COMO Laucala Island

The Hotel

Laucala is a 3,500-acre (1,400-hectare) private island in the northern Fiji group, off the south-east tip of Taveuni in the Vanua Levu archipelago. The island was purchased in 1972 by the publisher Malcolm Forbes, the original Forbes magazine proprietor, who is buried in the island cemetery, and was acquired in 2003 by Dietrich Mateschitz, the late Austrian co-founder of Red Bull. Mateschitz spent the next seven years and a reported USD 200 million developing the resort, which opened in 2010 as the most expensive private-island build of the era. After Mateschitz's death in 2022 the Mateschitz family sold operational control to the Singapore-based COMO Hotels & Resorts in 2024, the property reopened in February 2025 as COMO Laucala Island, retaining the build and the team while adding the COMO Shambhala wellness programme and COMO's culinary direction.

The 25 villas are spread across the island in three distinct settings. The Plateau Villas sit on the volcanic ridge above the resort with panoramic ocean views and large infinity pools (1- to 3-bedroom configurations). The Plantation Villas are in the coconut groves below, with private pools and direct beach paths. The Seagrass Villas are the overwater pavilions on the western lagoon, five units, the only overwater accommodation on the property, each with sliding glass floors over the reef. Every villa is a freestanding structure with at least one bedroom, a kitchen, a living and dining pavilion, a private pool and an outdoor shower; the smallest unit is 285 square metres, the largest (the Hilltop Residence) is over 1,800 square metres on its own promontory. The build is in dark hardwood and thatch, with Pacific-modernist detailing by the German architect Lorenzo Bennassar.

Dining is across five venues. The Plantation House is the main fine-dining room in a restored colonial villa; the Beach Bar and the Pool Bar handle daytime; the Seagrass restaurant is the open-air Asian; the Rock Lounge sits inside a volcanic outcrop with a private cellar. Eighty percent of the produce, vegetables, fruit, beef, pork, fish, dairy, even the salt and the coffee, comes from the island's own 240-acre organic farm, the largest hotel agriculture programme in the Pacific. The wine cellar holds 25,000 bottles and is open to guests for tastings. The all-inclusive rate covers all dining, all beverages outside of rare vintages, all activities and all spa treatments.

The activities programme is the most ambitious in the South Pacific. There is an 18-hole David McLay Kidd-designed championship golf course (one of the most remote in the world, the only true championship course in Fiji), a PADI dive centre with two boats, two submarines for reef tours to 100 metres, a 60-metre superyacht for charter, helicopter access to the Bligh Waters and Vanua Levu, a horse stable with thirty horses, a tennis academy, and the COMO Shambhala spa with eight treatment rooms and a yoga pavilion above the reef. Access is by private plane from Nadi (75 minutes) to the island's own airstrip; the resort handles every detail of arrival including arrival immigration.

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