The way people pack for a trip has changed—and we’re not just talking about fashion microtrends. Ten years ago, a two-week stay in Paris meant jackets, loafers and one pair of shoes that could pass for running. Now the suitcase is half Lululemon, half low-profile trainers, because the run along the Canal Saint-Martin has been mapped and the hit at the Racing Club de France is on the calendar. Sports tourism is projected to reach roughly $928 billion in 2026, per Grand View Research—no longer simply the business of men with golf bags. It’s women in Sardinia on 80-mile gravel rides; fathers and daughters learning to fly-cast on the Madison; the padel court going up behind a Hamptons hedge. The pickleball league that has taken over Palm Beach on Tuesday nights. Wellness was the industry’s last decade; sport is this one.
The average vacation used to end with a book half-finished and a spa voucher unused. Now, for a certain type of traveler, it ends with an athletic lesson booked for the next morning. Guests arrive having pre-read the course architect, the head pro, the coach’s bio, and the previous season’s race results. They show up in kit; they ask specific questions at check-in. Hotel concierges who spent a decade recommending restaurants now keep dossiers on tee times, tide charts and bike-fit specialists. The logic is simple: a week off should leave a person better than it found them, not worse. The logistics have caught up, too. Activewear packs a third smaller than the wardrobe it replaced, which means one carry-on now holds a tennis week. Spring’s finally here, so book something that makes you work for it.
18 Hotels Where the Sport Is the Reason You Go
Adare, Co. Limerick V94 W8WR, Ireland
There are maybe a hundred people alive who can say they played Adare the year before a Ryder Cup (the property hosts the tournament in 2027), and now, that number is expected to roughly double. Resort guests have priority on the course through the 2027 season, and the rest of the world has been politely redirected. You walk out to the first tee at 8 a.m., before the groundskeepers have lifted the dew, and the fiber-optic cable is already laid under the fairway for the cameras that won’t arrive for another 18 months. The starters call you “sir” in a way that suggests they know exactly what you paid to be there. There’s water on 14 of 18. Tom Fazio’s 2018 redesign of the original Robert Trent Jones Sr. layout holds up on the bentgrass. Luke Donald’s boot prints might already be somewhere on the back nine, and by October, so are yours.
Adare Manor
Jack Hardy
Guarda Golf Hôtel & Résidences
Rte des Zirès 14, 3963 Crans-Montana, Switzerland
The Severiano Ballesteros Course sits nearly a mile up in the Valais Alps, and when you mishit a 7-iron at that altitude, the ball keeps going until you stop being embarrassed. Guarda is a two-minute walk from the first tee. The DP World Tour shows up the first week of September for the Omega European Masters, and for a few afternoons, the hotel lobby fills with caddies and Trackmans and someone’s wife holding a glass of Fendant at 11 a.m. The rest of the summer, the mountain belongs to the breed of golfer who believes oxygen is a swing aid. The concierge will get you an 8:12 a.m. tee time if you ask twice.
Guarda Golf Hotel & Residences.
Fabrice Rambert
The American Club at Destination Kohler
419 Highland Dr, Kohler, WI 53044
Whistling Straits looks like someone relocated the Irish coast to Lake Michigan and forgot to tell anyone. Pete Dye designed it that way on purpose in 1998, and the 2021 Ryder Cup made sure nobody mistook it for a Midwest muni. Blackwolf Run is 10 minutes inland along the Sheboygan River—the sister 36 where the 1998 U.S. Women’s Open took 20 holes to decide. In between, you’re staying at a 1918 brick dormitory built for the European immigrants who made the company’s bathtubs, which is both a true sentence and the least convincing thing anyone has ever said about a place with four Pete Dye courses and a working sporting-clays preserve. Order a fish boil, then take the long way back to the room.
The American Club at Destination Kohler.
The American Club at Destination Kohler
Verdura Resort, a Rocco Forte Hotel
SS 115 KM 131, Contrada Verdura, 92019 Sciacca AG, Italy
The six clay courts at Verdura sit in a groove between olive orchards and orange groves, and in May, the whole resort smells like the blossoms have conspired against you. Certified coaches are on staff year-round, which means the 10 a.m. hit isn’t a resort hit—it’s a resort hit run by someone who has drilled French juniors. Padel on two more courts, pickleball on one, and Juventus runs a football academy down the road when the Italian kids are on summer break. Kyle Phillips designed the two 18-hole golf courses running to the Mediterranean. Book the sea-facing suites—designers Paolo Moschino and and Philip Vergeylen redid them this year, and the new upholstery is the correct shade of faded coral.
Verdura Resort, a Rocco Forte Hotel.
Verdura Resort, a Rocco Forte Hotel
Nihi Sumba
Nihiwatu Beach, Wanokaka, West Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
Nihi caps Occy’s Left at 15 surfers a day. The wave takes its name from Mark Occhilupo, the Australian world champ who paddled out once and called it among the best he’d ever ridden. Today, access requires a villa key and most mornings the lineup is half full. Tropicsurf runs the coaching, the same crew as Four Seasons Punta Mita (more on that below). Beyond the wave, Sandalwood Stables turns its Sumba ponies loose onto 1.5 miles of private beach at first light, and you can ride them through the shore break or up jungle trails toward what the staff calls buffalo traffic jams.
