Of every question I am asked, in May and in November, the most common is the same. Which one. The answer is not difficult; it depends on what you came for. Below, the five houses I would book without hesitation in the village this season, in the order I tend to recommend them.
There has never been a year in which Saint-Tropez offered more good rooms than 2026. The Cheval Blanc has settled into its third year. The Airelles takeover of the Château de la Messardière is now operating at the level the building always deserved. The Byblos remains, against all expectation, the most fun. Lily of the Valley, fifteen minutes south, has quietly become the most credible wellness address in France. Lou Pinet is, for the third year in a row, the room I would book for myself.
What follows is a guide for the visitor who has stayed in three of them and is trying to choose for the fourth time. Each of these houses is excellent. The question is which one is for you.
Cheval Blanc Saint-Tropez — the room for the long stay
The LVMH operation on the quai opened in 2019, took a year to find its rhythm, and is now operating at the level the address always promised. The thirty rooms are the most generous in the village. The pool, on the roof, is one of the very few in town that allows a serious adult swim in the afternoon. The single transformation that has made the property what it is, however, is the kitchen — La Vague d'Or, under Arnaud Donckèle, has held its three Michelin stars and become, for many of my American clients, the single most ambitious dining room on the Mediterranean coast.
Book the Junior Suite with the harbour view. Eat at La Vague d'Or once, on the second evening. Breakfast on your terrace. If you only do one Saint-Tropez hotel in a season, do this one for five nights and skip the rest.
Airelles Château de la Messardière — the room for the panorama
The Airelles takeover of the Messardière, completed in time for the 2022 season, has done for the property what the same group did for the Mas Candille in Mougins ten years ago — it has stopped trying to be everything and started doing one thing exceptionally. The pool is now the right pool. The spa is now the right spa. The terrace, with its view of the gulf and Pampelonne beyond, remains the single most beautiful view from any hotel terrace in the village.
The rooms are large. The service is, since the Airelles arrival, the most polished in town. The dining room — Acquerello — is a serious Italian kitchen, not a hotel restaurant in the bad sense. Book the suites with the Pampelonne view. Ignore the courtyard rooms. The drive into the village is six minutes; the drive to the beach, ten.
Hôtel Byblos — the room for the conversation
The Byblos, now in its sixtieth year, is the only hotel in the village that has never tried to be anything other than itself. The cluster of pastel buildings on the avenue Paul Signac is the work of an architecture that should not still feel right, and somehow does — the small inner streets, the bougainvillea, the swimming pool that has hosted the same families for three generations. The clientele is the most international in town. The bar at six is, on a good evening, the best room in the South of France.
Order dinner at Cucina, the property's Italian kitchen, on the night you want a long table — and at Byblos Beach Ramatuelle, where the chef Nicola Canuti is running the most consistent beach kitchen on the Pampelonne side this season, for lunch on the next. Les Caves du Roy, downstairs, is still Les Caves du Roy, which is to say the only club in town that the regulars of the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc will admit to having been to. Bring stamina.
Lily of the Valley — the room for the proper rest
The Stéphane Courbit property in La Croix-Valmer, fifteen minutes south of the village, is now in its seventh season and has become, in that time, the most credible wellness operation in the South of France. The medical side is serious — a real team, not a spa with white coats — and the architecture, by Philippe Starck, is the rare Starck building that has aged into being the right shape for its setting.
Send the friends who are coming for a week of proper sleep, proper food, and a saner version of the Riviera summer. The pool is the largest of any hotel in the area. The restaurant — Vista — is genuinely good. The drive into Saint-Tropez is thirty minutes. Many of the guests, by day four, no longer make it.
Lou Pinet — the room for the second visit
The Maisons Pariente property on the rue du Couvent, set in a walled garden behind the village, is the room I book for myself. It is small — thirty-four rooms — and the architecture, by the studio Festen, is the most assured contemporary work in the area. The pool, set in a pine garden, is the most beautiful in town. The restaurant — Beefbar Saint-Tropez since 2024 — is the right table for the night you do not want to leave the property.
The Pariente family treat their guests as members. Most of them are. If you have already done the Cheval Blanc and the Messardière, this is the room for the third year. By the second visit, the staff know the name of your daughter and the rosé you prefer chilled. It is, in the most precise sense, the entire point.
A note on the rest
There are other excellent rooms in and around the village — the Sezz, the Pan Deï Palais, La Bastide de Saint-Tropez, the small Villa Cosy — and several that I will quietly avoid this year. The above five, however, are the ones that will define the season. Pick one. Stay seven nights. Do not try to switch hotels in the middle of the trip.
The village is small. The houses are not.
— Camille Vedy
