The sale of a six-bedroom beachfront estate in Lyford Cay, was handled by George Damianos of Damianos Sotheby’s International Realty; the final transaction price was not disclosed.

A beachfront estate in Lyford Cay that had been listed for $36 million has sold, in one of the latest high-end residential transactions in the exclusive Nassau community.

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The milestone at Port Zante marks a major return for cruise tourism in St. Kitts, with more than 1 million passengers arriving on the island for the first time since the pandemic.

St. Kitts has officially welcomed more than 1 million cruise passengers for the first time since the pandemic, a major milestone for one of the Caribbean’s leading cruise destinations.

The island reached 1,002,282 cruise passengers, according to tourism officials, with the milestone celebrated at Port Zante in Basseterre, the heart of the island’s cruise tourism sector.

The figure continues a strong recovery for St. Kitts cruise tourism. We reported last year that cruise arrivals had climbed to a new post-pandemic high, when the island welcomed nearly 750,000 passengers during the peak cruise season.

Tourism officials pointed to the return above the 1 million mark as evidence of renewed confidence in the destination and the strength of the island’s cruise partnerships.

The milestone also carries an important economic impact beyond the port itself. Cruise traffic supports taxi operators, tour companies, artisans, vendors, restaurants and other businesses across St. Kitts.

Port Zante’s Growing Role

Port Zante has long been one of the Caribbean’s busiest cruise hubs, with its location in Basseterre making it a major arrival point for visitors exploring the island.

St. Kitts is also investing further in the port. The destination recently broke ground on a new cruise terminal at Port Zante, part of a broader push to expand the island from a port of call into a homeport destination.

That strategy is already drawing major cruise partners. P&O Cruises is planning to begin homeport operations in St. Kitts in 2027, meaning passengers will be able to begin and end selected cruises in Basseterre.

Popular cruise excursions include visits to Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, rides aboard the St. Kitts Scenic Railway, beach trips on the island’s southeast peninsula and tours around historic Basseterre.

The return to more than 1 million passengers represents another important benchmark for St. Kitts, which was already topping the mark before the pandemic. When Port Zante debuted its $48 million second cruise pier in 2019, the island had recorded more than 1 million cruise passengers in consecutive seasons.

Now St. Kitts has reached the threshold again, bringing another major stream of visitors through Port Zante and into businesses and communities across the island

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Oceania Cruises has reached a major construction milestone on its newest ship, the Oceania Sonata, ahead of a debut that will eventually bring the new luxury vessel to the Caribbean.

The ship was floated out at the Fincantieri shipyard in Marghera, Italy, moving from dry dock to a fitting-out berth as work continues on its interiors. Oceania Sonata is scheduled to enter service in August 2027, with a wide-ranging inaugural season that will include the Caribbean, Panama Canal, Mexico, Central America and South America.

The ship will have 695 rooms and suites, accommodating about 1,390 passengers, and will be the first vessel in Oceania’s new Sonata Class.

Oceania Sonata is also significantly larger than the company’s recently launched Oceania Allura. At about 86,000 gross tons, the new ship will be nearly 30 percent larger than Oceania Allura, despite having only 90 additional accommodations.

Construction will now focus on the ship’s interiors and onboard spaces before its first voyage.

“The float out of Oceania Sonata is an incredibly exciting moment as we get one step closer to welcoming our first guests aboard next August,” said Jason Montague, chief luxury officer of Oceania Cruises.

A New Class of Oceania Ship

The Sonata Class is a major expansion for the luxury cruise line, with five ships currently planned.

The first will be followed by Oceania Arietta in 2029, while three additional Sonata Class vessels are slated for delivery in 2032, 2035 and 2037.

The new class will continue Oceania’s focus on smaller luxury ships while adding substantially more space. One-third of the accommodations aboard Sonata will be suites, including four Owner’s Suites with two bedrooms, a first for the company.

The ship is also introducing two new suite categories. The Horizon Suites will span more than 600 square feet, with separate living and sleeping areas, walk-through closets and oversized verandas.

The new Penthouse Deluxe Suites will measure 488 square feet, with larger interiors and floor-to-ceiling sliding doors facing the sea.