Nihi Sumba.
Nihi Sumba
Kassandra, 630 77 Halkidiki, Greece
The Rafa Nadal Tennis Center at Sani is the most serious coaching in the Mediterranean, and the fact that Rafa himself hasn’t been photographed here recently hasn’t slowed the bookings. Coaches rotate in from the Academy in Manacor, which means the 10 a.m. session on a Wednesday in July might be with someone who has spent the winter drilling 14-year-olds destined for the tour. All eight clay courts are French red. The sailing school out of the marina runs RYA-certified catamaran and keelboat instruction, and the Aegean here in August has a steady afternoon breeze. More to love: A protected pine forest cuts a meandering trail through the property, and stand-up paddle yoga happens in the lagoon at 7 a.m. Your Greek athletic moment is here.
Sani Resort.
Sani Resort
Benito Juárez s/n, Col. Centro, 23300 Todos Santos, B.C.S., México
Cerritos Beach is 10 minutes down a road that was fully paved only recently, and the surf coach from Paradero will meet you there at sunrise with two longboards and a thermos of black coffee. He is, depending on the day, a 23-year-old from Pescadero or a 40-year-old who used to be on the Mexican national team. San Pedrito is 15 minutes further. Back at the hotel, the hikes leave from the lobby—five ecosystems between the Sierra La Laguna and the Pacific bluff, ascending through creosote and guaje and granite to a cactus plateau that looks photographed but isn’t. The architecture is Baja vernacular pushed to its sharpest edge, and 24 new Villa Suites open this year. Cosimo, the southern-Italian restaurant in the new wing, serves a carbonara that shouldn’t be good in the desert but is.
Paradero at the Sea.
Leading Hotels of the World
Palmschoß 22, 39042 Brixen, South Tyrol, Italy
Forestis sits 5,900 feet up the Plose massif, and the chairlift that runs out the front door drops you directly onto miles of hiking trail or, if you’ve brought the right equipment, downhill flow trails that will age you five years in a morning. Herbert is the in-house guide. He does the sunrise hikes, speaks English and German and a dialect neither of your parents would recognize, and has a habit of pointing at a peak across the valley and telling you its name as though you should have known already. Come September for the Bike Festa Südtirol (Sept. 17-20, 2026), the new flagship mountain bike weekend out of Brixen.
Forestis Dolomites.
4100 Moonlight Basin Rd, Big Sky, MT 59716
Meet the new model for American mountain resorts. Moonlight Basin opened in November 2025, with 73 rooms and 19 cabins, spread across 240 acres in Big Sky, with another 17,000 protected around it. You can fly-fish the Madison with a local outfitter in the morning—they tie their own flies, and the Madison in July runs green over limestone gravel in a way that makes the rest of your year feel monochromatic. Afternoons are trail rides through lodgepole or miles of singletrack from the door, while the private Jack Nicklaus course up the ridge is technically residents-only, but hotel guests get privileged access through a side gate. The Augustinus Bader treatments last two hours, and yes, you will book a second one before checkout.
One & Only Moonlight Basin.
One & Only Moonlight Basin
Località Castiglion del Bosco, 53024 Montalcino SI, Italy
Castiglion del Bosco has one of the best resort cycling programs in Europe. The on-staff guides put you on a carbon-fiber road bike or a gravel setup, read your cadence inside a few kilometers and have you climbing white roads north of Siena by lunch without realizing you signed up for a training ride. The estate is 5,000 acres with a working Brunello winery at its core—actual Brunello, actual vineyards, not just a gesture toward them—and the Tom Weiskopf golf course at the top of the property is the only private club in Italy, which matters more to certain people than it should. L’Eroica runs the first weekend of October out of Gaiole in Chianti, a vintage gran fondo on strade bianche, and the cycling program can build an August around the race, whether you ask it to or not.
Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco.
Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco
The Lodge at Blue Sky, Auberge Collection
27649 Old Lincoln Hwy, Wanship, UT 84017
Blue Sky sits on 4,000 acres of the Wasatch foothills, around 30 minutes from Park City, on a working ranch with a genuinely idiosyncratic activity roster. The falconry program, run with HawkWatch International, is the one guests book twice. A handler puts a leather gauntlet on your arm, walks you into the meadow, and a Harris’s hawk launches off a post to land on your fist with the weight of a small dog moving at 35 miles an hour. The fly fishing is no afterthought, either: guides run wade and float trips on the Provo, which runs brown trout to 20 inches in the tailwater below Jordanelle Dam. Add horsemanship clinics, mountain biking across Wasatch singletrack and clay shooting at the on-property range.
Clay shooting at The Lodge at Blue Sky.
