The new stays: seventeen hotels worth waiting for in 2027
From a former defence ministry on the Left Bank to six suites on a Kalahari dune, the openings that will shape next year's travel
Every year brings its list of openings, and most of them blur into one another: another overwater villa, another rooftop bar, another spa with a menu of treatments named after phases of the moon. The class of 2027 is more interesting than usual, partly because several of the biggest names are heading somewhere new for them, and partly because a handful of small, odd and carefully made places are arriving at the same time.
Start in the cities. Maybourne, the group that owns Claridge's and The Connaught, is opening The Maybourne Saint-Germain inside the Îlot Saint-Germain, a 17th-century block in the 7th arrondissement that spent decades as offices of the French defence ministry. It will have a 30-metre pool on the roof, which in Paris counts as a small act of provocation, and if I could book one hotel on this list tomorrow it would be this one. In Milan, Six Senses finally opens on Via Brera, opposite the Pinacoteca, after two delays and with interiors by Tara Bernerd. Trunk(Hotel), the Tokyo brand that made a corner of Shibuya feel like a neighbourhood again, leaves the capital for the first time with a 107-room tower in Sapporo, an 18th-floor bathhouse and the city's first counter from Sushi Saito.
Europe's countryside is where the year gets crowded. Evok Collection takes its Nolinski brand out of the city and into Gassin, on the hill above Saint-Tropez, at the old Mas de Chastelas. Six Senses restores El Quexigal, a 1563 country estate near Madrid by Juan de Herrera, the architect of El Escorial. Virgin Limited Edition is busy on two fronts, with Son Valentí, a 15th-century Mallorcan estate with its own watchtower next door to Son Bunyola, and a 37-suite farm estate 25 minutes outside Marrakech.
In Cortina d'Ampezzo the Bellevue on Corso Italia reopens under Accor's Emblems Collection, part of the rebuilding of the town's hotels that followed the Winter Olympics. In Puglia, La Maviglia brings 70 suites, a golf course and a medical spa to 202 hectares of olive groves on the Ionian side of the heel, a coast most visitors to the region have so far driven straight past.
Two Mediterranean entries need a footnote. Na Praia, the hotel in the Comporta dunes designed with Studio KO, quietly opened in June 2026, so next summer will be its first full season rather than its debut. Kenshō, the Mykonos group, has been taking bookings at its Paros outpost on Krios beach, and 2027 is the year it will be judged properly.
Then the islands, where the Maldives continues to absorb luxury brands at a rate that is starting to feel faintly absurd. Bvlgari's long-delayed Ranfushi, in Raa Atoll, has 54 villas, and one of them has an island to itself. Maxx Royal, the Turkish group behind some of the most lavish resorts on the Antalya coast and in Bodrum, brings its all-inclusive model to North Malé Atoll in the autumn. Aman's first Maldives resort now has a name, Amanolu, though it has slipped to 2028. Across the Atlantic, Banyan Tree builds the Caribbean's first overwater villas on Bimini, 48 nautical miles from Miami, and Anantara arrives on Zanzibar's northern coast with a resort of 181 keys.
The one I keep coming back to is the smallest. Vestige Xaudum opens on 15 March with six suites, the only lodge inside Namibia's Khaudum National Park, a place that sees fewer than 3,000 visitors a year. It is the first property outside Spain for Vestige Collection, a family company better known for Menorcan fincas, and it is either a brilliant or a reckless way to begin. I would very much like to be among the first to find out which.
A word of caution from someone who has spent a long time watching opening dates drift: treat every month on this list as a hope, not a certainty! Bvlgari's Maldives resort was first promised for 2025 and Six Senses Milan was meant to open last year, so book flexible rates and wait for the first reports from people who have actually slept there.
The Maybourne Saint-Germain, Paris
The owners of Claridge's take on the Left Bank, with a pool on the roof and four centuries of history underneath it
For most of living memory the block between Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Dominique was somewhere you walked past rather than into. The Îlot Saint-Germain, a 17th-century complex in the 7th arrondissement, spent decades as offices of the French Ministry of Defence, its courtyards closed to anyone without a pass. In 2027 Maybourne, the group behind Claridge's, The Connaught and The Berkeley, opens it as a hotel, and I suspect it will be the Paris opening people argue about for a year.
The hotel has 101 keys, split almost evenly between 50 suites and 51 rooms and arranged around an inner courtyard, with 23 serviced residences alongside. Pierre-Yves Rochon has designed the seven on Rue Saint-Dominique and Laura Gonzalez the sixteen on Rue de l'Université, which is a clever piece of casting. Rochon works in the grand, calm Parisian manner, Gonzalez in colour, pattern and a certain cheek, and if the hotel's public spaces borrow even a little of her nerve the place will feel younger than its postcode.
What will change how Paris uses it is the water. There is a 30-metre pool on the roof, which in a city where hotel pools tend to live in basements is close to unheard of, a 25-metre pool kept for residents and a third inside Surrenne, Maybourne's new health and longevity club, which promises to be one of the largest spas in the city. The rendering shows the rooftop pool lined up with the Eiffel Tower across the river, and I would happily spend a morning in it just to see whether the view lives up to the drawing.
There are six places to eat and drink, including a Japanese restaurant, a patisserie and a salon de thé. My bet is on the patisserie becoming a neighbourhood habit long before the Japanese restaurant settles in, because the 7th is a district of regulars, of diplomats, publishers and old families who know exactly where they like their coffee.
