The only Forbes Five-Star, Five-Diamond resort on the entire Palm Beach coast, a 309-room oceanfront property with a 42,000-square-foot spa, seven dining venues, and the half-mile of Manalapan beach that the locals actually use.
“The only Forbes Five-Star, Five-Diamond resort on the entire Palm Beach coast, a 309-room oceanfront property with a 42,000-square-foot spa, seven dining venues, and the half-mile of Manalapan beach that the locals actually use.”
Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa occupies the largest single-parcel oceanfront site between Palm Beach and Delray Beach, a 7-acre, half-mile-of-private-Atlantic-frontage property on the Manalapan barrier island, 10 minutes south of Worth Avenue but a full geographic remove from Palm Beach proper. The hotel opened in 1989 as the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach, ran under that banner for twenty-four years, and was bought in 2013 by London & Regional Properties, who put more than USD 100 million into a Jeffrey Beers International redesign, rebranded the property as Eau Palm Beach (the spelling references the French for water), and repositioned it from a buttoned Ritz formality toward a more contemporary, colour-saturated South Florida luxury vocabulary. The result is the only resort on the Palm Beach coast holding both the Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating and the AAA Five-Diamond rating, a distinction unmatched between Miami and Vero Beach.
The 309 keys (including 33 suites) are arranged across a single ten-storey oceanfront tower, with the upper-floor Ocean View categories looking straight east at the Atlantic over the resort's pools and private beach. Standard Resort View Rooms run a generous 450 square feet; Ocean View Rooms add direct surf views; the Ocean View Suites pair a separate living room with a furnished oceanfront balcony. The Presidential Suite (2,400 square feet, two bedrooms, a wrap-around terrace) occupies a top-floor corner and is the headline unit. Beers' redesign replaced the original Ritz colour palette with a brighter, more textural scheme, custom lighting, raw silk wall coverings, hand-knotted rugs, and a contemporary art programme curated by the design team. The bathrooms are marble-clad and oversized for the category; turndown service and the Forbes Five-Star service touch points (handwritten welcome cards, butler-grade room presentation) survive from the Ritz era largely intact.
The dining is the property's deepest single proposition. Angle, the AAA Four-Diamond oceanfront restaurant, runs a contemporary American tasting-menu format three nights a week, the only restaurant of its level between Miami's Faena and Palm Beach's The Breakers. Polo Steaks & Seafood is the daily steakhouse anchor; Breeze Ocean Kitchen runs Mediterranean lunch and dinner directly over the pool deck; the Stir Bar handles cocktails-and-light-bites; the Lobby Lounge does the afternoon-tea and pre-dinner ritual. Seven dining venues in total, including two pool-side and one beach-side, the most comprehensive single-property dining inventory on the Palm Beach coast.
Eau Spa is the property's headline amenity and the reason the property holds the only Forbes Five-Star spa rating in Palm Beach County. The spa runs 42,000 square feet across two floors, 19 treatment rooms (including five couples' suites), a Self-Centered Garden with hand-painted murals and a private outdoor relaxation court, separate men's and women's lounges with steam, sauna, and cold plunges, and a full menu of treatments built around the resort's signature scrubs and locally sourced botanicals. The other amenity tentpole is the beach: a half-mile of private, raked Atlantic frontage, the longest single-property beach allocation in the Palm Beach area, with a beach-services programme covering cabanas, watersports, and oceanfront butler-grade food and drinks. For Palm Beach-area wellness or oceanfront-resort stays at the Forbes Five-Star level, Eau is the obvious answer.
For Palm Beach-coast honeymoons that prioritise oceanfront seclusion over Worth Avenue social calendar, Eau is the obvious answer. The Ocean View Suites with private oceanfront balconies handle the standard one-week brief; the Presidential Suite for milestone honeymoons. The half-mile of private beach means morning walks without other guests for the first hour; Eau Spa's couples' suites handle the in-room-service side of the brief. The kitchen at Angle is the resort's culinary peak.
Eau holds the only Forbes Five-Star spa rating in Palm Beach County and the spa is built for multi-day immersion, not single-treatment day-trippers. The 42,000 square feet across 19 treatment rooms and the Self-Centered Garden support three- to seven-day stays without repetition; the resort's wellness programming pairs treatments with beach yoga, oceanfront meditation, and a dedicated wellness-menu at Breeze. For a quiet, oceanfront, structured-but-flexible wellness week, this is the strongest single property between Miami and Amelia Island.
Anniversary weekends at Eau calibrate cleanly: an Ocean View Room for a quiet two-night version, an Ocean View Suite for a milestone, the Presidential Suite for the major one. Angle handles the dinner that needs to feel exceptional without theatrical staging; Polo Steaks & Seafood handles the second night; the spa's couples' programmes carry the daytime brief. The half-mile of private beach takes care of the long afternoon walks the brief usually requires.
100 South Ocean Boulevard
Manalapan, FL 33462
United States
10 minutes to Palm Beach island; 15 minutes to Worth Avenue; 35 minutes to Boca Raton; 45 minutes to PBI airport
309 rooms and suites (including 33 suites)
Resort View Rooms from USD 564/night
Ocean View Rooms from USD 750/night
Ocean View Suites from USD 1,400/night
Presidential Suite from USD 7,500/night
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Built 1989 as Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach; rebranded Eau Palm Beach 2013 after USD 100M+ renovation by Jeffrey Beers
Eau Spa (42,000 sq ft, 19 treatment rooms)
Angle (oceanfront fine dining)
Polo Steaks & Seafood, Breeze Ocean Kitchen
Half-mile private Atlantic beach
Two oceanfront pools plus adults-only pool
Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star (both hotel and spa)
Forbes Five-Diamond AAA rating
From $564/night. Reservations book three to four weeks ahead in the December to April winter-season window; one to two weeks for summer and shoulder. Holiday weekends (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Presidents' Day) book three months ahead.
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