Richard Schultz
Awaroa Inlet, Abel Tasman National Park, Tasman 7183, New Zealand
Awaroa is one of the few hotels inside Abel Tasman, which is New Zealand’s smallest national park and one of its most spectacular—a coast of granite headlands, tidal estuaries and beaches the color of bone. The lodge is reachable only by boat, small plane or foot, which is also how the sport program works. Sea kayaking out of the on-property beach runs ability-tiered day trips to Torrent Bay and Bark Bay, and in season, the pods of orcas move through the inlet close enough that the guides have you hold the paddle still. The Abel Tasman Coast Track, 37 miles end to end, passes the front lawn—trail runners time themselves on the Marahau-to-Totaranui leg. Add a fly-fishing partnership on the Motueka River, 45 minutes inland, for brown trout the size of a housecat.
Awaroa Lodge.
Awaroa Lodge
The Lodge at Primland, Auberge Collection
2000 Busted Rock Rd, Meadows of Dan, VA 24120
Primland sits on 12,000 acres of Blue Ridge above the town of Meadows of Dan. The fly fishing is six miles of catch-and-release on the Dan River—brown, brook and rainbow—plus the Pinnacles of Dan tailwater below the hydro dam. Orvis endorses the guide program, which matters to the kind of person who notices. The sporting-clays course runs 14 stations and is serious enough that the people you’ll share it with will be wearing jackets with their initials. There’s an observatory up top with a research-grade telescope, a Donald Steel golf course, horseback trail rides for guests 12 and over. The bourbon list is worth working your way through as a post-excursion treat.
Fly fishing at Primland, Meadows of Dan.
Peter Frank Edwards
79 Carriage House Ln, Philipsburg, MT 59858
Rock Creek is a working cattle ranch that happens to put you up in a 29-key collection of cabins, canvas glamping tents and the Granite Lodge. The equestrian program operates across several arenas, with on-staff trainers teaching both Western and English to the same child over the same week, which is a small feat of patience. Cattle drives actually move cattle, and barrel-racing clinics actually clock times. Four miles of Rock Creek run Orvis-endorsed blue-ribbon trout, and the fly guides will tie you something local that works before the hatch figures itself out. Sporting clays, archery, a 19th-century saloon restored for poker nights that go later than they should. Six thousand six hundred acres of Montana, and the only sound after midnight is whatever the coyotes are gossiping about.
The Ranch at Rock Creek.
The Ranch at Rock Creek
Cami Sa Torre 71, 07810 San Juan Bautista, Ibiza, Spain
Everyone knows Ibiza for a specific reason, and that reason is not what happens at Six Senses. The hotel sits on the quiet north end of the island, 30 minutes from the airport, facing a cove called Cala Xarraca, where the water is so clear it looks digitally altered. The activity program, however, is the surprise. The hotel hosts windsurfing lessons in the cove, and a water-based yoga program in the lagoon. Paddleboard excursions leave before breakfast to reach the sea caves at Es Portitxol while the island is still sleeping off Friday. The club scene 45 minutes south can be somebody else’s obsession.
Six Senses Ibiza.
Six Senses Ibiza
Kanufushi Island, Baa Atoll, Maldives
For most people, the Maldives is filed under beach vacation, which is a tax bracket away from a sports destination. Finolhu, however, sits in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on Baa Atoll, one of the most-watched manta aggregations on earth. From May through November, Hanifaru Bay fills with feeding mantas and the occasional whale shark. The dive center runs daily snorkel drift trips led by marine biologists, and the kitesurfing school has IKO-certified instructors and flat turquoise water that makes learning embarrassingly easy. Private villas sit on stilts over a house reef you can drop into from your deck with a mask, while yoga on an overwater platform at 7 a.m. is the rare cliché that truly does relax you at a cellular level.
Finolhu Villas, Baa Atoll.
Finolhu Villas, Baa Atoll
Narçiçeği Sokak, Kesire Mevkii, 48400 Göltürkbükü, Muğla, Turkey
Bodrum is what the Côte d’Azur was before the Côte d’Azur decided to become, well, itself. Maçakizi is the property that best captures the shift—74 rooms up a terraced hillside above Türkbükü bay, the kind of place where breakfast lasts until 11 and nobody comments. The sport here is perhaps most unexpected: serious sailing. The hotel arranges access to day sailers and classic gulets out of the marina below, and the Aegean wind here is the meltem, which blows reliably from the northwest in July and August. Private coaching through the local sailing community is available on request. Add freediving at Karaada, paddle tennis on clay under a fig arbor and Pilates on the terrace at sunrise.
Maçakizi.
Maçakizi
Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita
Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit 63734, Mexico
Pacifico’s alternate 19th is in the Pacific Ocean. No, not overlooking it—in it. Known as the Tail of the Whale, the green is a natural island reachable only by amphibious cart at low tide, and when the tide is wrong, the starters wait because the alternative is flinging golf balls into the sea at a different hole. The Tropicsurf coaches will meet you at El Anclote before breakfast and have you standing on a soft-top by the time the other guests are ordering huevos. Tennis is run out of a 10-court complex with resident pros. Add kayaking, stand-up paddle and whale-watching when in season. The peninsula is 52 private acres, and whatever you want to do, someone on staff knows how to do it better.
Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita.
Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita
