Naples has always been the quiet, well-behaved sibling of Miami, with sugar sand instead of neon, sunset cocktails instead of spring break chaos and early-morning beachcombing instead of all-nighters. When the beloved Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, which had anchored this stretch of coastline since the 1940s, shuttered for a reimagining, locals were wary. Would the new owners bulldoze the nostalgia along with the old wiring?
They didn’t. Instead, they drew inspiration from the clapboard-sided cottages that define Old Naples and added a touch of contemporary flair. The result is Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, which opened in November 2025. The property easily marries hometown restraint with the luxury brand’s polish, proving that you can rebuild a landmark from the ground up without gutting its soul.
Here are five reasons we’re already planning our return trip.
The Location
Naples sits on what is rightly named the Paradise Coast, and the resort claims 1,000 feet of powder-soft Gulf shoreline. Rooms open straight onto the beach, water is the color of a Tiffany box and sunsets require no reservation. Here, a beach day isn’t an outing. It’s a given.
And the fun doesn’t stop where the sand does. Bella, the hotel’s 35-foot Hinckley Picnic Boat, turns the Gulf into an amenity with private charters, sunset cruises and chef-prepared picnics for guests who’d rather watch Naples from the water than from a lounge chair.
The Design
Architecture firm Hart Howerton took cues from the wood-shuttered Queen Anne cottages of the surrounding neighborhood while Champalimaud Design carried the story inside with bleached pecky cypress ceilings, painted clapboard paneling, sea-glass chandeliers and pops of periwinkle and flamingo pink.
Our favorite detail: every guest room comes with brass door knockers, cast as seashells, dragonflies and sea turtles.
The Cocktails
Chef Gavin Kaysen’s Merchant Room gets the headlines, but The Merchant Room Bar, with its scalloped oak bar, vintage-style rattan and walls decorated with an eye-catching mural by artist Dean Barger of flamingos drifting through mangroves, deserves your attention, too.
The cocktail menu, aptly named Forgotten Classics, revives lesser-known drinks from history. The Gin Rickey is built on Hayman’s Old Tom gin, umeshu (plum wine) and yellow plum while the Brown Derby mixes Buffalo Trace bourbon and Cynar with salted pamplemousse, honey and lemon. But the showpiece is the Rob Roy, made with Macallan 15 washed with dry-aged ribeye tallow, rounded out with Cocchi di Torino and barrel-aged bitters.
And for pure sunset theater, nothing beats a drink at the beachside Sunset Bar.
The Sports
Naples Beach Club is an oasis for golfers and racket-sports obsessives. The 18-hole course is in the midst of a Tom Fazio redesign and will reopen as The Gardens in early 2027.
Six Har-Tru clay surfaces, a pro shop stocked for serious players and seasonal clinics run by Matthew Bacon, a director with 25-plus years in the business, make The Racquet Club a legitimately elite operation dressed in resort casual. Four to six padel courts will join the lineup soon as well.
The Spa
At 30,000 square feet across three levels, Sanctuary Spa is less a spa than a wellness campus. There are 13 treatment rooms, including three VIP suites. The full thermal circuit features aromatherapy steam rooms, a Finnish sauna, cold plunges, an ice room and vitality pools. Up top, a 75-foot outdoor lap pool overlooks the golf course.
With its vaulted corridors, arched ceilings and hand-painted tiles, the space feels like a grand Moroccan hammam transported to Florida.
Coming Soon
Slated to open later this year and already generating buzz is a 22-seat private cinema showing first-run films because, apparently, a beach, spa and world-class chef weren’t quite enough scope for one resort.
