Luxury Resorts Rooted in Nature: The Nayara Story
Native trees planted on former cattle pasture around Arenal Volcano. The canopy returned, and so did the sloths.
MICHELIN Keys across the collection, including three at Nayara Springs, the only resort in Central America to receive this honor.
Of our Costa Rica workforce comes from surrounding communities. Service this personal only happens when the hosts are home.
Our Resorts Answer to Their Places
In short: Nayara Resorts operates six luxury properties across Costa Rica, Panama, and Chile. Each is built on one exchange: the place humbles and heals you, and we regenerate its land and invest in its people. Four pillars, one conviction: leave every place better than you found it.
The most extraordinary places on Earth deserve hospitality that honors them. Nayara was built on that conviction: not resorts that could exist anywhere, but properties that could only exist where they stand.
A tented camp raised in the canopy it replanted. An island resort whose spa hangs in a treehouse above a reef it is helping rebuild. An island sanctuary part-owned by the people whose ancestors carved the Moai. None of these could be lifted and set down anywhere else, and that is the point.
We operate in four ecosystems: the volcanic rainforest of Arenal, Costa Rica; the Caribbean Archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama; the high desert of Chile's Atacama; and Rapa Nui, the most remote inhabited island on Earth. Each property is shaped by its landscape, staffed by its people, and held accountable to its ecology.
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Four Pillars, Two Threads
Four pillars hold up everything we do, and they work in pairs. Two describe what the place does for you: it astonishes you, and it heals you. Two describe what we do for the place: we regenerate its land, and we invest in its people. The place works on you. We work for the place.
Born in Latin America
We were born in Latin America, and that warmth runs through everything. It is not a style of service. It's how we were raised: remembering what a guest said and asking about it the next morning.
The collection now spans two continents, and the standard travels with the culture, not instead of it. Our resorts belong to Leading Hotels of the World and Relais & Châteaux, but we never imported the soul of the operation. It moved with us, from rainforest to reef to desert to the most remote inhabited island on Earth. Our outlook is global. Our welcome never left home.
Everything we do has to have that flourish, a little bit of magic, a spark.
Experiences Rooted in Place
Every experience we offer exists because of where we are, not in spite of it. That is the test we hold ourselves to, and it is stricter than it sounds. You can build a golf course anywhere. A landscape that doubles for another planet cannot. Read: Mars on Earth →
In the Atacama, the terrain is so close to Martian that NASA has used it to rehearse missions. By day, guests walk ground that stands in for another world. By night, dry air, high altitude, and zero light pollution make the heavens blaze: guests trace Saturn's rings from our own observatory with resident astronomical guides, under 300 clear nights a year. Read: Stargazing in the Atacama →
On Rapa Nui, the Moai stand nowhere else on Earth. Nearly a thousand stone giants, some weighing more than 80 tons, were raised without metal tools, wheels, or beasts of burden. The island's isolation, 3,700 kilometers from the nearest continent, makes every encounter singular. No equivalent exists anywhere else on Earth.
In Panama, the night sea glows: bioluminescent bays shimmer around the private island. In Costa Rica, with Arenal Volcano as the backdrop, on-staff naturalists lead night hikes where the rainforest's nocturnal residents emerge. Our kitchens follow the same law. Cero Kilómetros, our zero-kilometer commitment, means ingredients travel meters, not miles. Read: Forest to Table →
The Healing Power of Nature
Wellness here is not a list of treatments. It is the land itself, working on you, in the hands of people who belong to it.
In Costa Rica, hot springs heated by Arenal Volcano carry minerals dissolved through rock over centuries. At adults-only Nayara Springs and family-friendly Nayara Tented Camp, every villa and tent holds a private plunge pool fed by the same natural hot springs.
In the Atacama, wellness is sensory subtraction. No humidity, no noise, no light. What remains is the body responding to altitude, dry heat, and stillness. In Panama, the Caribbean itself is the treatment: warm, calm, salt-rich water, held by mangrove and reef.