That is also why the location matters. Paris already has palace hotels in the 8th, along the Golden Triangle, but the Left Bank has always done grandeur more quietly. Maybourne's Riviera hotel showed the group can build something new without losing its manners, and this quarter, bookish and residential, suits that temperament well. The test will be whether a 101-key hotel with three pools can still feel like a private house on Rue Saint-Dominique, and Maybourne is one of the few groups I would trust to pull that off.
At a glance: opening 2027 · 50 suites, 51 rooms and 23 residences · rooftop pool, Surrenne spa and health club, six restaurants and bars · 7th arrondissement, Rive Gauche · Maybourne's first hotel in Paris and its second in France
Banyan Tree Bimini, The Bahamas
Maldives-style overwater villas arrive in the Caribbean, half an hour from Miami
Bimini has always lived slightly apart from the rest of The Bahamas. It is the westernmost district of the country and much closer to Florida than to Nassau, a scatter of low islands where Hemingway fished in the 1930s and where the bonefishing guides still talk about the flats with the seriousness other people reserve for wine. Banyan Tree's first resort in the Caribbean, and its first in North America, is going up on Rockwell Island, at the quieter end of the chain north of Bailey Town.
The headline is the overwater villas, the first in the Caribbean. Anyone who has stayed in the Maldives knows the appeal of stepping from bed to deck to lagoon without touching sand, and the renderings show a long, gently curving row of them over water so clear it looks shallow even where it is not. The hotel itself is small, with 50 keys, though it sits within a 750-acre development that also includes 54 waterfront residences, a marina and a beach club.
The architect is Chad Oppenheim, whose firm likes to talk about buildings that disappear into the landscape, and the low, pale villas in the drawings suggest he means it. There will be a signature restaurant, a lounge, a library and a bar, with an emphasis on local and seasonal food, and of course a Banyan Tree Spa, which has always been the brand's strongest suit.
Getting there is the part that will either delight or worry you. Rockwell Island is 48 nautical miles east of Miami, about 30 minutes door to door by seaplane, helicopter, private jet or boat. That makes it a weekend proposition for South Florida in a way the Maldives never could be, and it is clearly aimed at people who own a boat as well as a passport.
My reservation is Bimini itself, which is no longer the sleepy outpost it was. Virgin Voyages runs its own beach club on the island and cruise passengers arrive in numbers, so the success of Banyan Tree will depend on how well Rockwell Island is kept apart from that traffic. Done well, this could be the Caribbean's most original resort opening in years. Done carelessly, it risks becoming an expensive villa with a view of a cruise ship.
Timing has also changed, with earlier announcements promising 2021 and then 2025. The residences have been coming first, and the full resort is now pencilled in for 2027.
At a glance: opening 2027 · 50 keys including overwater villas, plus 54 residences · beach club, signature restaurant, library, bar and Banyan Tree Spa · Rockwell Island, Bimini, about 30 minutes from Miami
Nolinski Golfe de Saint-Tropez, France
A Riviera holiday house for people who like Saint-Tropez best from a safe distance (though La Pinède Plage, one of my favourite hotels, is difficult to beat)
The Mas de Chastelas was one of those Gassin addresses that regulars on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez spoke about with a slightly proprietorial fondness. It opened in the 1980s, stayed in the same family for thirty years and sat among vines and umbrella pines a few minutes inland from the beaches, close enough to Pampelonne for lunch and far enough to sleep. Evok Collection bought it in 2024 with Zaka Investments, and in April 2027 it reopens as the first Nolinski outside a city.
That is a bigger shift than it sounds. Nolinski made its name in Paris in 2016 and later in Venice with dark, clever, rather grown-up city hotels, and the Riviera asks for something quite different. Nathan Litera, the designer, is promising clean lines, warm materials and a great deal of light, and the renderings show pale stone walls, shuttered windows in a soft grey-blue and gardens planted with lavender, cypress and olive in a way that looks Provençal without tipping into cliché.
There are 55 rooms and suites across three hectares of landscaped gardens, each with its own terrace, and some interconnect for families. Two pools, of 18 and 33 metres, a tennis and padel club, a spa and clubs for both children and teenagers make the intention clear. This is a hotel for the long summer holiday, the three-generation August with grandparents on the terrace and teenagers out of sight, and I think that is a smart reading of who actually books Saint-Tropez these days.
The food will matter more than usual, because Evok's whole pitch is the rhythm of the day: long lunches, an aperitif that drifts into dinner, the slow return from the beach. With only one main restaurant and a bar, the kitchen will carry a lot of weight, and I would want to see the menu before deciding whether to dine in or head down to the port.
Gassin is a good place to be. The perched village has one of the best views over the gulf, and staying inland spares you the traffic on the road into town, which in July can turn a ten-minute drive into an hour. The Nolinski will also have company, with Oetker Collection opening its own hotel above Pampelonne the same year, and that competition should keep both of them sharp.
At a glance: opening April 2027 · 55 rooms and suites, all with terraces · two pools, spa, tennis and padel, kids' and teens' clubs · Gassin, a short drive from Saint-Tropez and Pampelonne
Na Praia, Comporta, Portugal
Ten years of replanting dunes, two kilometres of beach and a wine bar with five thousand bottles
Comporta has spent the past decade filling up with people, then complaining that it's full, while newer hotels have mostly been set back among the rice fields and cork oaks. Na Praia is different because it is on the sand. It occupies 340 hectares on the peninsula between the Atlantic and the Sado Estuary Nature Reserve, just north of the village near Carvalhal, with direct access to two kilometres of white beach, and it took more than ten years of landscape regeneration before a single guest arrived.