Oceania Sonata will have an adults-only environment, with an expanded collection of bars, lounges and public spaces.

There will be 13 food and beverage venues aboard the ship, including two new concepts: La Table par Maîtres Cuisiniers de France and Nikkei Kitchen. Returning Oceania restaurants will include Jacques, Red Ginger, Polo Grill and Toscana.

Caribbean Sailings From Miami

The ship’s inaugural season will run from August 2027 through April 2028 and cover more than 90 destinations.

After beginning service in Europe, Oceania Sonata will eventually cross to the Americas, including a January 2028 Panama Canal itinerary that finishes in Miami.

The 16-day Los Angeles-to-Miami voyage, departing Jan. 6, 2028, will visit Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica before making a daylight transit of the Panama Canal. It will then call in Cartagena, Colombia and George Town, Grand Cayman before reaching Miami.

Sonata will make a more extensive Caribbean run beginning March 1, 2028, when it launches a 10-day roundtrip voyage from Miami.

The itinerary will visit Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas; Basseterre, St. Kitts; St. John’s, Antigua; and Tortola, British Virgin Islands.

The itinerary also includes three days at sea before returning to Miami.

The Caribbean season will give passengers their first chance to experience Oceania’s newest class of ship on a traditional warm-weather itinerary from South Florida — and bring one of the line’s most significant new vessels yet to a region that remains central to the luxury cruise market.

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There are big all-inclusive resorts, and then there is Grand Lido Negril, a tiny oceanfront enclave in Negril, Jamaica with just 26 suites. The adults-only resort is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, with butler service, a private clothing-free beach area and a decidedly different take on the Caribbean all-inclusive.

Grand Lido Negril reopened on Aug. 25 following an extended closure, returning as a newly refreshed resort alongside neighboring Royalton Negril and Hideaway at Royalton Negril. Its return puts one of the Caribbean’s most unusual Marriott-affiliated resorts back in operation ahead of the fall and winter travel season.

The concept is straightforward: an upscale, adults-only, au naturel resort within a private section of the larger Royalton complex. You get the intimacy of a 26-suite boutique hotel, along with the restaurants, bars, pools and other amenities of two much larger neighboring resorts.

The broader reopening of Marriott’s Royalton resorts in Jamaica is bringing several properties back across Negril and Montego Bay, but Grand Lido is easily the most distinctive of the group.

A Different Kind of Marriott All-Inclusive

The Marriott connection is a major part of the appeal. Grand Lido Negril is officially Grand Lido Negril Au-Naturel, An Autograph Collection All-Inclusive Resort – Adults Only, putting the property inside one of Marriott’s best-known lifestyle collections.

It is also one of the more unexpected hotels to carry a Marriott flag. This is a resort built specifically around an au naturel experience, restricted to guests 21 and older and designed for couples and singles seeking a private clothing-free vacation.

The property describes itself as a protected oceanfront enclave, separate from the busier areas of the adjoining resorts. All 26 suites face the ocean, keeping the room product unusually consistent for an all-inclusive.

The small room count changes the feel significantly. Grand Lido has the service level and privacy of a boutique property, while the neighboring resorts give you a much larger collection of places to eat, drink and spend the day.

Butler Service Is Included

One of Grand Lido’s defining features is Butler Service, which is part of the resort experience rather than an upgrade confined to a small club category. The service extends to the details of the stay, including personalized arrival and departure and assistance throughout the vacation.

There are also preferential reservations at à la carte restaurants and hors d’oeuvres and snacks served beside the pool each day. Grand Lido guests wear a distinctive bracelet identifying them within the larger resort complex.

The resort also has its own Reggae Bar & Grill, reserved for Grand Lido guests. You can stay largely inside the enclave when you want privacy, then head into the surrounding Royalton resorts when you want more options.

A Private Clothing-Free Beach

The centerpiece is Grand Lido’s exclusive beach area, where the au naturel concept extends beyond the suites and pool experience. The resort describes it as a private dry beach with waiter service available to Grand Lido guests.

