Sandy Lane

Sandy Lane has been shorthand for Caribbean grandeur since 1961, when Ronald Tree built a Palladian retreat in coral stone on the finest bay of Barbados' west coast. Rebuilt from the ground up at the turn of the millennium on a famously unlimited budget, the resort doubled down on its founding manner: monumental coral-stone colonnades, fountains, acres of polished marble and a beach of pale sand lapped by water the colour of gin and tonic. Its winter season remains the most conspicuously glamorous in the Caribbean.

Rooms are large, classically dressed and generously balconied, looked after by a staff-to-guest ratio few resorts attempt. The Green Monkey golf course, carved by Tom Fazio into an old coral quarry and reserved for hotel guests, is the trophy among three courses; the spa is one of the region's largest, a domed complex of treatment suites and hydrotherapy gardens; and the children's Treehouse Club quietly makes this bastion of grown-up gloss surprisingly good with families.

Dining runs from Bajan-influenced fine cooking at L'Acajou to lobster lunches at the beachside grill, with the legendary Monkey Bar for planter's punches at dusk. The west-coast location puts Holetown's restaurants and the island's calm-water swimming on the doorstep. Sandy Lane is unabashedly formal, unabashedly expensive and utterly sure of itself—the Caribbean's great show hotel, still drawing the audience to match.