I should be clear that it is not, strictly, a 2027 opening. The hotel opened on 1 June 2026, and next year will be its first full season, which is when a place like this really shows what it is.
The architecture comes from Studio KO, the French practice behind the Yves Saint Laurent museum in Marrakech, working with Doxiadis+ and Estúdio Lisboa. The rule they set themselves was that the buildings follow the existing topography and that native plants, juniper and wild thyme among them, stay where they are. The rendering shows walls of layered, sand-coloured stone, crazy-paved terraces and a round plunge pool, everything the colour of the dune, which is exactly right for a coast this pale.
There are 113 keys in all, made up of 42 rooms, three suites, 63 houses and five villas with private pools and their own way down to the beach. The houses are built on a hexagonal plan and can be linked together, which is a clever answer to the problem of families and groups who want to holiday together without sharing a bathroom.
Food is where I expect Na Praia to win people over. Casa Na Praia is a café, bakery and charcuterie by day and a wine bar at night, with a cellar of more than five thousand references, and the kitchens buy fish from the old stilt pier at Carrasqueira and vegetables from small farms nearby run by local women. There is a spa built for long, quiet sessions, a resident biologist who leads walks through the dunes and a children's club.
If it has a weakness, it is scale. A hotel of 113 keys on a wild beach has to work hard to feel wild, and the first full summer will show whether those houses scattered among the pines keep their sense of solitude when every one of them is occupied. On the evidence of how carefully it has been built, I am inclined to think they will.
At a glance: opened June 2026, first full season 2027 · 42 rooms, 3 suites, 63 houses, 5 villas · restaurants, wine bar, spa, kids' club · just over an hour from Lisbon airport · a member of The Leading Hotels of the World
Bvlgari Resort Ranfushi, The Maldives
The Roman jeweller finally lands on its Little Gold Island, three years later than planned, let's hope it's worth the wait!
Ranfushi means Little Gold Island in Dhivehi, and you can see why the name appealed to a house that has been setting stones in gold since 1884. Bvlgari signed for the island, in the Raa Atoll about 45 minutes by seaplane north of Malé, in 2022 and promised it for 2025. It then moved to 2026, and the brand now says 2027, so I will believe in the first sunset when someone sends me a photograph of it.
The wait may well be worth it. Bvlgari Resort Bali, the group's first resort, remains one of the most beautiful hotels in Asia, all lava stone and clifftop calm, and the same architects are in charge here. Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel have designed every Bvlgari property, and their style of warm wood, deep shade and very good furniture tends to age better than the showier Maldives competition.
It is a small resort by local standards, with 54 villas over 20 hectares. There are 33 beach villas, each with its own pool, 20 overwater villas and a single Bvlgari Villa on a separate private island, which will no doubt be booked by the kind of guest who rents the whole of something. As part of the build, a new island is being created for the atoll's nesting birds, a gesture I would like to see more developers make.
The food is the strongest card. Niko Romito, whose Reale in the Abruzzo holds three Michelin stars, oversees Il Ristorante, as he does across the Bvlgari hotels, where his restaurants have become one of the main reasons to stay. Alongside it there is Bao Li Xuan for Chinese fine dining, Hōseki for Japanese omakase with a short, serious sake list and La Spiaggia for long lunches with sand underfoot. The Bvlgari Bar, the Bvlgari Spa, a boutique and La Galleria complete the familiar set.
What I cannot yet tell you is how it will feel. City Bvlgaris have a certain polished, after-dark glamour, and the Maldives is a place where most guests want to go barefoot by the second afternoon. Bali showed the brand can relax, and if Ranfushi manages the same balance it will be among the best resorts in the country. Raa Atoll also has serious diving, so it is worth packing a mask as well as a jacket for dinner.
At a glance: opening 2027, no exact date yet · 54 villas, including 20 overwater and one on a private island · four restaurants including Il Ristorante Niko Romito, Bvlgari Spa · Raa Atoll, 45 minutes by seaplane from Malé
Kenshō Paros, Greece
Mykonos money arrives on the quieter island, with a pool for almost every room
Paros used to be the island you went to when you had grown tired of Mykonos, a place of family-run hotels, windsurfers at Golden Beach and fishing boats in the harbour at Naoussa. It is now in the middle of the busiest run of luxury openings the Cyclades have seen, with OVÉA, a Marriott Autograph Collection hotel and a Hyatt among the arrivals, and Kenshō is the one that interests me most because it already knows how to run a very good small hotel on a very demanding island.
Kenshō began in Mykonos, above Ornos Bay, and built its following on discreet service and food that was better than it needed to be. The Paros hotel sits on the other side of the bay from Parikia at Krios, a couple of minutes' walk from the beach and within a short drive of the port. It was slated for a soft start in the summer of 2026, so think of next summer as the season in which it settles in and gets judged.
The design takes the dry-stone terraces of the Cycladic hillside and makes them the main event. In the renderings, rough walls of grey local stone rise behind long, low pavilions roofed in rust-coloured steel, with pale stone terraces, an infinity pool and planting of lavender and feathery grasses that will look its best in June before the meltemi browns it off. It is a more grown-up look than the whitewash and blue doors most visitors expect, and I like it a great deal.