Privacy is central to the design. Grand Lido occupies an isolated section of the resort complex, giving guests a separate adults-only environment even as the much larger Royalton Negril operates next door.

The setting is quintessential Negril, the western Jamaican resort town known for its long beaches, warm water and famous sunsets. Grand Lido’s ocean-facing orientation means the Caribbean is a constant presence across the property rather than something reserved for a handful of premium room categories.

And You Get Two More Resorts

A 26-suite hotel would ordinarily mean a limited collection of restaurants and bars. Grand Lido solves that by giving its guests full use of facilities at both Royalton Negril and Hideaway at Royalton Negril.

Across the wider complex, Grand Lido guests have a choice of 12 restaurants and nine bars, along with additional swimming pools and resort amenities. It creates an unusual proposition: you can retreat to one of the smallest all-inclusive resorts in Jamaica while having the choices of a much larger property a short walk away.

The neighboring Hideaway at Royalton Negril is also adults-only, creating another option when you want to leave the Grand Lido enclave without moving into the family-oriented parts of the complex.

Grand Lido remains the private home base. The other resorts effectively expand what you can do during a stay without changing the intimate character of the hotel itself.

The Airport Experience Is Part of It

Grand Lido also includes Club MoBay service at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay. Guests receive fast-track service, a personalized meet-and-greet and lounge privileges at the airport.

The resort says the drive from Montego Bay to Negril takes about one hour and 15 minutes. Once you arrive, you are close to several of Negril’s best-known attractions, including Seven Mile Beach and Rick’s Café.

That makes it practical to combine the all-inclusive experience with a little time outside the resort. Negril remains one of Jamaica’s most established resort towns, with beach bars, restaurants, cliffside swimming spots and nightlife beyond the hotel gates.

Who Grand Lido Is Really For

This is obviously not a conventional Marriott resort, and that is precisely what gives Grand Lido its identity. The clothing-free concept is the central experience, not a small designated corner of an otherwise traditional hotel.

Couples who already enjoy naturist resorts will understand the appeal immediately. First-time visitors have the reassurance of a private environment, a tiny room count and the hospitality infrastructure of the Royalton complex surrounding it.

There is another advantage in the Marriott affiliation. Grand Lido combines an experience normally associated with independent niche resorts with the distribution and brand ecosystem of one of the world’s largest hotel companies.

It also gives Marriott guests something genuinely different in the Caribbean all-inclusive space. There are plenty of adults-only hotels across the region, but very few pair a dedicated au naturel environment with a major international hotel brand.

A Small Resort With a Big All-Inclusive Footprint

The most interesting part of the reopened Grand Lido may ultimately be its size. At 26 suites, it is dramatically smaller than most branded Caribbean all-inclusives, and every accommodation looks toward the sea.

Yet staying here does not mean giving up the variety normally associated with a large resort. The restaurants, bars and pools of Royalton Negril and Hideaway are part of the experience whenever you want them.

Then you can return to the quieter Grand Lido enclave, its private beach and its dedicated service.

With Grand Lido now welcoming guests again, Marriott has one of the Caribbean’s most unconventional all-inclusive experiences back in its portfolio — a 26-suite retreat in Negril where the dress code is about as relaxed as it gets.

What It Costs

Rooms start at about $526 per night right now; that gets you a “sunset ocean view” room with either a king bed or two queens. For a swim-out room, the price rises to about $658. Obviously, if you know us, you know we’d suggest the latter. Always. 

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With the winter travel season coming into view, it’s a good time to build a Caribbean trip around food rather than the beach alone. In these places, some of the most memorable things you can eat come wrapped in paper, pulled from a fryer, chopped at a conch stand or lifted straight from a roadside grill.

In Port of Spain, the famous bake-and-shark stands of Maracas Bay are about 20 miles from the capital. In Nassau, Potters Cay is just minutes from downtown, while Piñones puts some of Puerto Rico’s best-known frituras within an easy drive of San Juan.

We’ve explored the extraordinary street-food scene in Trinidad and some of the Caribbean’s essential street foods before. These eight destinations remain places where the food beside the road, on the beach or at an open-air stand can be as memorable as anything served in a formal restaurant.

