This Caribbean Island Is One of the Must-visit Destinations of 2025—Thanks to New Resorts Like This One

During an East Coast winter, there is no better feeling of relief than the one that comes with boarding a flight from New York’s JFK to Turks and Caicos. This past winter, inspired by Travel + Leisure‘s Best Places to Go, which named Turks and Caicos a must-visit destination of 2025, my husband, nine-month-old son, and I escaped to the islands. We stayed at The Strand, a new resort with standalone beach houses, hidden on Cooper Jack Bay on the south coast of Providenciales. Set on pristine white sand, the resort is an angular sandcastle of clean lines, coral surfaces, and glittering private pools that mirror the island’s milky blue surrounds.

The sun-washed coral-stone walls and floors of The Strand, which opened in late 2024 and will be fully complete by 2027, made it incredibly easy to switch gears from snow boots to sunglasses. The modern sandcastle is studded with color, starting with a vibrant lobby mural (above) by local artist Bradley Theodore, and a rainbow of bright sundresses and jewelry in the resort shop. The kaleidoscope of color followed us to the restaurant, where there was a scotch bonnet on top of my margarita and green tobiko atop an amuse-bouche of local lobster.

Our days at The Strand were equally peaceful whether spent on our private pool deck or down on the hotel’s private beach. There will never be another hotel that shares this strip of sand with The Strand, which sets this resort apart from most others on the island—many of which share the densely developed Grace Bay. Meals at on-site DelMar restaurant were both polished and casual, and any meal delivered to our room was just as elegant; suite kitchens are fully stocked with everything from dinnerware to wine fridges. And we didn’t even ask for the full-size crib or diaper pail that were already waiting in our room—clear indicators of the attention to detail that we noticed throughout our stay.

Here, my full review of The Strand on Turks and Caicos.

The Rooms

Accommodations at The Strand range from one-bedroom suites with balconies to six-bedroom residences with direct access to the private beach. Across all options, one feature is standard: every room at The Strand features the sea view as its centerpiece. “The unique thing about our resort is that all the rooms are ocean front. We are not seeing a partial ocean view. You are just…there,” Jenny Hannenberg-Feig, the hospitality manager at The Strand, told me when I toured the resort.

Suites are each part of larger attached “villas”—each villa can be split into multiple suites for families (or separate parties) as needed. Every ground-floor suite features its own private plunge pool with a covered terrace—some with dining tables, others with soaking tubs and televisions. We stayed in a ground-floor suite and were glad to have a dining table and sitting area on our balcony; while beautiful, a bathtub would have been less useful for our family. Second floor suites feature ocean-front balconies, and some include rooftop terraces complete with outdoor kitchens.

Our suite had a full kitchen, including a wine fridge, ice machine, Nespresso coffee maker, and cabinets stocked with everything from flatware to Champagne flutes, all of which we used. We loved opening the sliding doors to our sitting area to create an indoor-outdoor living room, especially in the evening after dinner when live music from the bar below allowed my husband and I to feel like we were out for the night, even when we had to be home to put our baby to bed.

Bedrooms are spacious (ours was big enough to accommodate a full-size infant crib without inhibiting our movement) with king-size beds made with Frette linens, large closets, and en-suite bathrooms with double sinks and rain showers. Ground-floor bedrooms have sliding doors onto each suite’s outdoor terrace.

I also toured the Strand’s five-bedroom residences, which are private homes available for travelers to rent. Each has a combination of “casita” guest suites and customizations like outdoor showers, infinity and plunge pools, offices, kids’ rooms, firepits, and outdoor kitchens.

Food and Drink

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served at The Strand’s DelMar restaurant, which serves as the social center of the resort. Most nights of our stay, the restaurant was busy with both hotel guests and outside visitors, coming from all over the island to check out the newcomer to the Providenciales restaurant scene. We sat for leisurely meals at DelMar, sometimes at the beachfront tables under the night sky, and loved the tuna and hamachi crudos, topped with delicate garnishes. We went out on the resort’s Boston Whaler one day and got to watch as the captain hauled in the resort’s catch of the day (red snapper for most of our stay). There was live music at the restaurant during multiple nights of our stay; guests were regularly abandoning their tables to dance under the stars.

We ate breakfasts both at the DelMar and in our room and lunches of tacos, salads, and club sandwiches each day under our umbrella at the pool.

Activities and Experiences

The Strand offers a full menu of activities and experiences that can be booked with a tablet without even leaving your room. Most activities take place with third-party tour operators—fishing, snorkeling, diving, and more can all be arranged as day trips. Tennis and pickleball courts are complete and open for play at the resort, and paddleboards and kayaks are available for use on the beach. A spa and kids’ club are still under construction, as is a large marina that will offer boaters from across the region the opportunity to dock for lunch and dinner at the DelMar—The Strand will be the first hotel to offer this capability on Providenciales.

Accessibility and Sustainability

Seventy percent of The Strand’s energy comes from solar power, which is unfortunately uncommon on Turks and Caicos. All of the hotel’s light-colored finishes and shade-providing wooden pergolas act together to keep things cool. The property is working in partnership with Colorado-based Butterfly Pavillion to protect the habitat for pollinators. And the land to the west and north of the resort are part of a designated nature reserve which will never be developed. During my stay, I didn’t notice many accessibility features; the restaurant and pool are both at the bottom of several flights of stairs.

Location

The Strand’s south coast location is either a selling point or a drawback, depending on the kind of vacation you’re planning. The resort will never share its private beach with another hotel, which makes it perfect for those seeking privacy on their vacation. But the shopping and dining opportunities of the Grace Bay strip are a 15-minute drive from the resort. This means guests are less likely to leave for a quick coffee or lunch—any trip to town will be less spontaneous than at some resorts in walking distance from Grace Bay Road. That said, renting a car was easy on Providenciales. We rented a Jeep for one day during our trip, which was dropped off and picked up at the resort. The island is not large, the resort is located roughly in the center of its southern coast, and we were easily able to explore the entire island of Providenciales from east to west in one day.

How to Get the Most Value Out of Your Stay

The Strand is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World group, where you can earn loyalty points and use them to save on stays across the globe. Booking The Strand on the Leading Hotels of the World platform can get you a flexible cancellation policy and rates that include daily breakfast.