There are 47 suites and villas, and nearly every one has its own pool, which on an island where August days can be fiercely bright is less of an extravagance than it sounds. The largest is a four-bedroom villa facing the sea. There are two restaurants built around Greek produce and the flavours of Paros, three bars, a beach club and a spa with four treatment rooms, including space for couples and treatments outdoors.
My one hesitation is the location. Krios is lovely and calm, but it is not Naoussa, and guests who want to wander out for dinner by the harbour will need a car, a taxi or the little boats that cross from Parikia. For many people that distance will be the whole attraction, and for anyone who has spent a Mykonos August fighting for a sunbed it may feel like a gift.
At a glance: first full season 2027 · 47 suites and villas, most with private pools · two restaurants, three bars, beach club, spa · Krios beach, near Parikia, about 25 minutes from Paros airport
Six Senses Quexigal Palace, near Madrid, Spain
A royal country estate built by the architect of El Escorial, reopened as a village for weekenders
In 1563 Juan de Herrera, the architect who would go on to build El Escorial for Philip II, designed a country house in the hills west of Madrid that was soon spoken of as the most beautiful estate in Spain. The king later took El Quexigal as a royal retreat, and for long stretches of its history it was run by Hieronymite monks who made wine, olive oil and honey on the land. In early 2027 it becomes the first Six Senses on the Spanish mainland, about 50 minutes' drive from the capital in the province of Ávila.
The owners are two of Spain's best-known wine families, which tells you something about how seriously the estate's farming past will be taken. The project covers 100 hectares, with the palace and its outbuildings restored by the Madrid practice Arvo Arquitectura and interiors by Raphaël Navot, the Paris-based designer whose work tends to feel sculptural and quietly expensive. The one image released so far shows a bedroom under a vaulted ceiling of old brick, with a bed framed by a sinuous copper rail and nightstands in a pale, curved wood, and it is the most original hotel bedroom I have seen in a rendering this year.
There are 60 places to stay spread across the main house and the auxiliary buildings, including 13 suites and a presidential suite with its own gardens, plus a five-bedroom villa with full service for families or groups who want the place to feel like theirs. Six Senses describes the whole as a 16th-century royal village, and the intention is that guests move between houses, gardens and fields rather than staying inside one grand building.
The spa looks properly equipped, with six treatment rooms, a vitality pool, infrared and Finnish saunas, a steam room, a salt cave and an ice bath. Food will come from the estate and the surrounding countryside wherever possible, and there will be an Earth Lab explaining the restoration and the materials used.
My favourite detail has nothing to do with the palace. El Quexigal is close to the European Space Agency's deep-space tracking station at Cebreros, where the skies are often clear enough to make an evening of it, and the hotel is planning an observation deck for stargazing. Madrileños already head for the Sierra de Guadarrama at weekends, and a Six Senses with a monastery's history and a space agency's sky should have no trouble finding them.
At a glance: opening early 2027 · 60 rooms and suites, plus a five-bedroom villa · Six Senses Spa, Earth Lab, stargazing deck · Ávila province, around 50 minutes from Madrid
Anantara Zanzibar Resort, Tanzania
A big, polished lagoon resort (I had to include it, but, as you know, resorts aren't for me) for the island's northern tip, aimed at families and long stays
Zanzibar has changed faster than almost anywhere in East Africa over the past decade. The old pattern of a few nights in Stone Town followed by a simple beach bungalow after safari has given way to a coast lined with international brands, and the north, around Nungwi and Kendwa, has become the busiest stretch because the tides there are kinder to swimmers than on the east coast, where the sea can retreat for hundreds of metres. Anantara, which already has a good reputation in the Indian Ocean, opens here in 2027.
It is worth being honest about what kind of place this will be. With 181 keys it is large, and the mix tells you a great deal. There are 37 suites, a presidential villa and 73 one- and two-bedroom villas facing the sea, each with a private pool, but also 38 one-bedroom apartments, 19 two-bedroom apartments, eight three-bedroom penthouse apartments and five further penthouses. Minor Hotels describes it as a resort for both leisure and extended stays, and the apartments suggest it is courting families and people who come for a month rather than a week.
The renderings show low, flat-roofed pavilions in pale timber set along winding channels of turquoise water and thick tropical planting, so the lagoon views and water access will be the defining feature. Six restaurants and bars include all-day dining, a beach grill, a beach club bar, a delicatessen café, a pool bar and, slightly unexpectedly, a tiki bar. There is an Anantara Spa, kids' and teens' clubs, a gym, a water sports club, a lagoon pool, a library, meeting rooms and a business centre.
This will not be the most intimate stay on the island, and travellers who want barefoot simplicity will be happier in one of the smaller lodges further down the coast. Where Anantara usually does well is in the detail of service and in getting guests out to see the place properly, and on Zanzibar that means dhow trips at sunset, the spice farms inland, the forest at Jozani with its red colobus monkeys and, above all, a long morning lost in the alleys of Stone Town.
The resort is owned by Dubai's Infinity Group and operated by Minor, which runs more than 540 hotels around the world, so the systems will be slick from the first day. Whether it feels like Zanzibar rather than a very comfortable anywhere will come down to the menus, the staff and the willingness to send guests beyond the gates.
