The Best Hotels in Kauai

A small boutique resort planted right on Poipu Beach, with just over a hundred rooms keeping the scale intimate enough that you're not sharing a zip code with a convention. The south shore stays sunnier than the rest of Kauai, which locals will tell you with the quiet satisfaction of people who made a good decision. There's a spa, a pool bar, and a fine-dining restaurant on property, all of it leaning toward couples who flew here specifically to be left alone.

Perched on a bluff in Princeville with the kind of view that makes you question every life choice that led you somewhere else, this resort earns a Michelin Key by doing luxury in the new mode: no golf-blazer stuffiness, just rooms that are quietly smart, a spa and fitness setup that spares nothing, and sustainability woven in so thoroughly the jungle nearly swallows the building whole.

Six hundred rooms built low into a hillside on Kauai's south shore, open to the air in a style that nods to old Hawaii without doing a costume about it. The resort sits on Keoneloa Bay, with cascading waterfalls threading through lush gardens and a white sand beach that earns its keep at sunset. Pools, a full-service spa, and a calm sense of remove from the busier resort strip down the road round it out.