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Sought after for its crystal-clear turquoise waters, lush jungles, and vibrant cultural and dining scenes, Belize’s growing real estate market is moving beyond retirees to encompass a broader range of buyers seeking a more laid-back lifestyle. With a wide variety of properties to choose from, Belize offers an authentic international feel and an under-the-radar vibe that can’t be beat. We spoke to Dean Astren and Kim Astren, Managing Partners of The Agency Belize, to get a better understanding of what the country offers buyers and how easy international access keeps people coming back. What draws buyers to Belize today? And where are most of them coming from now? Belize continues to attract buyers who are looking for a simpler, more balanced way of life. Many are initially drawn by the opportunity to experience a destination that still feels authentic and relatively undiscovered, along with a favorable cost of living and the ability to enjoy the outdoors year-round. We continue to see strong interest from buyers across North America, particularly from the United States and Canada, as well as other countries with convenient direct flight access to Belize. How have buyers’ lifestyle expectations or priorities changed? Are they looking for something different in a property now than they were a few years ago? The market has evolved considerably over the past several years. Belize was once seen primarily as a retirement destination, but today we are seeing a much broader range of buyers. Many are looking for properties that offer both a lifestyle and an investment opportunity, with vacation rentals and income-producing homes becoming increasingly popular. Buyers are looking for flexibility, whether that means enjoying the property themselves, generating rental income, or planning for a future move to Belize. Belize offers a sense of peace that is becoming increasingly difficult to find. The country is English-speaking, property ownership is straightforward for foreign buyers, and the people are known for their warmth and hospitality. What should someone completely new to Belize understand before making an offer on a property? The most important thing is to understand your long-term goals before choosing a location. Every region of Belize offers something different, from vibrant beach communities and island living to quiet jungle bungalows and growing inland destinations. Taking the time to explore the country and work with experienced local professionals helps ensure buyers find the area and property that best aligns with their lifestyle and investment objectives. Where do you see the best opportunities in the market right now? Whether that is a specific area, property type, or price point? The best opportunity depends entirely on the buyer’s goals. Belize is a diverse market, and each region offers its own character, amenities, and price points. Some buyers are focused on strong vacation rental potential, while others are searching for a full-time residence, a retirement home, or undeveloped land for future growth. Rather than there being one standout location, the greatest opportunities come from matching the right property with the buyer’s vision and long-term plans. What keeps long-term residents and repeat buyers coming back to Belize? What is the appeal that goes beyond the real estate itself? What keeps people coming back is the lifestyle. Belize offers a sense of peace that is becoming increasingly difficult to find. The country is English-speaking, property ownership is straightforward for foreign buyers, and the people are known for their warmth and hospitality. The fact that you can spend your morning on a private island, your afternoon exploring the rainforest, and your evening dining along the Caribbean coast is something so unique to Belize. Combined with convenient access from North America, it is easy to see why so many visitors eventually choose to call Belize home. Thinking of making a move to Belize? Get in touch with Dean Astren & Kim Astren, Managing Partners of The Agency Belize, to learn more about the market and available properties. The post Spotlight on Belize’s Diverse Real Estate Market appeared first on The Agency Journal.

Coronado Island hasn’t had a new independent design hotel in over two decades. The Baby Grand finally gives the area a fresh update, and a genuinely design-forward one at that. The Baby Grand opened in May on Orange Avenue, directly across from the Hotel Del Coronado, in the former La Avenida Inn building. It’s a $17 million, 31-room project from San Diego hospitality group CH Projects – the team behind The Lafayette Hotel & Club and a portfolio of more than two dozen bars and restaurants across the county, including Morning Glory and Born & Raised. Design came from Brooklyn-based Post Company, reuniting with CH Projects after Lafayette. “We wanted The Baby Grand to feel less like a hotel you check into and more like something you stumble upon, like you discovered it halfway reclaimed by time and decided to stay,” said CH Projects Founder Arsalun Tafazoli. “It’s our attempt to create a social, slightly surreal gathering place on Coronado where history isn’t polished over, but left visible and alive, and where people can move through spaces that unfold slowly, connect, and make their own version of the story.” A Landscape of Wild Wonder The clearest evidence of that discipline is the entry sequence. What was formerly a 6,000-square-foot asphalt parking lot is now a dense, overgrown