At a glance: opening 2027 · 181 keys, including private-pool villas, apartments and penthouses · six restaurants and bars, Anantara Spa, kids' club, water sports · northern coast of Zanzibar Island
Trunk(Hotel) Sapporo, Japan
Tokyo's most sociable boutique brand heads north, with a rooftop bathhouse and Sushi Saito on the tenth floor
Trunk(Hotel) opened in a backstreet of Shibuya in 2017 and quickly became the place where Tokyo's design crowd went for coffee, lunch and the bar, as much as somewhere to sleep. It has since added hotels at Yoyogi Park and on Cat Street, and on 17 September 2027 it leaves Tokyo for the first time with Trunk(Hotel) Sapporo, its fourth and largest property, in the Odori district in the middle of Hokkaido's capital.
The hotel takes the top floors of the new Sapporo Daibiru building, a couple of minutes on foot from Odori subway station, between Odori Park and the covered shopping arcades of Tanukikoji. The 107 rooms, 89 of them standard and 18 suites including several spa suites, sit on floors 13 to 18. The look is something Trunk calls Midcentury Folklore, which in the renderings means a great deal of wood, low sofas, woven throws, ceramics on lacquered trays and big windows over the city lights, rather like a 1960s mountain lodge rebuilt by a Tokyo furniture shop. It is warmer and more rustic than the Shibuya original, which feels right for a city where snow lies on the ground for months.
The floor everyone will talk about is the 18th, given over to Trunk(Bath House), the brand's first spa. A water channel about 40 metres long runs through it, linking ten bathing areas where temperature, light and sound change from one to the next, and swimwear is worn throughout. Separate men's and women's areas have large communal baths, hot saunas, cold plunges and outdoor terraces. In a country with such a deep bathing culture, this is a bold thing for a city hotel to attempt, and if it works it could be the reason people choose Sapporo over a ski town for a night or two.
The other draw is Sushi Saito, the Tokyo sushi counter that is famously hard to book, which opens its first Sapporo outpost on the tenth floor and will combine Edomae technique with Hokkaido fish and shellfish. Plenty of people already fly to Hokkaido for the crab, uni and scallops alone, so expectations will be very high. On the same floor there is an all-day restaurant and a lounge bar with live piano and bands, plus a terrace fitted with transparent domes for winter.
The extras, a chapel with a six-metre ceiling, three banquet halls, a private cinema and a karaoke room, suggest the hotel will also be busy with weddings and parties, and that could make weekends lively. For winter visitors heading to Niseko or Furano, a night here at either end of the trip already looks like the best way to see Sapporo.
At a glance: opening 17 September 2027 · 107 rooms, including 18 suites · Trunk(Bath House), Sushi Saito, all-day restaurant, live-music lounge · Odori, central Sapporo, two minutes from the subway
Six Senses Milan, Italy
Tara Bernerd brings arabescato marble and smoked glass to Via Brera, opposite one of Italy's great picture galleries
For years the standard complaint about Milan was that its hotels were built for trade fairs, comfortable and grey and full of people with lanyards. That has changed quickly, with Portrait, Rosewood and Rocco Forte all arriving or on the way, and Six Senses Milan is the one with the best address. It stands at Via Brera 19, directly opposite the Pinacoteca di Brera, in the old artists' quarter of galleries, cafés and narrow streets a short walk from the Duomo.
It has also been a long time coming. The hotel was announced for 2025, moved to late 2026 and is now due in early 2027, and I would keep an eye on that date before booking anything around the Salone del Mobile in April.
The interiors are by Tara Bernerd & Partners, whose work in London and elsewhere leans towards dark woods, rich textures and rooms that feel lived in, and the material list here is very Milanese: arabescato marble, antique brass, handmade smoked glass, textured ceilings and mosaic borders. Bernerd talks about a house-villa built with sartorial care, which is a fair description of the best Brera apartments, the ones you glimpse through a half-open portone with a courtyard garden behind.
There are 69 rooms, 16 of them suites. Two of the suites have plunge pools and one has a terrace with its own 12.5-metre pool, a rare thing in the middle of the city. There is an internal courtyard, a restaurant and deli focused on seasonal Italian cooking, a rooftop bar and an Earth Lab, the brand's space for explaining its sustainability work.
The spa is where Six Senses usually earns its rates, and the plans are serious, with a 15-metre pool, two saunas, a steam room and a cold plunge. The image released so far shows a relaxation area lined in travertine with branches carved into the stone and slatted wooden beams overhead, terracotta vessels on a ledge and a classical head watching over three loungers. It looks calm and very Italian, and in a city with so few hotel spas of real quality, I expect locals to want in as much as guests.
Prices will start at around €1,200 a night on a bed and breakfast basis, which puts it at the top of the Milan market. Six Senses Rome showed the brand can make a historic Italian building feel relaxed without turning it into a resort, and Brera, with its galleries on the doorstep, is a better setting for that idea than the fashion district would have been.
At a glance: opening early 2027 · 69 rooms including 16 suites, some with private pools · Six Senses Spa with 15-metre pool, rooftop bar, restaurant and deli · Via Brera 19, opposite the Pinacoteca di Brera
Vestige Xaudum, Namibia
Six suites on a Kalahari dune, inside one of the least-visited national parks in Africa
Khaudum National Park, in the far north-east of Namibia, is the kind of place safari people mention with a certain gleam. It covers more than 3,800 square kilometres of deep Kalahari sand, it is unfenced except along the border with Botswana so that elephants and wild dogs move freely in and out, and it receives fewer than 3,000 visitors a year. Most of them arrive in convoys of two four-by-fours, as the rules require, carrying their own water. From 15 March 2027 they will have the option of a bed, a bath and a very good dinner.