Trinidad

If there is a street-food capital of the Caribbean, it is Trinidad, and particularly Port of Spain. The island’s culinary personality comes from an extraordinary mix of Indian, African, Chinese, Middle Eastern and European traditions, and much of it is best understood standing beside a roadside stall.

Doubles are the essential starting point: two pieces of soft fried bara filled with curried channa, then dressed according to taste with tamarind, cucumber, pepper sauce and chadon beni. Every vendor seems to have a slightly different version, and finding your preferred doubles stand can become one of the enduring pleasures of a Trinidad trip.

Then there is pholourie, the little fried split-pea flour balls served with chutney; aloo pies stuffed with seasoned potato; saheena; geera meats; roti; and bowls of corn soup substantial enough to count as dinner. Corn soup is especially associated with Queen’s Park Savannah, where food vendors have long been part of the Port of Spain experience.

The Savannah is a good entry point, but Trinidad rewards exploration beyond it. St James, Curepe and countless roadside stops expand the menu, while the drive north to Maracas Bay brings another island classic: bake and shark, the fried sandwich piled with sauces, vegetables and condiments.

Trinidad’s advantage isn’t one iconic dish. It’s the extraordinary number of things you can eat this way, creating a street-food culture with a depth unmatched elsewhere in the region.

The post 8 Caribbean Islands With Incredible Street Food, From Trinidad’s Doubles to Nassau’s Conch Salad and Fish Cakes in Barbados appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge occupies 383 acres at the southwestern edge of St Croix, just south of Frederiksted, with a broad sweep of white sand and clear Caribbean water that feels almost removed from the rest of the island. And beginning Sept. 5, you can experience it again during its tightly limited public hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

The reopening is a small event with an outsized payoff: Sandy Point spends roughly five months closed to ordinary public visitation while endangered leatherback sea turtles nest and hatch along the beach. When the gates reopen in September, you get one of the Caribbean’s rarest beach experiences — protected land, virtually no development and an enormous expanse of sand where nature still determines the calendar.

Why Sandy Point Is Different

St Croix has an unusually diverse collection of beaches. You can snorkel off Cane Bay, swim beside the Frederiksted waterfront, head east for the secluded sands of Shoys Beach or take a boat to Buck Island, but Sandy Point belongs in another category.

Part of the appeal is simple geography. The refuge extends around the island’s southwestern tip, creating a beach that seems to keep going as the sand bends away into the distance.

There are no rows of resort chairs waiting behind you. No beach club interrupts the view. No hotel rises above the sand, and there is no line of restaurants or souvenir stands defining where the beach begins and ends.

Instead, the backdrop is protected vegetation, salt ponds and the natural environment of the refuge.

Sandy Point is wide enough that even when other people are there, you can find an extraordinary amount of room. Walk farther down the sand and the voices behind you begin to disappear, leaving the water, wind and an almost uninterrupted horizon.

The sea is part of the appeal, too. The sandy bottom creates long areas of intensely clear blue water, although conditions can vary around the point and swimmers should always pay attention to the surf.

This is primarily a beach for swimming, floating, walking and doing very little.

Snorkeling is not the central attraction here. Sandy Point has no protective fringing reef immediately offshore like some other St Croix beaches, which means the underwater experience is different from reef destinations around the island.

The reward is above the water.

A Beach Protected By Turtles

Sandy Point looks the way it does because its most important visitors are not people.

The refuge was established in 1984, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired 340 acres specifically to preserve nesting habitat for endangered leatherback sea turtles. Another 43 acres were acquired later, bringing the refuge to its present 383 acres while also protecting archaeological resources and endangered Vahl’s boxwood.

Leatherbacks remain central to Sandy Point. Hawksbill and green sea turtles also use the refuge, making this one of the most significant sea-turtle habitats in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The protection has a direct impact on your vacation plans.

Public visitation closes during the nesting period, roughly from April through August, allowing nesting turtles and hatchlings to use the beach with dramatically less human disturbance. The refuge then returns to its regular public schedule from September through March, with weekend visitation rather than everyday beach traffic.

