The Luxury Hotels Making Travel Fun Again

Remember when traveling was actually enjoyable? Haven’t you missed it? 

If your answer is yes, you’re in luck. Luxury hospitality has a youthful glow right now. Florida’s Boca Raton Resort just overhauled its beach club, sinking millions into the makeover. Its most notable feature isn’t an upgraded bar but a Creamsicle-orange floating Fiat 500 revving up to offer Insta-friendly rides in the shallow waters. On every bed at Eriro, a lodge in the Austrian Alps that opened last August, you’ll find a thick pair of woolly socks: A handwritten note encourages you to wear them rather than shoes so you can pad around like a kid at home. At Cambodia’s Shinta Mani Wild, you can opt for an adrenaline-charged check-in, whizzing down a 1,300-foot zip line past a jungle waterfall. And why take a photo with your phone when you can sketch and paint, slow- travel-style, with the easel, watercolors, and pad in every room at Kenya’s new exclusive-use Wild Hill property? 

The point of these little luxuries is to make you smile, according to travel specialist Jules Maury of Scott Dunn Private. Take the personalized suite plaques at Indonesia’s Bawah Reserve: “Handmade and rustic, but mine now hangs in my home,” she says of her own. She also raves about the gilet and boot bag delivered to your suite at L’Apogée Courchevel. Costa Rica’s Nayara Tented Camp leaves a plush version of its unofficial mascot, Tony the three-toed-sloth, to take home. At the Eden Rock in St. Barts, expect everything from a rubber duck to a pedicure set, all in the property’s signature scarlet. 

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Today’s five-star resorts aren’t afraid to be seen as unabashed fun palaces, offering experiences you don’t have to leave the grounds for. Scotland’s Gleneagles has such surprises as an ice-cream cart and a falconry facility, while Casablanca’s new Royal Mansour is far enough from the local mosque to serve booze on-site. Gray & Co.’s Cari Gray says she’s currently turning a simple tour of Dubrovnik’s Old Town into a scavenger hunt, which will include some of the memorable views HBO captured for Game of Thrones. It’s a taste of neighborhood culture that some of this year’s other winners offer. Still, Gray cautions that there are limits to the trend that even she can’t embrace. “What pushes fun too far?” she asks. “Forced communal dining.”