Review: Laucala, Fiji (2025 edition)

It’s a bit shit to have to write a review that will be utterly irrelevant by the time it’s published.  Like reviewing sliced bread and giving it the accolade of “greatest thing of all time”, only to have Rick Astley’s Whenever You Need Somebody get released the next day.  Now you’ve gotta write it all over again.

Ya see, Laucala is shutting next year for a major refurb.

And not like the previous “we’ve updated the cushions and invited the world’s press to celebrate this miracle, like we’ve cured cancer” kind of refurb.  No, this is a year-long closure where no one quite knows what’s coming back, or even who, as there are lots of behind-the-scenes changes.

So this review is useless.  But then again, so are most travel reviews, so I’m in good company.

Now, I’ll tell you what isn’t useless: the arrival experience.  Holy hell.  Best I’ve ever had – by some margin.  We were met at the aircraft door of our Fiji Airways flight from Tokyo, taken through a private exit, and driven to Laucala’s dedicated hangar.  No immigration queues, no querying why you’re carrying illicit materials in your pants — they just took our passports and did it all for us while we sat in a beautiful lounge, naturally alone.

This is Laucala in a nutshell: completely over the top, and, perhaps my favourite part: all inclusive.  Yep, no extra charge for that.  I won’t call it free — we were paying over $10k a night — but the whole thing starts to feel like such outrageous value for money that I no longer resent the fact I can’t afford life-saving medicine for my children because I blew it all here.

In the hanger are two Laucala planes, so once we finished up in the lounge, we walk to the plane and were on our way.

Well — we would have been, if there hadn’t been some issue with the flights from LA.  We ended up waiting around for hours for other guests to arrive, which would’ve been far less irritating if anyone had actually properly communicated to us what was going on.

Still, if you’re going to be stuck at an airport, this is the way to do it: a gorgeous bar, ridiculously comfy sofas, with snacks from their own kitchen.  As much as it sucked to wait for hours, we were well looked after.  One of the staff even sat down with the kids, brought out paper, and started drawing with them.

Over on the island, it’s just as immaculate as I remembered.  Nothing in particular is the most impressive or the most beautiful — it’s all just… absurd.  The scale of what they’ve built for so few people defies logic.  And yet somehow, it all comes together to create one of the most stunning islands I’ve ever seen.

But even that magic can’t paper over the fact that Laucala exists in a strange time warp.  Six years since I last visited and it’s still the same pitch-dark villas, the same 17-button light system where turning something off in one bedroom triggers a blackout across the estate, and the same low lighting that makes you question whether you need glasses or a seeing-eye dog.  The fan still whistles like a haunted house, the doors still slam like they’re possessed by the evil spirit of past guests (private island…past guests…. let’s not go there), and the design — while massive and private and objectively ridiculous — looks like a relic compared to recent arrivals like Miavana or Kisawa.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still do everything.  Golf, tennis, pickleball, horse riding, island bike tours, private boat charters, massages, PT sessions, stretching at 7 am you never requested.  I was cycling around the island with the GM.  My Dad was trying to break speed records on a jet ski.  They’ve added a new speedboat, the spa does a cracking Indian head massage, and the gym is actually ok — assuming you forgive the cardio machines that look like they were rescued from a 1997 Sports Direct fire sale.

Food is… well, food.  Sometimes great, sometimes good enough.  Breakfast was superb (that avocado toast was a religious experience), the wagyu was lovely, and the pastries were dependable.  It’s not world-changing cuisine, but it doesn’t need to be when you’re eating it on a deserted beach under lanterns, and someone offers to wipe your daughter’s bum at lunch.  Seriously. Try getting that kind of service at the Ritz.

Which brings me to the service.  It’s hard to describe because it’s not consistent.  Some staff are incredible — Jerry, Gary, the entire activity team.  Moana showed up to meet our kids.  Others forget everything because they refuse to write anything down, day after day, like they’ve joined a cult that worships bad memory.  How would they even know they joined it?  The whole thing operates on Fiji Time, and if you’re here expecting the Maldives, you’re gonna need some therapy.  You’ll be screaming into your anger management sock puppet by day three.  If you’re here for ten, you’ll find yourself going, “Eh, who needs their luggage before takeoff anyway?”

Yes, they forgot our luggage in the villa.  Including our passports.  We were already on the plane.

But that’s Laucala. Going from Japan to Fiji is like going from the Playboy Mansion to a strip club in a retirement home, ran by the residents.  It’s chaos disguised as calm.  An island built for an audience that never shows up.  You’ll see more wild horses than other guests.  And everyone.  And I mean everyone, is so kind and sweet and trying, that you can forgive most of it.  Mostly.

My dad put it best, somewhere around day five: “It just keeps on amazing, everywhere you go.”.  He was still walking around in amazement, astonished by it all.