Vestige Xaudum will be the only lodge inside the park, set on a sand dune above an omuramba, one of the ancient fossil riverbeds that cross this part of the Kalahari and act as natural highways for game in the dry months. There are just six suites. A lodge on this site was planned years ago by another operator and never opened, and Vestige Estudio, the in-house design team, has substantially rebuilt and enlarged the suites and created a new main lodge.
If the renderings are any guide, it will be one of the most original safari interiors in Africa. One suite is shown under a great earthen dome with a circular opening to the sky, the walls rendered in a rough ochre plaster, with arched doorways leading off, a curved sofa in sage-green velvet and a wall of glass sliding open onto a deck above the plains. It looks like something between a desert dwelling and a piece of land art, and it deliberately avoids the old safari kit of canvas, brass and antlers. The thatch is from surrounding villages and local craftspeople have worked extensively on the build.
Vestige Collection is a Spanish family company, best known for restoring a 16th-century palace in Asturias and a handful of fincas on Menorca, and this is its first property outside Spain. It is also the first of four Namibian lodges, with Vestige Sorris Sorris, Vestige Omatendeka and Vestige Sheya Shuushona to follow, forming a circuit through the north of the country. I like that ambition, and I like even more that new recruits will spend three months in residential hospitality training before the lodge opens.
Guiding will follow the animals rather than a timetable, with game drives, bush breakfasts, walks outside the park boundary and stargazing under skies with next to no light pollution. Power comes from a solar system with battery storage and water from carefully managed boreholes.
Of everything opening in 2027, this is the one I would most like to visit. Its remoteness, its size and the fact that nobody yet knows quite how it will run all remind me of the safaris that first made people fall for this continent, before the private concessions filled with Land Cruisers.
At a glance: opening 15 March 2027 · six suites · game drives, guided walks, bush breakfasts, stargazing · the only lodge inside Khaudum National Park, northern Namibia
Maxx Royal Maldives
Türkiye's most lavish all-inclusive brand tries its luck in the Indian Ocean
Anyone who has stayed at The Maxx Royal in Bodrum or at its sister resorts in Belek and Kemer will know that this is not all-inclusive as most British travellers understand it. The formula is closer to an extremely generous private club, with a small army of staff, restaurants for every mood and a habit of anticipating what you want before you have decided. The Bodrum resort made Time magazine's list of the World's Greatest Places in 2025, and in autumn 2027 the group opens its first hotel outside Türkiye, in the Maldives.
It is in Kaafu Atoll, at Ul'laanee Falhu in North Malé Atoll, about 30 minutes by speedboat from Velana International Airport. That short transfer matters more than people think, because it spares guests the seaplane schedule and lets a family arrive in time for lunch. North Malé is also known for its surf breaks and lively reefs, so there is plenty to do beyond the villa.
The resort spreads across several connected islands, and every villa, overwater or set in the gardens, has its own pool, with larger multi-bedroom villas for families and groups. At the far end of the chain, a handful of villas on Thari Island form a private enclave with its own beach, spa facilities and a dedicated team, including Kiaya, Maxx Royal's personal butler service. The rendering shows a timber-framed overwater villa with a thatched fringe, a long infinity pool running out towards the horizon and a woven daybed on the deck, which is handsome if fairly familiar by Maldivian standards.
What will make it different is the Maxx Inclusive model. The resort is opening in phases, and a second phase in September 2027 brings what Maxx Royal calls the core of its food and entertainment, including Twenty4, an all-day venue, and Le Melange & Chocolatier. The Maxx Assistant service handles everything before arrival, and the Maxx Wellbeing Spa travels over from Türkiye too. There are also plans for a marine biology centre and a manta protection programme, which in an atoll this busy is welcome.
The question is whether a style of hospitality built for the huge resorts of the Turkish coast translates to the hushed, small-island Maldives. My guess is that it will suit families and multigenerational groups very well, the ones who like to know that every ice cream, cocktail and dinner is already paid for, and that couples looking for silence may prefer somewhere smaller. Maxx Royal has rarely put a foot wrong at home, so I would not bet against it.
At a glance: opening autumn 2027, in phases · overwater and garden villas, all with private pools, plus a private-island enclave · Maxx Inclusive, Maxx Wellbeing Spa, marine biology centre · North Malé Atoll, 30 minutes by speedboat from Malé
Virgin Limited Edition Marrakech, Morocco
Orange groves, a 40-metre pool and a speakeasy, 25 minutes beyond the city walls, one of the most exciting openings to look out for!
Kasbah Tamadot has long been one of the most loved hotels in Morocco, a kasbah in the Atlas foothills above Asni with terraced gardens and mountain views that make it hard to leave. For years its one drawback was distance from Marrakech, and Virgin Limited Edition's answer is a second Moroccan hotel, an hour away and only 25 minutes from the medina, which opens in 2027.
It is going up on a ten-hectare private estate within a larger organic farm of citrus orchards, olive groves and vegetable gardens, developed with the Marrakech property firm Sazanes Immobilier. There will be 37 suites in total, but they will arrive in two stages, with 22 opening in the first quarter of 2027 and the remaining 15 in the first quarter of 2028. I would ask about the construction work when booking that first season, because a small hotel can feel very different with a crane next door.