landscape, with mature plantings, gas-lit torches, statuary half-swallowed by greenery, and a two-story waterfall, all engineered to read as though no one built it at all. That’s a much harder design problem than it sounds like. Manufactured wilderness usually announces itself through symmetry or overly clean sightlines. Here, the planting and hardscape are staged with enough asymmetry and layering that the eye can’t immediately locate the design intent, which is exactly the point. Guests are meant to move through a central oasis and encounter the property’s pieces, including a private lagoon, an outdoor bar, and the Greek open-fire restaurant Night Hawk. “The design is theatrical, but never overly choreographed — there’s a sense that it’s still unfolding and evolving.” Leigh Salem, Partner, Post Company Night Hawk itself pushes the expedition-camp idea into its dining architecture. Trellised planting and tented structures overhead nod to Coronado’s early beach-culture tent cities, while sculpted rock formations and running water blur the line between built environment and landscape. Night Hawk Inside, the former check-in area has been reworked as a literal threshold between the property’s two registers — outdoor discovery and interior excess. Vintage tapestries referencing Pompeian wall paintings run the perimeter, framed in custom trim beneath a fabric ceiling that lifts toward a central chandelier. A high-gloss custom check-in desk anchors the room and doubles as a backbar, shifting from coffee service to cocktails over the course of a day, which is a small but telling move: the room isn’t zoned by function so much as by time. Lobby Scattered statues and artifacts complete the “fragments left behind” theme — and one conceals the entrance to Fallen Empire, a reservation-only oyster and champagne bar tucked behind the lobby. Fallen Empire The Guest Rooms: Designed to be Remembered The guest rooms take a familiar exterior-corridor hotel layout and layer it with enough material density that the plan disappears. Schumacher wallpaper in tropical scenes wraps the walls under a wood ceiling lacquered in a high-gloss “dead salmon” finish — a color choice specific and slightly perverse enough to read as intentional eccentricity rather than a default mood board. Oxblood trim and parquet flooring set a warm, saturated base, while a custom iridescent clamshell bed becomes the room’s central sculptural object. The supporting cast — mirrored custom cabinetry, an oversized in-room bar, a custom chaise, animal-print stools, marble tables, and a mix of vintage artwork — is assembled with the same “found over time” logic that governs the rest of the hotel. Nothing reads as a matched set, which is precisely what makes it convincing as an inhabited space rather than a designed one. Bathrooms continue the material richness at a smaller scale. Mosaic tile floors leading to a fluted marble wash console with Waterworks fixtures, and a clawfoot soaking tub as the room’s anchor — a fitting, quieter close to a design language built almost entirely on the tension between opulence and decay. “We approached The Baby Grand as a deliberate departure from the casual, beachy aesthetic typical of Southern California hospitality,” said Leigh Salem, Partner at Post Company. “From mosaic floors and mirrored walls to iridescent clamshell beds, each element contributes to a rich, cohesive world that feels assembled over time. The design is theatrical, but never overly choreographed – there’s a sense that it’s still unfolding and evolving.” It’s a hotel built on the idea of discovery, and unusually, the design itself never gives the trick away. For more information or to book a stay at The Baby Grand, visit thebabygrandcoronado.com. Follow along for updates on Instagram @babygrandcrowncity. All photos by Ethan Jones The post The Baby Grand: A Coronado Island Hotel Designed to Feel Like a Discovery appeared first on The Agency Journal.

Last month, Laura Corrigan, SVP of Marketing & Communications at The Agency, traveled to Vail, Colorado, as a guest of The Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) for the 2026 LHW Summit, hosted at Sonnenalp Hotel around the launch of Explore: The Leading Hotels of the World — the third volume in LHW’s book series with Phaidon, Monacelli, and The Slowdown. Beyond the book itself, the Summit offered a real-time look at where LHW sees the industry moving: toward travel that’s more intentional, more active, and more tied to the people and places behind each stay — echoing the latest issue of The Agency Magazine, which dives into what today’s travelers are actually seeking (see page 23). “Around the world, travelers are seeking journeys that feel meaningful, transformative, and connected to place. We’re seeing this reflected in our own business, with bookings to remote and rural destinations up more than 10% year over year.” Lauren Alba Vice President of Global Marketing & Communications, LHW The Trend: Exploration Over Checklist Travel Explore follows Design (2024) and Culture (2025), and according to Lauren Alba, LHW’s Vice President of Global Marketing & Communications, it reflects a shift already showing up in the numbers. “Around the world, travelers are seeking journeys that feel meaningful, transformative, and connected to place,” Alba says. “We’re seeing this reflected in our own business, with bookings to remote and rural destinations up more than 10% year over year.” For LHW, she notes, exploration isn’t about checking places off a list — it’s about how independent