He’s right.  They opened a restaurant just for our family, on our final day, so we could depart at 7 pm.  I never even thought to ask about a late checkout, as that’s logistics and time which is grounded in reality.  That’s not Laucala. Here, everything just works in your favour.  Here, Gary, the GM spent an hour with us over in Nadi and helped us to the airport at 9:40pm.

One minute you’re alone at sunset on a cliffside bar with no one in sight, the next you’re touring their hydroponic farm and wondering how the hell this place even exists.  Laucala gets so, so much right.  It’s these moments where the entire place feels dedicated to you, that it reminds me when I still chase these things.  Why I was prepared to lug my family to literally the furthest away point in the world, a 26 hour flight away, to get there.

Who is it not for?

It’s not for everyone.  Everyone being people that just love amazing service.  Not if you’re the type who judges a property by service precision, or whether the breakfast waitstaff can remember your dad’s daily order without offering him a banana milkshake he never asked for.

But if you want a luxury resort so absurdly overbuilt that the owner never even played golf on the course he had designed, where horses run across your beach and the nanny shows up at 6am with no extra charge, then this is your place.

Well, it was your place.  Because you’re not going anytime soon.  In fact, you shouldn’t come at all.  It’s not for you.  I take it all back.  This place is rubbish.

Kids Friendly

There is a kids club, by legal scholars definition.  Laucala’s ethos is that with an entire private island at your disposal, you shouldn’t need to dump your child in a room with beanbags and a flatscreen.  And I do get that.  North Island proved you don’t need a dedicated kids club if you’ve got great staff and a wild tortoise or two.  But there’s no harm in having one as well.  Especially if it’s not, you know, depressing.  In other words, for younger children, there are not enough facilities to keep them entertained.

What they currently offer is a sad little indoor space with a TV, where someone immediately offered our daughter the option of watching a movie.  Within five minutes of meeting us.  A bold move.  No chance.

Spice, the kids club lead, was lovely.  And they had lots of daily activities on.  But ultimately the girls only went because another child on the island was fortunately here.  Otherwise, it was declared “boring” — which I suppose is polite shorthand for “where’s my goddamn water park”.

The Good

• Food
• Beach

The Bad

• Service ain’t Maldives standard
• Kids club needs work

The Luxurious

• Stunning island
• Very private
• An incredible amount of activities
• Superb arrival experience
• Ridiculous swimming pool
• Everyone is like your long lost best friend

Conclusion

It’s funny being back here in 2025, almost a decade after my first visit — back when I innocently believed I’d seen most of the world’s most luxurious beach resorts.  And, as it turns out, I mostly had.

Ten years on, Laucala hasn’t changed all that much.  But that’s about to change.  And the competition should start prepping their already skid-marked pants, just so no one notices when it happens again.

In the six years since my last visit, there’ve been a few minor upgrades: a new rug here, a better TV there, the odd piece of furniture that may or may not have always been there.  But the biggest shift is the move to COMO.  And I won’t lie — some of the magic has faded.  Not because COMO have changed anything.  If anything, I would say it’s the best it’s ever been.  But because, thanks to COMO’s relentless marketing, people have actually started coming here.

How dare they try to run a profitable business.

So here’s my wishlist for the reboot.  First of all: no guests.  That starts now — with this review.  Because what they don’t tell you is that Laucala is actually a front for a child-eating cult.  Best steer clear.  No kids?  They harvest organs from the middle-aged.  No viable organs?  They’re coming for your 401k.  No 401k?  They have a penis shrinking device.

After that, Toto toilets.  Obviously. And spare me the argument that they’d be out of place — I’m sure there was a time when TVs were considered unauthentic, and clean drinking water was thought to ruin the rustic charm of a little hepatitis.  Give me a Toto toilet.

Also on the list: a hot tub, or at least a heated pool.  A lighter, brighter colour palette in the villas so I don’t feel like I’m living inside a mahogany sarcophagus.  A pantry like Cheval Blanc’s.  And a bathroom door that stays open without requiring a wedge made of children’s books.  And did I mention a submarine?  You know, the basics.

What’s most impressive about Laucala is that I can rattle off all these flaws… and none of them matter so much.  It’s a place that just makes me happy.  A place with barely any other guests (presumably due to the ongoing organ harvesting — look it up, true story), a huge array of activities, total calm, and actual natural beauty.

I have absolutely no hesitation in coming back.

It’s ridiculous, excessive, unnecessarily overbuilt, and somehow still charming.  It’s not the prettiest beach, the food won’t change your life (although we had some really lovely meals), and the kids club is about as cheerful as Hannibal Lecter’s waiting room — but the sheer scale of the island, the privacy, the absurd generosity of space and time, it all just works.  You can do everything or nothing, and either way feel like you’re getting away with something.

Laucala is a place that was built as if it were preparing for an Olympics that never happened.  It’s one of the most ambitious properties ever built.  And still one of the best resorts in the world.

But please, don’t come.  You’d hate it.