Luxury Resorts Rooted in Nature: The Nayara Story

Our Resorts Answer to Their Places

In short: Nayara Resorts operates six luxury properties across Costa Rica, Panama, and Chile, 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.

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. A golf course can be built 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, raised without metal tools, wheels, or beasts of burden. The island's isolation, 3,700 kilometers from the nearest continent, makes every encounter singular. There is no equivalent anywhere else on Earth.

In Panama, the night sea glows: bioluminescent bays shimmer around the private island. And in Costa Rica, with Arenal Volcano as the backdrop, on-staff naturalists lead you on 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: in Arenal, three kitchens draw from one rainforest, and the culinary program is the edible expression of the landscape. Read: Forest to Table, Adventures in Flavor ↗

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, an ecological dead zone. We planted more than 40,000 native trees on it. Cecropias grew, the canopy closed, and the sloths returned: a keystone indicator that survives only in a healthy rainforest. Once branded a deadly sin, the sloth has become our favorite auditor. Its presence is the certification no agency can issue. The agencies came anyway: our Arenal resorts hold Green Globe certification and full carbon neutrality.

In Panama, we work with marine biologists to restore degraded reef in Bocas del Toro, raising coral fragments in underwater nurseries and grafting them onto damaged substrate. The reef is measurably recovering, and a mangrove-dwelling sloth of its own patrols the island's edge.

In Chile, the sun does the work. Nayara Alto Atacama transformed relentless desert light into clean energy and reclaims every drop of greywater to irrigate its gardens, earning the S seal, Chile's highest sustainability distinction. Nayara Hangaroa followed with its own solar project on Rapa Nui. In a desert averaging less than 15 millimeters of rain a year, you learn quickly: nothing is disposable. Read: Green Globe & S Certification ↗

"A stay here is not an offset. It is an investment you can watch grow."

The Salar de Atacama: in a desert this dry, nothing is disposable.

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. They are lived by the people who greet you. 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. This is not cultural tourism. It is an invitation into an ancestral household.

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, Housing in La Fortuna ↗

The 40-home neighborhood rising in La Fortuna: privately titled, permanently owned, independent of employment.

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 in the world. Condé Nast Traveler named Nayara Bocas del Toro the #1 resort in Central America, and every Nayara property has a prestigious Leading Hotels of the World or Relais & Châteaux designation.

These are not marketing claims. They are the receipts. Hospitality for us 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 the exchange feels like from inside it: trace Saturn's rings from a desert ridge, soak at midnight in water heated by a volcano, stand before the Moai you have seen in photographs all your life.

"Four ecosystems. Four pillars. One conviction: leave every place better than you found it."

• MICHELIN Guide, Nayara Springs (Three MICHELIN Keys)
• Green Globe Certification, Nayara Resorts Costa Rica
• UNESCO World Heritage, Rapa Nui National Park
• Chile S-Certification for Sustainable Tourism
• American Psychological Association, Nature and Mental Health
• UCLA Health, Benefits of Spending Time in Nature