Resort Reviews
18 posts tagged Resort Reviews.
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Best All-Inclusive Drinks in Mexico and the Caribbean (2026)
Every all-inclusive pours unlimited drinks, which makes it useless for choosing between them. The questions that actually matter are narrower: is the liquor top shelf, do you have to ask for it, why is everything so sweet, and is there anything in the room. Here are the answers, and the resorts where somebody is genuinely making something.
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The Best Adults-Only Resorts in St. Lucia (2026)
Here's the thing nobody tells you before you book St. Lucia: the airport is at one end of the island and most of the famous resorts are at the other, and the drive between them is far slower than any map suggests. I've been to the island twice. Here's where each of five adults-only resorts actually puts you, and which suite category to ask for.
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The Best Adults-Only Swim-Up & Swim-Out Suites in the Dominican Republic (2026)
Seven adults-only resorts on the Punta Cana coast where the terrace steps straight into water. The exact category to ask for at each, what the transfer really costs you in hours, and the sargassum question nobody puts on the booking page.
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The Best Adults-Only Swim-Up Suites in Jamaica (2026)
Jamaica's adults-only swim-up list is short, and Hurricane Melissa made it shorter. Four resorts you can book today, one with private pools instead, three more coming back — and the category to ask for by name at each.
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The Best Adults-Only Resorts in Barbados (2026)
Barbados has spent years keeping the big all-inclusive brands at a distance, which is part of why its adults-only water scene is easy to miss. It's smaller than Mexico's or Jamaica's, but it's real — a private SkyPool suite, a swim-up lagoon, a ten-room hideaway, and a brand-new west-coast property with a rum program built in. Here's what to book at each.
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The Best Overwater Pool Villas in Bora Bora (2026)
Every Bora Bora resort sells the same photograph: a bungalow on stilts over impossibly blue water. What the photograph doesn't show is that the plunge pool on the deck is a specific category, not a given — and on this island, nobody puts one in every single villa. Here's which name to book at each of the four.
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Maldives vs. Bora Bora: What Actually Separates Them
Both sell the same photograph: a bungalow on stilts over water too blue to look real. The photograph doesn't tell you which one is actually a full day of travel each way, which one has better food, or which one has rules about alcohol you'll want to know before you land. Here's the honest version.
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The Best Overwater Pool Villas in the Maldives (2026)
Booking an overwater villa in the Maldives does not mean you're getting a pool. On some islands every villa has one; on others it's a category you have to book on purpose, and on two of the loveliest adults-only islands there isn't one at all. Here's which is which.
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The Best Private Pool Villas in Phuket and Koh Samui (2026)
Almost every villa resort on these two islands gives you your own pool. So the question isn't whether you get one — it's what you trade for it. Usually a hillside, sometimes a buggy, and on one coast a sea you can't swim in half the year.
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The Best Swim-Up Rooms in Bali (2026)
Most of Bali's best-looking rooms come with water you can photograph and not much you can swim in. A handful of resorts do the opposite — a lagoon threading the property, and a room you step out of straight into it. Here's who does it, what it costs, and the room categories that quietly come with no water at all.
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All-Inclusive Resorts With Private Pools & Plunge Pools (2026)
"Private pool" is the most oversold phrase in resort booking. It covers everything from a soaking tub on a terrace to a sixteen-by-twenty-foot pool you can actually swim in, and both get the same filter checkbox. Here's which all-inclusive resorts deliver water that's genuinely yours — including the handful where every single room has one.
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Sargassum Season in Mexico? Book the Swim-Up Room, Not the Beach
Sargassum is in the headlines again this summer — but the best mornings in Mexico were never on the beach. Picture a swim-up room: warm water starting at your terrace, coffee in hand, the resort still asleep. Here's how to book the trip the seaweed can't touch.
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Why Fakarava Belongs on Your French Polynesia Itinerary
Most travelers to French Polynesia never make it past Bora Bora. That's exactly why you should — one more inter-island flight lands you on a UNESCO atoll with walls of gray reef sharks, a pink sand beach, and a working pearl farm older than most of the resorts in Bora Bora.
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Belize Is the Caribbean You Haven't Tried Yet
Belize has one of the world's great barrier reefs, an in-water dining experience unlike anything in the Caribbean, and one excellent adults-only boutique resort. Worth it.
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Best Adults-Only Swim-Up Rooms in Mexico (2026)
If you've ever filtered for a swim-up suite and landed on a family resort with a kiddie pool, this list is for you. Every resort here is adults-only, on Mexico's Caribbean coast — with the exact room category to ask for and the one detail at each that decides whether it's your kind of week.
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3 New Adults-Only Resorts Worth Knowing About in 2026
Overwater villas in Jamaica, a rum-soaked Autograph property in Barbados, and a two-water newcomer in Cancún — three genuinely new adults-only resorts that opened in the last eight months. Here's why we're paying attention.
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Platinum Yucatán Princess: A Last-Minute Booking That Mostly Worked Out
I ended up at the Platinum Yucatán Princess for an honest reason: my first choice, Barceló Maya Riviera Adults Only, was sold out. I needed a Riviera Maya trip, I needed it adults-only, and I wanted a swim-up suite. Platinum Yucatán Princess checked all three boxes and had a room available at the last minute.
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Why I Keep Going Back to Barceló Maya Riviera
Some resorts you visit once and check off the list. Barceló Maya Riviera is not that resort. I've lost count of how many times I've been, and I'm already thinking about the next trip before the current one ends.