The design draws on Moroccan craft and Berber building traditions, using local stone and wood, and the rendering shows a long, low pavilion in pinkish earth tones, black awnings slung between posts on the roof terrace, a round plunge pool and a garden of boulders, agave and cactus. It looks rather like a desert camp that has decided to settle down permanently, which is exactly the mood I would want just outside Marrakech. Artworks by Moroccan and African artists will hang throughout, with a space for pop-up exhibitions.
The farm is the point of difference. Three restaurants, a Chef's Table and a speakeasy bar will all cook with what is grown on the estate, and in a city where the luxury hotels in the Palmeraie can feel interchangeable, that is a strong idea. Beyond the table there is a traditional hammam, a 40-metre pool, tennis, padel and horse riding, plus the programme of cultural outings Virgin's hotels tend to do well.
The obvious way to use it is as half of a double act. Spend a few nights here for the souks, the gardens and dinners in town, then drive up to Kasbah Tamadot for walks in the Ourika and Imlil valleys, and the two together make the kind of Moroccan trip that is very hard to arrange well on your own. Bookings opened in September 2026, and a residential project on the estate will follow later.
At a glance: opening first quarter of 2027, with all 37 suites by 2028 · three restaurants, Chef's Table, speakeasy, hammam, 40-metre pool · tennis, padel and riding · 25 minutes from central Marrakech, an hour from Kasbah Tamadot
Amanolu, The Maldives
Aman's long-awaited Maldives debut, where sixteen houses each get an island of their own
It has always seemed odd that Aman, the brand that more or less invented the modern idea of the remote, hushed resort with Amanpuri in Phuket in 1988, had no hotel in the Maldives. That gap now has a name. Amanolu combines Aman, from the Sanskrit for peace, with olu, after the water lily found across the Indian Ocean, and it will be in Vaavu Atoll, one of the least developed atolls in the country, reached by seaplane from Malé.
A note on timing first. Amanolu has been widely listed as a 2027 opening, but in September 2026 Aman confirmed it for 2028, so this is one to plan for rather than book.
The architects are Kerry Hill Architects, the Singapore practice behind Aman Tokyo and Amanemu, whose buildings have a way of making the landscape feel like the main material. Here the brief is white coral sand, shallow lagoons and very little between inside and out. The aerial rendering shows a low island ringed by a breakwater, a cluster of steep thatched roofs among the palms and a long pool facing the beach, simple and spare in a way that should stand apart from the busier resorts further north.
The hotel has 52 keys, but the attention-grabbing part is the 16 Aman Residences. Each has five bedrooms and sits on its own island, with a private beach, a 25-metre pool, a berth for a boat and quarters for staff. Some face sunrise, some sunset, and some stretch from one shore to the other so you can follow the light all day. It is an extravagance almost to the point of comedy, and also a very clever way of offering a private island without the bother of owning one outright.
Rather than piling everything onto a single island, Amanolu spreads its facilities across the water. One island is given over to an Aman Spa and the brand's Spa Houses, private suites for longer treatments, and another to diving, snorkelling and water sports. Vaavu is known among divers for its channels, Fotteyo Kandu above all, so the dive centre should be more than an afterthought. There will be restaurants drawing on Aman's international concepts, family facilities and shared spaces for guests.
Aman's best resorts work because they feel withdrawn from the world without feeling empty, and the multi-island plan could help that by keeping the activity in one place and the quiet in another. It is a long wait, but I expect this to be the Maldives resort that serious travellers talk about once it opens.
At a glance: opening 2028 · 52 keys and 16 private-island residences · spa island, activity island, Aman restaurants · Vaavu Atoll, by seaplane from Malé
Hotel Bellevue Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
A 19th-century grand hotel on Corso Italia returns, dressed in the spirit of Cortina's 1956 Olympics
Cortina d'Ampezzo has always had a slightly cinematic glamour, the Dolomite town of fur coats on Corso Italia, Bellinis at the Hotel de la Poste and Peter Sellers bumbling through The Pink Panther. What it had lacked for a long time was hotels to match the reputation, and the 2026 Winter Olympics finally forced the issue. The Grand Hotel Ampezzo has reopened after twenty years, Mandarin Oriental is restoring the Cristallo, and the Bellevue, on the town's main promenade, returns as the first Italian hotel in Accor's Emblems Collection.
The building dates back to the late 19th century, and when Prodea Investments and Invel Real Estate bought it for around €49 million ahead of the Games, part of it had become private flats. The reopening was announced for the end of 2026, so the realistic expectation is that its first proper season will be the winter of 2026 to 2027, with a full summer to follow.
The architecture is by the Italian practice pconp and the interiors by Tihany Design, whose principal Alessia Genova grew up in Italy and has drawn openly on Cortina's golden age. The images show a lounge with floor-to-ceiling windows onto snowy chalets and fir trees, a ceiling of pale timber bands, two great hoop chandeliers encrusted with crystal, a dark rug with the curves of a ski run woven into it, and a lean mid-century armchair in walnut and leather next to a heavy stone table lamp. It is the kind of room Gio Ponti might have furnished for an Olympic delegation in 1956, and I mean that as high praise.