A 2020 review reported measurable links between time in nature and reduced stress, improved mood, and better physical well-being. Read: The Healing Power of Nature →
The ecosystem is the healer.
We simply know where to take you.
Beyond Sustainability
Sustainability holds the line. Regeneration moves it forward. The question is not how to avoid harm, but how to leave each ecosystem stronger than we found it.
In Costa Rica, the proof has fur and moves slowly. The land under Nayara Tented Camp was once cleared cattle pasture. We planted more than 40,000 native trees on it. Cecropias grew, the canopy closed, and the sloths returned. The agencies came too: our Arenal resorts hold Green Globe certification and are fully carbon neutral.
In Panama, we work with marine biologists to restore degraded reefs in Bocas del Toro, raise coral fragments in underwater nurseries, and graft them onto damaged substrate.
In Chile, the sun does the work. Nayara Alto Atacama transformed relentless desert light into clean energy and reclaims greywater to irrigate its gardens, earning the S seal. Nayara Hangaroa followed with its own solar project on Rapa Nui. Read: Green Globe & S Certification →
Roots, Culture, and Community
Service this personal is not a flourish. It is what hospitality looks like when the hosts are home.
On Rapa Nui, the Hitorangi family part-owns Nayara Hangaroa. The island's history, language, and traditions are not curated for guests. The people who greet you live them. The Moai builders survived centuries of colonization, disease, and near-extinction; today the culture is being reclaimed, and the resort is part of that reclamation.
In Costa Rica, more than 90 percent of our workforce lives in the surrounding communities. The families who staff our properties grew up under Arenal Volcano. They do not perform local culture. They are part of it.
And in La Fortuna, we are building a 40-home residential community: not employee housing, not a company benefit, but a permanent neighborhood of privately titled homes, each owned outright by its resident, entirely independent of employment at Nayara. Most of the future residents are single mothers working across the region's tourism economy. Not staff housing. Inheritance. Read: Women's Empowerment →
The place works on you. We work for the place. That is the whole architecture.
Recognition: The Receipts
The pillars do not need external validation to function. But when the world's most rigorous evaluators arrive independently and confirm what we have built, it matters.
MICHELIN has awarded Nayara seven Keys across the collection, including Three Keys at Nayara Springs, the first and only resort in Central America to hold that distinction. Read: 7 MICHELIN Keys →
Travel + Leisure readers named Nayara a top 15 hotel brand globally and Nayara Tented Camp the #1 resort in Central America for the fifth time in six years, ranking it #28 worldwide. Condé Nast Traveler named Nayara Bocas del Toro the #1 resort in Central America.
These are not marketing claims. They are the receipts. For us, hospitality is personal, precise, and calm. Guests should feel known, not managed. We measure success by names we remember and guests who return.
So come see what all the fuss is about.
Come Meet the Places We Answer To
Six properties across Costa Rica, Panama, and Chile, each rooted in its place's nature and culture.
Explore the Podcast
Conversations about the people, places, cultures, and ideas behind Nayara's destinations.
The Nayara Philosophy
What are the four pillars of the Nayara philosophy? +
What does “our resorts answer to their places” mean? +
Why is the sloth a symbol for Nayara? +
Which Nayara resort is on Easter Island? +
What does “beyond sustainability” mean at Nayara? +
How many MICHELIN Keys does Nayara hold? +
What is the housing project in La Fortuna? +
Where are Nayara Resorts located? +
- MICHELIN Guide · Nayara Springs
- Green Globe Certification Program
- UNESCO World Heritage · Rapa Nui National Park
- Chile S-Certification for Sustainable Tourism
- American Psychological Association · Nurtured by Nature
- UCLA Health · Benefits of Spending Time in Nature
- Travel + Leisure · World's Best Awards
- Condé Nast Traveler · Best Resorts in Central America