It is a restriction worth building a trip around.

Most Caribbean beaches are available whenever you decide to arrive. Sandy Point asks you to match your trip to the beach, and the result is one of the reasons it has retained such an undeveloped character.

The Sand Is the Main Event

Some beaches win you over with amenities. Sandy Point does it with sand.

It is pale, soft and strikingly broad, particularly along sections where the beach opens into a huge canvas between the vegetation and the sea. The sense of space is unusual even by Caribbean standards.

There is room to wander rather than simply claim a chair.

Walk along the water and the beach changes subtly as you round the southwestern end of St Croix. One direction points back toward Frederiksted; another opens onto an expanse of Caribbean blue.

The refuge lies only about 1 mile south of Frederiksted, yet the atmosphere feels considerably farther from town.

That proximity is one of Sandy Point’s best surprises.

You can stay around Frederiksted, spend part of the day exploring the town and still reach a protected beach environment that feels almost completely removed from urban life.

The resurgence of St Croix’s western end has made Sandy Point even more compelling. The Fred, the adults-only beachfront hotel in Frederiksted, gives visitors a home base close to both the town and the island’s west-end beach circuit.

You Have to Bring Your Own Beach Day

The absence of infrastructure is central to the Sandy Point experience.

There are no concessions waiting for you on the sand. You should arrive with drinking water, food, towels and whatever else you need for several hours outside.

Shade is limited, which makes sun protection especially important.

The refuge also has rules designed to protect nesting habitat. Objects cannot simply be driven or staked into the sand, and pets are not permitted.

The best approach is to think of Sandy Point as a protected nature experience that happens to include a spectacular swimming beach.

Bring what you need, take everything out with you and leave the sand as empty as you found it.

There is another benefit: admission is free. The scarcity here comes entirely from the limited calendar and limited hours rather than a price of entry.

It Even Has a Hollywood Connection

The beach may look oddly familiar to movie fans.

Sandy Point was used for the final beach sequence in The Shawshank Redemption, standing in for the Mexican Pacific destination of Zihuatanejo. The turquoise water and long arc of sand viewers saw on screen were actually St Croix.

The movie connection is an entertaining footnote, but Sandy Point hardly needs it.

Seeing the beach in person explains why filmmakers chose it. The landscape has the visual simplicity of an archetypal deserted island beach: sand, blue water and almost nothing constructed competing for your eye.

An Easy Caribbean Escape From Miami

Sandy Point feels remote once you are standing on the sand, but St Croix itself is surprisingly straightforward to reach (including with new flights coming on United).

American Airlines operates nonstop service between Miami International Airport and Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, with a scheduled flight time of about 2 hours and 51 minutes.

A few hours after leaving South Florida, you can be on an island with two historic towns, one of the region’s strongest culinary scenes, world-class diving and a beach that closes for months every year because sea turtles have priority.

The island is also entering an interesting period for air service, with new nonstop options expanding the ways visitors can reach St Croix and broadening the audience for an island that has often remained less heavily visited than some of its neighbors.

When to Go

The best Sandy Point trip starts with the calendar, not the weather forecast.

The public season runs from September through March, and visits are normally limited to Saturdays and Sundays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. The upcoming reopening weekend begins Sept. 5.

Winter is especially appealing because you can build Sandy Point into a larger west-end St Croix itinerary: spend one day at the refuge, another around Frederiksted, then explore beaches farther north or cross the island toward Christiansted and Buck Island.

Arrive early enough to make use of the six-hour public window.

Sandy Point is not a place to rush into for 30 minutes between stops. Its appeal grows as you walk farther down the beach, put some distance between yourself and the parking areas and begin to understand how uncommon an undeveloped stretch like this has become.

The limited opening hours create another kind of anticipation.

Much of the year, Sandy Point is visible but effectively off-limits, its beach returned to the turtles and the natural rhythms the refuge was created to protect. Then September arrives, the gate opens again and people get their turn.

What awaits is one of the essential St Croix experiences: 383 protected acres, brilliantly clear water, an immense ribbon of sand and almost nothing else.

