Is all-inclusive becoming luxury travel’s most exciting category?

There was a time when telling someone you were going all-inclusive gave them a fairly good idea of the holiday you had booked.

There would be a buffet. Drinks by the pool. Perhaps a garish wristband. The minibar might be included; the good wine almost certainly wasn’t. The appeal was convenience and, more importantly, knowing exactly what the holiday was going to cost before you left home.

For plenty of families, that formula worked brilliantly. It still does. But somewhere along the way, the upper end of all-inclusive started becoming considerably more interesting.

Today, it might mean a private island in the Maldives where your butler can arrange a dive in the morning, a massage that afternoon and dinner wherever you happen to fancy it. At Ikos, there are menus designed by Michelin-starred chefs, more than 100 wines to choose from and an electric MINI waiting when you want to go exploring. In Antigua, one of the Caribbean’s loveliest private islands happens to be all-inclusive too.

The change isn’t simply that all-inclusive hotels have become more luxurious. The best are rethinking what it means to have everything included in the first place.

It started with the food

Food was always going to be the sticking point. For years, all-inclusive dining was largely about abundance: plenty of choice, plenty of it and the reassuring knowledge that you could go back for seconds. That’s perfectly fine, but it isn’t necessarily how we want to eat on holiday now, particularly when food is often one of the things we’re most excited about before we go.

Ikos Resorts is one we come back to again and again when clients want all the ease of all-inclusive but still really care about where they eat. Restaurants are predominantly à la carte, menus have been created with Michelin-starred chefs, and the wine list runs to more than 100 labels. There’s also Dine Out, which includes meals at selected local restaurants. We love this. The traditional all-inclusive was designed to give you very little reason to leave; Ikos will quite happily send you out for dinner.

Ikos Porto Petro works especially well in Mallorca because you really shouldn’t spend a week on the island without seeing some of it. Have a slow breakfast at the hotel, take an electric MINI out for the day, stop somewhere that catches your eye and come back for dinner. Or use Dine Out and stay out for the evening. Having paid for an all-inclusive holiday doesn’t need to dictate what you do once you’re there.

There are some lovely variations on this around the Mediterranean. At Daios Cove in Crete, the Residents’ Club opens up restaurants and bars across the resort for eligible guests. Elix, Mar-Bella Collection, on the Greek mainland near Parga, pairs its inclusive offering with a wonderfully wild setting of pine forest, beach and Ionian Sea. Domes Aulūs Elounda is adults-only and feels altogether more laid-back.

We’d still look closely at the restaurants before recommending any all-inclusive. Ten places to eat isn’t terribly exciting if you only really want to eat in two of them. Give us a handful of genuinely good restaurants, a proper wine list and the freedom to go somewhere local when we fancy it, and we’re much more interested.

The real luxury might be not having to sign for everything

This is the part of all-inclusive that we think is slightly underestimated.

Luxury holidays can involve a surprising amount of admin. Nothing dramatic, just the tiny transactions that punctuate the day: lunch by the pool, another bottle of water, two ice creams, a paddleboard, room service because somebody missed lunch, drinks before dinner. None of those costs is necessarily the issue. It’s the constant reminder that every decision is another transaction.

For families, removing that can be wonderfully freeing. Children don’t understand room charges, and nor should they. They want another juice, decide they’re hungry 45 minutes after lunch or suddenly fancy trying whatever activity they’ve just watched another child doing. At the right resort, everyone gets a little more freedom to say yes.

At the very top end, the same principle applies; only the things you’re saying yes to go well beyond another round of drinks. Kudadoo Maldives Private Island has just 15 overwater residences and an “Anything, Anytime, Anywhere” philosophy. Dining, spa treatments, diving, water sports and excursions can all become part of the stay, with a private butler shaping the days around you. You might go diving in the morning and decide over lunch that a massage sounds good that afternoon. Dinner can happen when and where you want it. There isn’t the same sense of working your way through a list of inclusions because the service is built around making those inclusions feel almost invisible.

That’s when we think all-inclusive becomes genuinely luxurious. Not when the list of free things gets longer, but when you stop having to ask whether something is included before deciding whether you’d like to do it.

The resort gates have opened

There is still a place for the classic fly-and-flop all-inclusive. Sometimes you want a beautiful pool, a week of sunshine and very few reasons to leave it. We would never argue with that.

But one of our old reservations about all-inclusive was always that it could put a little bubble around the holiday. You’ve paid for everything inside the resort, so heading into town for dinner or hiring a car for the day suddenly feels like paying twice. That’s less of an issue when the hotel itself has started building the destination into what you’ve paid for.

Again, Ikos feels the same. Alongside Dine Out, guests can take an electric MINI out for the day and explore independently. We love that because it acknowledges something fairly obvious: however lovely a hotel is, Greece is outside. Go and see it.

Turkey does the resort holiday brilliantly in a slightly different way. Hillside Beach Club, tucked into the coastline near Fethiye, has long been one of those places where staying put doesn’t necessarily mean doing very little. The sea and surrounding coves are a huge part of the experience. XO Cape Arnna brings a newer, very polished option to the same stretch of Turkish coast, with a big emphasis on restaurants, wellness and days spent by and on the water.

