Beach holidays

We have plenty of superb luxury options for beach holidays, whether you’re looking for a boutique hotel on a resort island in the Maldives, or a family-friendly villa in the Kefalonia countryside with the beach just a five-minute drive away.

But you’ll find that our beach holidays aren’t just about stylish, high-end amenities – often, luxury also translates to glorious, remote simplicity. On an all-organic estate on the Greek island of Ithaca, your hosts use passive cooling techniques for their accommodation, harvest rainwater for the beautiful gardens, and use their own timber for heating.

In Morocco, our traditional hotel near Essaouira is set on a largely deserted expanse of the Atlantic coast. You can enjoy soaks in the hammam, and home-cooked cuisine either on the terrace or by the pool. Sunset walks along the beach, with or without the resident camel, also speak of luxury, with long stretches of sand where you won’t encounter another soul. And in Turkey, our exclusive villa perches on the hillside overlooking the fishing village of Kalkan. Its peaceful and scenic outlook can be enjoyed from a communal infinity pool, and you can also make use of a private plunge pool. Other luxury trappings here include the option of a gulet cruise in the Mediterranean, and a meze dinner delivery to enjoy on your terrace. Nearby, Patara beach is a popular haunt for nesting turtles – guests on our beach holidays here can watch from a responsible distance, or join in with efforts to keep the beach clear of plastic waste.

If you’re looking for a family beach holiday, you don’t need to go down the all-inclusive resort route which can offer an inauthentic take on your destination, and little economic benefit to local communities. Instead, our beach holidays for families are often set in or close to villages where you can find little restaurants, with beaches safe for swimming either a short walk or drive away. Our apartments and villas tend to be good options for family beach breaks, as they give you privacy and flexibility, as well as coming in a range of sizes and styles. They come equipped with everything your brood will need, from BBQs to cots, and some can even arrange car hire (EVs are often possible). So you can enjoy relaxed family time without crowds around the buffet table, or struggling to find sun loungers.

Lanzarote, Greece, Cyprus are all popular locations on our family-friendly beach holidays, and are great for babies all the way up to teens. If you have older kids and want to get active, then water sports off Croatian islands are a great option. You can also combine beach with culture in Thailand and Cambodia, or with wildlife in Kenya – a classic family safari destination.

Your beach holiday needn’t involve staying in an identikit hotel room, or a heaving resort with half a dozen pools and restaurants where you need to queue for a meal. Our selection of unusual beach accommodation can see you exploring offshore in Egypt’s Red Sea, from a dive resort in Dahab staffed by brilliant local guides. If you’re looking to unwind mind and body, then you can enjoy a week of meditation and yoga at a luxury wellness resort in Tobago, constructed by craftspeople from surrounding communities, and designed to blend into the trees.

There are laid-back backpacker lodges in South Africa, and a choice of spacious yurts, fisherman’s cottages and barns in Lanzarote, all powered by wind and solar energy. Our glamping retreats in Portugal’s sunny Algarve, meanwhile, help biodiversity and bird conservation efforts, with bird boxes and pollinator-friendly plants around the property.

Our unusual beach accommodation is full of quirks and style, but what they all have in common is proximity to glorious stretches of sand, and a commitment to responsible tourism so that your holiday helps benefit nature and local people.

You can get the most from your trip to Africa with a wildlife and beach holiday, combining safari with time on the coast afterwards so that you can soothe all the kinks after a week of early starts and long game drives. Many of Africa’s most renowned safari destinations are just a short hop from coast or islands. Palm-fringed Diani Beach in Kenya is just 30km south of the capital, Mombasa. Tanzania’s parks and reserves, where your holiday might help support a vital cheetah monitoring project in the Serengeti, can easily be complimented with Mafia Island or Zanzibar. And if you’re watching wildlife in South Africa you can continue on to Mozambique or Mauritius. These wildlife and beach tours are typically at the more luxurious end of safaris, and can be tailor made according to your preferences.

Our wildlife and beach holidays are not confined to Africa, though. You can see turtles, howler monkeys and sloths in Costa Rica before unwinding with a few days on the coast in Samara. In Belize, your efforts on a marine conservation trip can be rewarded with a week of snorkelling and swimming over the Central American country’s coral reefs. In Borneo, watch orangutans swinging through the trees, then head to Labuan Island and swing yourself into a hammock.