And at Sandy Point, almost nothing else is exactly what makes the beach so great.

The post St Croix Has a 383-Acre Refuge With White Sand, Weekend-Only Access, and Sea Turtles — And It’s One of the Best Beaches in the U.S. Virgin Islands appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

Carnival Cruise Line is expanding its West Coast cruise program, with a broader lineup of Mexico sailings from Long Beach planned for its 2028-2029 season.

The newly announced program will include three- to eight-day cruises aboard Carnival Radiance and Carnival Panorama, with departures running from May 2028 through April 2029.

Carnival, which carries more cruise passengers from Long Beach than any other cruise line, will continue offering both short Baja getaways and longer voyages deeper into the Mexican Riviera.

Baja Cruises on Carnival Radiance

Carnival Radiance will continue its short-cruise program from Long Beach, with three-day voyages calling on Ensenada and four-day itineraries combining Ensenada with Catalina Island.

Carnival is also planning a special five-day holiday cruise departing Dec. 21, 2028, with calls at Catalina Island, Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada.

The program gives Southern California travelers a mix of quick weekend-style cruises and longer holiday options from the same homeport.

Longer Mexican Riviera Trips

Carnival Panorama will operate the longer itineraries, including six- and eight-day cruises to the Mexican Riviera.

The six-day cruises will include Cabo San Lucas, with two days in the destination, along with a call in Ensenada.

The eight-day itineraries will travel farther along Mexico’s Pacific coast, visiting Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta.

The expanded schedule reinforces Long Beach as one of Carnival’s most important year-round homeports and gives West Coast cruisers a wider range of Mexico itineraries without having to fly to another embarkation city.

The newly announced sailings are scheduled through April 2029.

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Argyle International Airport has launched a search for a consulting team to prepare a new master plan that will guide infrastructure, commercial development and capital investment at St Vincent and the Grenadines’ primary international gateway through 2046.

Argyle International Airport is beginning work on a long-term development plan that could reshape the aviation gateway serving St Vincent and the Grenadines over the next two decades.

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The Casa de Campo Food & Wine Festival is coming back to Casa de Campo Resort & Villas in La Romana, with two days of tastings, chef demonstrations and special events led by names including Michael Mina, Hubert Keller and Joe Isidori. The Oct. 9-10 festival is expected to draw more than 3,000 attendees, with programming built around eight chefs and more than 30 food, wine and spirits exhibitors.

It’s the fourth edition of the festival, and one of its centerpieces will be the Dinner Under the Stars at Minitas Beach Club, headlined by Top Chef finalist Adam Pawlak. Casa de Campo is currently offering a festival package from $650 per person, per night, valid for stays from Oct. 9-11.

The event adds another major weekend to a resort that has increasingly built its calendar around food, golf, fashion and other destination events. Casa de Campo’s 7,000 acres give the festival room to extend well beyond a conventional tasting hall, from the Marina Riverside Center to the beach and the wider resort.

The festival comes during a busy period for the La Romana resort, which recently completed a $15 million transformation of Teeth of the Dog, its best-known Pete Dye golf course.

Michael Mina Joins the Casa de Campo Lineup

The biggest new culinary name this time is Michael Mina, the award-winning chef and founder of the Mina Group, whose restaurant portfolio has helped make him one of the most prominent American chefs of the last two decades.

Mina joins two familiar faces at the festival. Hubert Keller is returning for a fourth appearance, while Joe Isidori, founder of Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer, is coming back for his second.

The resort is also highlighting Dominican chef Gabriel Tejada Núñez as part of the program, adding a local component to a weekend otherwise built around an international roster.

Casa de Campo says the two-day program will include live cooking demonstrations, tastings and sessions with chefs and winemakers inside the Grand Tasting Pavilion at the Marina Riverside Center. The resort’s current festival page lists eight chefs in total along with more than 30 exhibitors.

Dinner Under the Stars Returns to Minitas Beach

The Saturday program ends at Minitas Beach Club, where Adam Pawlak will lead the festival’s Dinner Under the Stars.

