5 Emerging Ultra-Luxury Destinations Worth Planning Around

There is something quietly satisfying about arriving somewhere before everyone else has found it. This year, a Saudi wellness coast welcomed its first guests on June 15, Aman opened its first resort in Mexico on August 1, and a Montenegrin island hotel that had been shut since 2021 reopened in stages. Three very different openings, all pointing the same way.

Another began as a family home. Fawn Bluff, on the edge of British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest, was once the home of Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley before its French owner turned it into a nonprofit retreat. Add a Riviera that has quietly multiplied its resorts, and you have the five destinations ultra-luxury travellers are heading to next.

5 Emerging Ultra-Luxury Destinations

AMAALA opened with Four Seasons Resort and Residences at Triple Bay, and Six Senses AMAALA followed in July. The Four Seasons occupies 16 acres and has the longest beachfront in Triple Bay, at 900 metres. It has 202 rooms, suites and villas, plus 26 private residences of 552 to over 1,000 sq m, each with a private pool, and it runs entirely on renewable energy. Guests can tour the Corallium Marine Life Institute and use the AMAALA Yacht Club, in keeping with a destination built around wellness and marine conservation.

Aman chose the quieter East Cape over the busy Los Cabos corridor. Amanvari has just 18 casitas, each with a private heated pool, an outdoor shower and a broad terrace. It sits inside the 1,500-acre Costa Palmas community, about 45 minutes from Los Cabos airport, with three miles of swimmable Sea of Cortez shoreline. The estate also holds 18 acres of organic orchards and farms, a marina and a Robert Trent Jones II golf course.

A cluster of luxury lodges has turned this remote coast into a destination for ultra-high-net-worth travellers. Fawn Bluff opened in June 2026 on 340 acres of Homalco First Nation territory, reached only by seaplane or helicopter. It has a five-bedroom main house and a lake cabin, and is open from June 1 to October 15. All net profits go to Homalco community initiatives.

The story here is a comeback. Aman Sveti Stefan had been closed since 2021 after a dispute between the government and the leaseholder over beach access and guest privacy. Villa Miločer, a 19th-century royal summer residence, reopened on May 22 with the Aman Spa and two beaches, and the fortified island followed on July 1. Around ten ultra-luxury hotels now line the coast between Sveti Stefan and the Bay of Kotor, including One&Only Portonovi, the brand's first European resort, which opened in 2021.

In 2020 the coast had essentially two properties international travellers would recognise as resorts. It now has eight to ten, and Accor's MGallery is the first major international brand, at the Green Coast Hotel in Palasë. The headline promise is a EUR 1.4 billion resort on Sazan Island, a former military base, but it is contested. Albania's anti-corruption prosecutors opened an investigation on June 1, 2026 into changes to the island's protected status.