Travellers searching for a luxury hotel room off the beaten track are increasingly finding that their perfect suite is a peasant’s cottage, and the reception is in the cowshed.

The Italian concept of alberghi diffusi, literally “spread out hotels”, which involves hotels taking over stunning but dying villages, is catching on across Europe. Devised in the 1980s in northern Italy, where hamlets abandoned after an earthquake were brought back to life, there are now about 120 villages turned into hotels in Italy. “This trend is accelerating and about six or seven new ones are opening in Italy every year,” Giancarlo Dall’Ara, the head of the Italian association of alberghi diffusi, said