TRICIA WELSH

Meet Makepeace Island, Branson’s other private paradise.

A new wellness adventure retreat in the Southern Alps serves up physical and mental makeovers. The soaring granite peaks of Mount Judah surge above the sapphire water of New Zealand’s Wakatipu Lake. I am traversing a zigzagged trail, twisting up and down the Southern Alps’ undulating grasslands, with every turn affording a new angle from […]

My hands are slick with wet clay as I squeeze, mold, and shape balls of sticky matter into a monster with flaring nostrils and wild tufts of hair. I am nearing the end of an hour-long pottery class at Hoshinoya Okinawa, a traditional Japanese resort that opened in June on the diminutive coral island of […]

After studying hotel management in Switzerland, Jeanette Mix returned to her hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, intent on opening a boutique hotel. In 2007, she and her husband acquired an early-20th-century mansion in the residential neighborhood of Östermalm and—with the help of London-based interior designer Ilse Crawford of Studioilse—transformed it into a 12-room retreat brimming with […]

Okinawa has been a favored tropical destination for generations of Japanese. With the recent opening of its first luxury-brand hotel, the 160-island chain is now primed to become popular the world over. The former Kise Bettei, an upscale resort built on the chain’s main island in 2007, closed for eight months of renovations prior to […]

The Park Hyatt Sydney has never lacked for location. Set in the historic Rocks neighborhood between two of Australia’s best-known landmarks—the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge—the 22-year-old hotel has long been the city’s top choice for travelers. But the Park Hyatt was also long due for an update by the time it […]

The first notable hotel to open in Sydney since the 2000 Olympic Games, the Darling debuted in October in the city’s bustling Darling Harbour precinct. The hotel is housed in an inverted, 12-story glass tower with views of Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Blue Mountains, and the behemoth Star entertainment complex that it is part of: […]

Due north of New Zealand’s popular resort city of Queenstown, a vast and beautiful wilderness remains largely inaccessible to tourists. Hikers can tramp into the South Island’s 1,373-square-mile Mount Aspiring National Park to pitch a tent or stay in a government-run bunkhouse, but travelers seeking a higher level of comfort (and warmth) in the backcountry […]

The recent explosion of resort construction in the Maldives has been concentrated in the now-crowded central atolls, leaving the island nation’s southern reaches relatively untouched. Opened last August, Alila Villas Hadahaa is the first resort on the 1,120-square-mile atoll of Huvadhoo. The remote southern isle, the second largest atoll in the world, is located about […]