hotels use deep local knowledge and a personal touch to open the door to a destination. The 80-plus properties in Explore trace that shift across the portfolio, from stargazing in Chile’s Atacama Desert to a Bavarian-style basecamp in Vail. Bürgenstock Hotel & Alpine Spa, Switzerland Photo: © Bürgenstock Hotels Nayara Alto Atacama, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile Katikies Kirini, Santorini, Greece Spencer Bailey, the series’ editor-in-chief, frames it as an evolution across all three books. “Design was really about helping readers see LHW differently — the physical environments that shape a stay,” he says. “Culture broadened that lens considerably, asking what makes a hotel culturally significant.” Explore, he says, marks another shift: from what a hotel is to what a hotel makes possible. “The emphasis shifted from the destination itself to the adventures, discoveries, encounters, and even transformations that happen because you’re there.” The book leans further into first-person reporting and introduces three destination inserts — Hawaii, Sicily, and Thailand — built around “Day Trip” itineraries that push guests beyond the property gates. The Trend: Independent, Family-Led Hospitality as the Differentiator A second theme ran through both the book and the Summit conversation: In a landscape of increasingly interchangeable luxury, LHW’s independent, often family-run properties are becoming its clearest point of difference. Sonnenalp Hotel, owned by the Faessler family since 1979 and now in its fourth and fifth generation of leadership, served as a working example. “Sonnenalp Hotel was a fitting host for the Summit because it brings the spirit of Explore to life in a very family-oriented and tangible way,” Alba says. “I hope [guests] saw that LHW hotels are not interchangeable luxury properties. They are individual expressions of their destinations, shaped by the people who own, operate, and care for them.” Bailey, who grew up in Colorado, put it in personal terms. “What surprised me was discovering something completely new: this authentic pocket of Bavaria nestled within [Vail],” he says. “I was struck by how genuinely personal everything at Sonnenalp Hotel felt — from Rosana Faessler’s careful attention to every detail of the interiors, to the staff members who’ve worked there for decades, to the guests who’ve returned hundreds or even thousands of nights.” As he writes in the book, “It quickly becomes clear that the Sonnenalp isn’t simply in or of Vail; in a profound sense, it is Vail.” Sonnenalp Hotel, Vail, Colorado Photo: Trent Davis Bailey A Fitting Backdrop for The Agency As a brokerage built around access to the world’s most distinctive properties and the people behind them, the throughline of the Summit felt familiar. The best hospitality stories, like the best real estate stories, are ultimately about place — what makes somewhere singular, and who has spent decades getting the details right. We’re grateful to the LHW team for the invitation, and look forward to continuing the conversation with LHW as Explore makes its way into the world. The post Inside LHW’s Explore Summit: Unpacking Where Luxury Travel is Headed appeared first on The Agency Journal.

Texas is known for many things—Michelin-star barbecue, incredible live music, cowboy culture, and more. But recently, it’s the mineral-rich springs, sheer expansiveness of nature, rustic minimalism, and high-tech innovation that have drawn the billion-dollar wellness industry. These days, wellness can mean a lot of things—a spa day, a healing retreat, or even a midday break for meditation—and that’s okay. Because no matter what you’re looking for, the wellness offerings in Texas are ready to deliver. This is an excerpt from The Agency Magazine, written by Brianna Peters. To see the full article, flip to page 34. Perhaps the most anticipated opening of the year is Canyon Ranch. A longtime wellness favorite with locations in Tucson, Las Vegas, and Lenox, Massachusetts (plus an extension in Fort Worth), the much-obsessed-over retreat’s next outpost in Austin makes perfect sense. Set to be the most luxurious wellness getaway in Texas—and home to the state’s largest spa—the resort opens in September and began taking reservations in mid-April (and is surely booking up quickly). Canyon Ranch is known for its unique treatments and innovative wellness retreats—ranging from a menopause program to a sound healing workshop and a seminar on communicating with pets—and Austin is no exception. The property is also all-in on women’s health, with programming and offerings designed to reflect that, bringing some of the most cutting-edge wellness services in the world to guests. Tucked away in lush Dripping Springs, Camp Lucy is hardly a camp. Instead, it is five-star massages, chef-crafted dinners, and sumptuous rooms with antiques and cottagecore wallpaper. Co-owned by the Texas husband-and-wife duo Kim and Whit Hanks of Whim Hospitality, the retreat unveiled its next chapter with Folklore, a new spa concept that’s as beautiful as it is unique. Rather than the clinical feel of a traditional spa, guests will find bold and vibrant ceramics, mixed fabrics, and tiles sourced from artists in Mexico, Spain, and the UK. The reason? The entire wellness concept of the spa is centered on color therapy—the idea that color can influence a person’s mood, emotions, and physical health. To see the full article, visit The Agency Magazine. The post Wellness’s Bet on Texas: Big News on New Resorts appeared first on The Agency Journal.