The Peninsula House

Character and identity

Picture an 18th-century Charleston mansion airlifted onto a jungle hillside 1,000 feet above Cosón Bay, and you have the gist. Six individually decorated suites sit inside what feels like a private collector's home, filled with Louis XIV furnishings, Tibetan prayer books, and antiques gathered over decades by the French owner. Breakfast is laid out on rotating sets of china on the veranda, The Beach House handles barefoot lunches, and dinner is a fixed three-course menu served in a brick courtyard lit by hurricane lanterns. There's no spa, but treatments come to your balcony. Service is personal, often delivered by the GM himself.

Who's it for

Bottom line

What you're really buying is a six-key private house with a serious antiques collection and a hands-on owner-family running the show. Book one of the two oceanfront corner suites (the Taupe Room is the benchmark) for the 12-foot ceilings and French doors onto the bay, and keep stays to four or five nights so the set dinner menu stays a pleasure rather than a routine.