moore explains: "About three-quarters of the shares have been sold to Americans so far - many of them baby boomers." Ironically, at a time of dollar weakness, the attractiveness of investing in Tuscany has been partly to lock in a euro-denominated asset, a natural dollar hedge, meaning that the earliest owners have profited greatly from the strength of the euro, at least on paper.

Moore says that it's not an investment for the pension fund - "most buyers see it as a lifestyle choice rather than an investment per se"- yet, as these things go, it's a rather more prudent way of anchoring hard-earned cash than frittering it away on services devoid of underlying assets.

Increasingly, says Moore, interest is coming from within Europe as word about the estate spreads. There are two reasons for this: the first being that there are very few 'ruined farmhouses' left to buy in Tuscany for less than €700,000 and good luck with the authorities when it comes to restoring them; the second is transparency. Instead of receiving another jaw-dropping bill courtesy of a small complication with the foundations, Timbers has taken on that risk and clearly it has been a stressful project even for them.

The previous owner, Italian-Swiss concrete magnate Guido Antonello bought the property from the great Agnelli dynasty of Fiat fame in the late-90s. Antonello had earlier bought the estate from Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, believed to have housed various mistresses in the casali while living there with Helmut Berger of The Godfather Part III. But no one began to restore the place until Antonello arrived on the scene, and despite huge investments even he wanted the back-up of a large 'partner' by the early noughties, which is where Timbers founder David Burden got involved.

The results are astonishing, with infinity pools that look down on lush green forests and plasma screened interiors that bask in the subdued light of a wood burning stove. What's more, owners can trade their annual allocation of four weeks with other Timbers' owners taking advantage of other properties from Aspen to Baja. You really can have it all.
www.timbersresorts.com

Mandarin moves on Moscow, eyes European march
Mandarin Oriental will open its first Russian property in Moscow in 2011. The 237-room hotel will be housed in a 19th-century building located close to Red Square. Features will include 66 suites, a spa, an indoor pool and fitness centre, 6,000m2 of luxury retail space, and underground valet parking. Long-starved Moscow is now a magnet for the chain hotels. The Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya will open soon; Rezidor will open three Radisson SAS hotels in 2010-11; and Raffles Hotels and Resorts is planning a Moscow property for 2011. Mandarin Oriental already has four hotels in Europe - Geneva, Munich, Prague and London - but it has big expansion plans for the next three years. It will open a Barcelona property next July, followed by Marrakech. Others hotels are planned for Paris, Milan and Marbella.

Etihad adds routes, planes
Etihad Airways will begin flying five times weekly from Abu Dhabi to Moscow from 1 December. The new route will be served by A319 aircraft configured for 84 in economy and 20 in business (except on Thursday when an A320 will carry 120/20). Etihad will also begin flying to Almaty in Kazakhstan the same week. In August the airline launched flights from Abu Dhabi to Belarus's capital Minsk and to Tullamarine in Australia. In July, unaffected by the economic meltdown engulfing Europe and the US, Etihad placed a €25bn order for 205 new aircraft.

Sol: future is still bright
Despite announcing it will miss its 2008 targets due to the deepening economic crisis, Spain's biggest hotel chain Sol Meliá is pressing on with its ambitious growth plan. In the first half of the year, the company opened a deluxe resort, the Gran Meliá Palacio de Isora in Tenerife, and has added two hotels to the new ME by Meliá brand: the ME Barcelona, which opened in July, and the ME Vienna, which will be Austria's tallest building when it opens in late 2010. Both are designed by Dominique Perrault, the feted architect behind Paris's National Library. This year, Sol Meliá has added or signed deals to add hotels in Athens, Kos, Dresden, Angra dos Reis and Jacuma (both in Brazil), Hurghada (Egypt) and Zadar (Croatia). Sol Meliá will also soon begin construction on a hotel with 280 rooms in Salvador de Bahía in Brazil (part of a mixed-use project set over five million square metres) and of two hotels in Playa del Carmen in Mexico. In 2009, the company plans to open its first hotel in China, the Gran Meliá Shanghai.

Dublin luxury to spread
Dublin-based property investment company Quinlan Private is planning a major international expansion of its Maybourne Hotel Group, which owns Claridge's and the Berkeley and Connaught hotels in London. Maybourne's chief executive, Stephen Alden, says that the hotel group could open up to 20 five-star hotels over the next decade and is looking at New York, Milan, Dubai and Moscow. Alden, who joined Maybourne in 2005 when it was acquired by Quinlan, says new properties would all be "iconic buildings" and that a lot of time had been invested in creating a brand that would have "an instant impact". Maybourne is likely to sign long-lease contracts to operate these hotels, the first of which could open next year. Last November, Quinlan announced plans to spend €300m on extending and refurbishing Claridge's and The Berkeley. It has spent €80m refurbishing the Connaught, which reopened this summer. Its restaurant, headed by French chef Hélène Darroze, is currently wowing critics.

Forte fills middle market
The Rocco Forte Collection is to expand its presence in the Middle East after signing a deal to open a new property in Saudi Arabia in 2010. Forte has agreed a contract to manage a new hotel in Jeddah on behalf of Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Al Issa, a Saudi businessman. The hotel will follow The Rocco Forte Collection's first Middle Eastern property, due to open in Abu Dhabi next year. The Jeddah site will have 159 rooms in two towers and include 50 serviced apartments. Rocco Forte said that a presence in the region would help to promote his European hotels to the Arab market. He added that group trading remained buoyant with like-for-like sales growth of 5.5%. Forte is looking for properties in Paris, Milan, Madrid , Moscow and New York as he hopes to build the group to around 30 hotels.