Luxury beach resorts with Tahitian- style overwater bungalows are well-known for their privacy, spectacular scenery, and top-notch service. Extremely popular for honeymooners and others seeking a romantic get-a-way, for company retreats, and even for families, these resorts are found in substantial numbers only in the Indian Ocean and in the South Pacific. There is a very good world-wide demand for this type of resort, but there is a strange lack of supply of these resorts anywhere close to the Americas.
The great majority of these resorts are located in the Maldives of the Indian Ocean and also in French Polynesia of the South Pacific. There’s a spattering of a few others around other islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but the ones in French Polynesia and the Maldives are most prominent and abundant. Extremely well-designed, many of these resorts are four to five star quality hotels, with rates for standard rooms averaging about $1100 per night. But what really sets them apart from other resorts are their locations upon beautiful coral atolls in the midst of deep blue oceans with crystal clear blue waters inside the atolls. The islands themselves are also stunning with plentiful palm trees and beautiful beaches.
Upon several atolls in the Maldives, there are 26 of these resorts established and running well. In addition, there are two? other new resorts of this type currently under construction in the Maldives, which fact makes it obvious that these resorts must be achieving success, since they are still building More of them.
The other concentration of these overwater bungalow resorts in French Polynesia includes 25 more overwater-bungalow-resorts. The Society Islands (within French Polynesia) have 22 of these resorts located on Bora Bora, Moorea, Tahiti, Huahini, Raietea, and Taha’a. There are an additional 3 more of these resorts also located in French Polynesia on atolls in the Tuomotu Archipelago 200 miles north of the Society Islands.
Additional overwater bungalow resorts are found in much smaller numbers in other areas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, such as Palawan-Philippines (4), Vanuatu (4), Malaysia (4), Fiji (1), Cook Islands (1), Samoa (1), New Caledonia (1), and Mozambique (1).
You can see a spreadsheet of all these resorts plus pages with pictures and information about all of these overwater bungalow resorts in the pages that follow, but the main point to understand is that there are lots of these resorts in the world charging very high rates and they are surviving and doing well.
However, there are major drawbacks for Americans (both north and south) to ever want to visit these resorts in these areas. American vacationers have a huge desire to visit these overwater bungalow resorts, but the horrendous travel time and the huge cost are big hurdles. Not only are long vacations to these overwater bungalow resorts prohibitive, but you can’t even imagine taking a long weekend trip to these resorts.
For Americans the Caribbean offers a much closer and more affordable option, but as of now there are no first class overwater bungalow resorts that can offer the beautiful south seas luxury tropical experience.
In truth, there ARE some smaller lower quality overwater-bungalow-resorts in the Caribbean and Atlantic, but none are in the right locations with beautiful waters and private settings. The few that do exist are of subpar quality in comparison to the ones in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. While the designs of some of these Caribbean overwater bungalow resorts might be acceptable, their locations just do not measure up to the beautiful atolls of the other oceans. Instead of sitting above beautiful clear blue waters of an atoll, the bungalows, by and large, are perched over murky backwater areas. Cayo Espanto Resort in Belize and Anthony’s Cay Resort in Roatan, Honduras are perfect examples of decent resorts in very mediocre locations.
What the Caribbean and the Americas are lacking, is a first class Overwater Bungalow resort with a location which has the look and feel of the South Pacific. Unfortunately, the Atlantic and Caribbean have very few Atolls (only 5) which could sustain such a resort, but fortunately there is ONE, just ONE, atoll in the Caribbean which has the perfect setting and the perfect islands on which to build a successful overwater-bungalow-resort.
That would be Lighthouse Reef Atoll with Northern Two Cayes.
The links below take you to details and information about all the overwater-bungalow-resorts of the world.
This section encompasses all the overwater-bungalow-resorts that we could find. The list and info is pretty complete, but it is possible that there are more that we have not been able to find. As a matter of fact, the resort in Mozambique showed up nowhere in our searches, but only came to light when a client revealed it as a place he took his wife to about 5 years ago.
Any corrections or additions would be welcomed.