There are 80 rooms, 27 of them suites, with mountain views. The spa covers 500 square metres and has both an indoor and an outdoor pool, which on a clear January afternoon with the Tofane turning pink is about as good as Alpine bathing gets. Food will be served in a main restaurant and on the Bellevue Terrace, whose menu changes with the seasons, and the owners have said from the start that they want the hotel to be somewhere the town comes to eat.
Corso Italia is the best and worst place to stay in Cortina. You can walk to everything, the shops, the bars and the cable car to Faloria, but in high season it is the busiest street in the valley. For anyone who prefers to be in the middle of things, and in Cortina most people do, the Bellevue looks like the hotel the town has been missing.
At a glance: opening winter 2026 to 2027 · 80 rooms, including 27 suites · 500-square-metre spa with indoor and outdoor pools, Bellevue Terrace and main restaurant · Corso Italia, central Cortina d'Ampezzo
Son Valentí, Mallorca
A 15th-century estate with its own watchtower, high in the Tramuntana above Banyalbufar
The road from Esporles to Banyalbufar is one of the loveliest drives in Mallorca, a narrow ribbon of bends between holm oaks and terraced hillsides that drop away towards the sea. Halfway along it, on the slopes of the Serra de Tramuntana, sits Son Valentí, a 15th-century estate that Richard Branson's Virgin Limited Edition is turning into its second hotel on the island, a neighbour to Son Bunyola, which opened in 2023.
The estate is big, at roughly 46 hectares, and it is protected. It was declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 2018, and it took years of approvals before work could begin, with conditions that the old terraces and dry-stone walls be kept, new walls built in the traditional way and 195 trees planted. The house itself is an imposing Mallorcan manor arranged around a central courtyard, with a medieval defensive watchtower, the kind once used to look out for pirates, an ancient olive mill in a room of some 245 square metres, stables and outbuildings. From almost everywhere on the land you can see the Mediterranean.
It will be tiny. Plans have changed over the years, from 29 rooms to 17 and, in the most recent reports, to about a dozen suites, which would make it one of the most intimate hotels on the island. The single interior image released shows a room under dark timber beams, with old terracotta floor tiles, a woven jute rug, white-painted panelled cupboards and a deep olive-green headboard cut in a stepped outline, lit by two alabaster pendant lamps hanging on long cords. It is calm and earthy and properly Mallorcan, and that green headboard is braver than anything I have seen in a new Mallorcan hotel for some time.
The Son Bunyola estate already includes a hotel and villas along the coast, and Son Valentí extends Virgin's land into something close to a private valley. That should mean real walking from the door along old mule tracks, the Banyalbufar terraces where Malvasia grapes are grown again, and swimming in the coves below, though anyone who knows this coast will tell you the paths down are steep.
Timing is the uncertain part. The hotel was originally due in 2026 and is now spoken of for 2027, and given the heritage rules involved I would not be surprised if it took a little longer. With so few suites, my advice is to register interest early, because when it does open it will fill very fast.
At a glance: expected 2027 · around 12 suites (to be confirmed) · 15th-century estate with watchtower and olive mill, sea views · Banyalbufar, Serra de Tramuntana, about 30 minutes from Palma airport
La Maviglia, Puglia, Italy
Golf, a medical spa and 202 hectares of olive groves in Primitivo country, on the coast most visitors miss
Most people who holiday in Puglia stay on the Adriatic side, in the Valle d'Itria around Ostuni and Fasano or down towards Lecce. The Ionian coast south of Taranto gets far fewer foreign visitors, which is precisely what drew Nicola Cortese, the Swiss-Italian former banker and one-time chairman of Southampton Football Club, to an old estate outside Maruggio. His company, Ultimate Collection, bought it in 2023, and La Maviglia is due to open there in 2027, with an investment that reportedly runs past €200 million.
The land is the reason to pay attention. It covers 202 hectares, roughly 500 acres, of olive groves and old orchards of cherry, almond, citrus, pomegranate and fig, with more than 40 stone trulli scattered across it and a 16th-century masseria at the centre. Maruggio itself has a 12th-century castle, the Castello dei Commendatori, a reminder of the town's role during the Crusades, and the sandy beaches of the Ionian are a short drive away.
The architects are Oppenheim Architecture, the same practice working on Banyan Tree Bimini, with Enea Landscape Architecture, and the rendering shows exactly what you would hope for: long, low pavilions in pale render, a row of arched openings, a wide stone terrace with a fire bowl and floor cushions, a long pool and lavender running down to a lawn of wild grasses. It feels rooted in the masseria tradition without copying it.
In total there are 70 suites, ranging from 55 to 150 square metres, a 20-room hotel inside the golf complex and 35 villas. There will be four restaurants led by chefs, a private beach club, an 18-hole golf course that weaves around the old water features and orchards, and a medical spa of 5,000 square metres developed with the consultancy Maina, which is run by the industry veteran Paul Fehr. The estate will also farm organic vegetables and make its own olive oil and wine.
Comparisons with Borgo Egnazia are inevitable, and some in Italy are already calling La Maviglia its Ionian rival. My worry is the golf, because golf resorts have a tendency to smooth away exactly the wildness that makes a landscape like this special. If the course really does follow the old orchards and stone walls rather than flattening them, this could become one of the great hotels of southern Italy, with Primitivo vineyards on the doorstep and an empty coast beyond.
At a glance: opening 2027 · 70 suites, a 20-room golf hotel and 35 villas · medical spa, four restaurants, beach club, 18-hole golf course · Maruggio, province of Taranto, within reach of Brindisi and Bari airports