Matchmaker: Top Family-friendly Caribbean Resorts

No two families are alike, and the world’s best resorts know it. Our favorite family-friendly Caribbean resorts use great imagination in creating activities and amenities for guests of all ages and interests. From marking sea turtle nesting areas to three-generation backgammon games, the offerings at these top properties help you spend quality time with the ones you love.

Contact a member of our Bookings Team for assistance planning multigenerational family travel.

Families With Young Children: Four Seasons Nevis

This sprawling resort, which encompasses hundreds of acres on the volcanic island of Nevis’ west coast, including a beautiful four-mile beach, has an excellent kids club and offers myriad activities to keep everyone from toddlers to grandparents entertained and happy. In addition to the hotel’s three pools, ten tennis courts and eighteen-hole golf course, Nevis itself offers water activities, challenging hikes, a sailing school and beautiful beaches with low surf. Budding conservationists should visit in June, which is sea turtle nesting season. Guests of the Four Seasons can help patrol the beaches and mark turtle nests at night, while kids can join a weekly sea turtle camp.

The nearly 200 guest rooms and suites, as well as 42 residences, feel fresh, providing an updated take on traditional West Indian interiors. Be aware that walking from one end of the resort to the other can take fifteen minutes, and some of the villas are on a hilltop. Contact a member of our Bookings Team for many more suggestions on family travel with little kids.

Families With Teenagers: Casa de Campo, Dominican Republic

Casa de Campo

, the Dominican Republic’s legendary resort, has been an exclusive retreat for wealthy Latin and North American families since its founding in the mid 1970s. The property, whose hundreds of hotel rooms and villas are spread out over 7,000 acres on the island’s southeastern coast, is world-renowned for its three superb golf courses, including Teeth of the Dog, which many consider the top eighteen-hole course in the Caribbean. Other recreation options range from the classic—tennis, polo, watersports, deep-sea fishing—to the offbeat: merengue lessons, tie-dye workshops, spelunking and dune buggy rides. The resort has six restaurants, of which the best are the two run by the Maccioni family: La Caña by Il Circo, in the main hotel building, and the Beach Club by Le Cirque, at Playa Minitas. There are also two excellent restaurants not owned by the resort, Peperoni and Limoncello, at La Marina, on the edge of the property. In nearby Alta Chavon, a re-creation of a medieval Mediterranean village, the best restaurant is La Pizzeria.

Rooms have modern amenities and furnishings, including large marble bathrooms and plasma-screen TVs, although detractors complain about a corporate blandness to the design. Families will appreciate the many connecting-room options. Contact a member of our Bookings Team for many more suggestions on family travel with teenagers.

Adventurous Families: Viceroy Sugar Beach, St. Lucia

Sugar Beach

occupies the most picturesque and historically rich piece of real estate on St. Lucia: a UNESCO World Heritage site encompassing more than 100 acres of lush tropical rainforest, nestled between the island’s twin volcano peaks, as well as a white-sand beach— the only one in the area— bordering a National Marine Preserve just offshore. Scattered throughout the property are fifty-nine plush villas that combine plantation elegance with Southampton-cottage minimalism. Interiors are predominantly white, but stylishly accented with dark hardwood floors and black-and-white photographs. The voile-draped four-poster beds are piled high with feather mattresses atop crisp 700-thread-count Egyptian cotton linens. All rooms have complimentary Wi-Fi and are outfitted with flat-screen televisions, Nespresso coffee makers and such deluxe amenities as Victorian claw-foot bathtubs, plunge pools and deck furniture.

The Luxury Villas are the largest and most desirable accommodations. Most are set back on the hill, which makes them a bit hard to access but affords beautiful panoramas of the surrounding foliage and mountainside; ocean views may be available upon request but cannot be guaranteed. Superior and Grand Luxury Villas have the added benefit of a living room with a queen sleeper sofa, and a handful of them are equipped with half bathrooms. Each villa cluster has very distinct characteristics, with some better for families than others, so members should contact Indagare’s Bookings Team for assistance in reserving the most suitable accommodations.

Sugar Beach is ideal for nature enthusiasts. On the property, guests can participate in sea kayaking, snorkeling, sailing, windsurfing and scuba diving in the National Marine Reserve. A five-minute drive away are such attractions as a drive-in volcano, botanical gardens, zip line cables, waterfalls and sulfur springs. Contact a member of our Bookings Team for many more suggestions for adventurous family travel.

Multigenerational Families: Curtain Bluff, Antigua

Developed in 1961 by the late Sir Howard Hulford, Curtain Bluff is still run by Hulford’s wife, Michelle, and caters to a cadre of guests who have been coming year after year, generation after generation.

The resort is set on a spit of land on the southern coast of Antigua, bordered one side by the Atlantic and on the other by the calmer Caribbean. All the rooms overlook the ocean, which means you go to sleep to the marvelous sound of crashing surf. The Caribbean-facing beach is lined with palm trees to shade the lounge chairs and hold hammocks. At the back of the beach are a half basketball court, a shuffleboard court, a freeform pool and a swing for kids. On the other side of the resort are four tennis courts, a squash court, a fitness center and the spa.

A trip to Curtain Bluff can feel like a visit with old family friends. The rate is all-inclusive, so there are no dinner checks to sign, and tipping is not permitted; instead, guests are encouraged to donate to the hotel’s charitable organization, which funds scholarships for local children. This also means no activities fees, whether you spend the day scuba diving, playing squash or taking a tennis clinic. This is particularly wonderful for older kids, as they can easily set off on all sorts of adventures. In addition, the resort offers a year-round kids club.

Lunch is served down by the beach and dinner up on the terrace, in the center of the resort. Dishes are simple and light, like grilled swordfish with fresh tarragon and baby bok choy. The extensive wine cellar has an impressive stock, including Château Margaux and even (amazingly for the Caribbean) Château Pétrus.

Rooms are spacious and well-kept, with wicker furniture and huge marble bathrooms. The style is not überchic, and parts of the property could use some updating, but it is very comfortable, and the atmosphere is energetic and welcoming.

Contact a member of our Bookings Team for many more suggestions for multigenerational family travel.