The dinner is designed as a more intimate counterpoint to the larger tasting program, with a multi-course menu paired with wines in an open-air beachfront setting.

Pawlak, a Top Chef finalist and restaurateur, is known for a contemporary approach to Midwestern cooking. His appearance gives the weekend a distinct closing event rather than ending with the Grand Tasting Pavilion alone.

The festival package currently offered by Casa de Campo includes access for two people to the Grand Tasting Pavilion on both days as well as two places at the Dinner Under the Stars on Oct. 10.

Why Casa de Campo Works for a Food Weekend

Casa de Campo has 315 guest rooms and suites, along with a large collection of private villas spread across its 7,000-acre grounds. Every room and villa comes with a four-passenger golf cart, which matters at a resort where the marina, beach, golf courses and Altos de Chavón occupy different corners of the property.

The resort also has eight international restaurants, two food trucks and seven bars and lounges, according to its current accommodation information. That existing food-and-beverage footprint gives the festival a natural extension once the formal tastings are over.

You could spend part of the weekend at the Grand Tasting Pavilion, head back toward Minitas Beach and then make an evening of the marina or Altos de Chavón.

Casa de Campo’s scale also means the trip does not have to revolve exclusively around the festival. The property has 63 holes of golf across Teeth of the Dog, Dye Fore and The Links, all designed by Pete Dye.

Teeth of the Dog reopened earlier this year after its extensive restoration, giving golfers another reason to build an extra day or two around the festival weekend. The course remains the signature golf experience at Casa de Campo, with several holes running directly beside the Caribbean Sea.

The resort also has a 250-slip marina, an equestrian center, a racquet center and a spa, along with Altos de Chavón, the hilltop village overlooking the Chavón River.

That range is one reason Casa de Campo has increasingly worked as the setting for standalone destination events. The resort hosted its inaugural fashion week in June and has also developed a Cigars in Paradise festival built around cigars, rum and golf.

A Bigger Culinary Weekend in the Dominican Republic

The festival arrives as the Dominican Republic continues to deepen the range of experiences attached to its resort destinations.

Punta Cana remains the country’s largest tourism center, but La Romana offers a different kind of trip, with Casa de Campo operating as a resort community rather than a single hotel building.

Food is becoming a larger part of that identity.

The Casa de Campo festival combines visiting chefs with Dominican talent and places those events inside a property where guests can move between the marina, Minitas Beach, golf courses and Altos de Chavón over the course of the same weekend.

The Grand Tasting Pavilion will host the main programming on Friday, Oct. 9 and Saturday, Oct. 10. Saturday will then move into the closing Dinner Under the Stars at Minitas Beach Club.

Raúl de Molina will return as host of the festival, continuing a role he has held in previous editions.

Casa de Campo President Andrés Pichardo Rosenberg described the event as a celebration of both global culinary talent and Dominican heritage, while the resort is positioning this edition as its largest yet.

The numbers support the ambition: more than 3,000 attendees across two days, eight chefs and more than 30 exhibitors, all inside one of the Dominican Republic’s largest luxury resorts.

What It Costs and When to Go

Casa de Campo’s dedicated festival offer starts at $650 per person, per night and is valid from Oct. 9 through Oct. 11. The package includes accommodations, two passes to the Grand Tasting Pavilion for both festival days and two places at the Dinner Under the Stars.

October also gives you the option of turning the festival into a longer La Romana stay, especially if you want to add golf or a day around Minitas Beach.

The festival itself takes place Oct. 9-10, with the resort package extending through Oct. 11. That leaves enough room to treat the weekend as more than a food event: two days with Michael Mina, Hubert Keller, Joe Isidori and the wider chef lineup, followed by one more day inside Casa de Campo’s 7,000-acre Dominican Republic retreat.

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Hotelier Daniel Shamoon is partnering with developer Orange Limited on a new resort and residential project with 40 hotel accommodations, 36 villas for sale and residences priced from $3 million.

A major new hospitality and residential project is taking shape at one of the Caribbean’s most ambitious luxury communities, bringing together a veteran international hotelier, a 160-acre waterfront property and a new collection of multimillion-dollar villas.

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