The Maldives takes a different approach because, naturally, leaving your hotel usually requires a boat. Here, the more interesting inclusive stays can bring snorkelling, diving, dolphin cruises, watersports and trips out onto the water into the experience. Soneva Unlimited, for example, can wrap dining, drinks, spa treatments, diving and a huge range of experiences into the stay. At that level, you’re not paying to remain on an island; you’re paying for access to everything that makes being there interesting.

We’d still choose carefully. If we were sending someone to a tiny Italian town where half the pleasure is trying a different trattoria every night, we’d be unlikely to insist they needed all-inclusive. But on a private island, or at a resort where the hotel can genuinely open up the destination rather than close you off from it, the equation starts to make much more sense.

Service is what separates the really good ones

Of course, putting more things into the room rate doesn’t automatically make a hotel luxurious. You could include every bottle in the cellar, every boat in the marina and a massage before breakfast; if the service is impersonal, none of it will feel particularly special.

This is why Jumby Bay Island has the reputation it does. It’s an Oetker Hotels private island just off Antigua and one of those places where the words “all-inclusive” almost feel inadequate. Dining, fine wines and Champagne, water sports and plenty of activities are part of the stay, but the experience is still rooted in the polished, intuitive service you’d expect from one of the Caribbean’s greatest hotels. You’re not being funnelled through an all-inclusive programme. You’re staying on a beautiful private island where an awful lot happens to have been taken care of already.

Helen’s view is that this is where the category has changed most: the best all-inclusives don’t feel as though everybody is having the same holiday. One family might spend the day on the water, another barely leave the beach, while a couple disappears to the spa and resurfaces for dinner. The inclusions are there to give you more choice, not prescribe how you use your time.

Kudadoo takes that idea even further with its butler-led service. Ikos approaches it from a different direction, using an enormous amount of infrastructure to make family holidays remarkably seamless. Different price points, different styles, but the principle is similar: the best all-inclusive service should make a holiday feel less structured, not more.

And perhaps families have the most to gain

This is probably why we’re talking about all-inclusive more often with families than we were a few years ago.

A family holiday has lots of moving parts. One person is awake at seven; someone else wants breakfast at ten. One child has ski-school levels of enthusiasm for the kids’ club; another would rather stay attached to a parent. Lunch is eaten enthusiastically on Tuesday and rejected on Wednesday. Somebody always wants an ice cream.

A very good all-inclusive absorbs a lot of that chaos.

It’s why we rate Ikos so highly for families. Yes, there are children’s clubs, sports and activities, but the grown-up side of the holiday hasn’t been forgotten. Parents still get excellent restaurants, proper wine, beautiful spas and spaces that don’t feel as though every design decision began with a toddler. Grandparents can come too, teenagers have some independence, and everybody can operate on a slightly different timetable without one person spending the week organising it.

In the Maldives, Finolhu is a good example of a resort that understands the same balancing act. It’s colourful and playful, with its famous sandbank and beach-club energy, but it also has strong family facilities and a premium all-inclusive offering that gives guests much more freedom across its restaurants and bars. We’d look at something like Finolhu for a family who wants the Maldives to feel fun rather than hushed; we’d steer a couple looking for complete privacy towards somewhere very different.

And sometimes there isn’t a child in sight

We don’t want to make this entirely about families. Some of the most tempting all-inclusives are designed for two people with very little planned beyond deciding where to swim and what time to have dinner.

Stella Island in Crete is a good case in point. It’s adults-only and unashamedly romantic, with a huge amount of the hotel built around water: rooms that open straight onto the pool, overwater-style bungalows and private pools for hiding away completely. Add a serious spa and enough choice at dinner that you don’t start eyeing up restaurants elsewhere by night three, and you have the sort of place where a week can happily become very unambitious. We mean that as a compliment.

Domes Aulūs Elounda, further east in Crete, feels calmer and a little more understated. We’d look at it for couples who want the ease of all-inclusive but aren’t necessarily drawn to the big-resort version of it. And then, several thousand miles away, Kudadoo shows just how far the same idea can stretch: only 15 residences, a private butler and days that can be shaped almost entirely around whatever you wake up wanting to do.

So, is all-inclusive becoming luxury travel’s most exciting category?

We think it might be one of them.

Not because every luxury hotel should suddenly start including everything. There are trips where half the fun is wandering out for dinner, finding a little bar you hadn’t planned on and allowing the destination to dictate the day. We’d never want to lose that.

What interests us is how far the best all-inclusives have moved away from the idea that convenience requires compromise. Better food, thoughtful experiences, excellent childcare, serious wine, genuinely good spas and service personal enough that two guests staying at the same hotel can have completely different weeks.

The old promise was simple: pay before you go and don’t worry about the bill.

The new one is subtler. Don’t worry about the bill, certainly. But don’t worry too much about the itinerary either. Order another bottle. Let the children have the ice cream. Go diving because the sea looks particularly inviting this morning. Have the massage. Take the car into town for dinner.

Thinking about all-inclusive a little differently? From Ikos in the Mediterranean to private islands in the Maldives and Caribbean, we can help you find the right fit – and work out which level of inclusivity is actually worth paying for.

Speak to the More Travel team, and we’ll help you plan it.