Side by side Ballyfin Demesne vs Nihi Sumba

Twenty-odd rooms on 616 acres in Laois, and the arithmetic does the work: even on a full night you can go a whole stay barely seeing another guest. One solo traveller booked a private shooting lesson, tennis, and back-to-back massages, then had the hot tub to herself both times. That is not a brochure promise, that is what happens when a Regency mansion this size only sleeps forty or so people.

The restoration is the real headline: Fred and Kay Krehbiel spent nine years bringing the 1820s Morrison-designed house back from decades as a boarding school, and it shows in the plasterwork and the antique floors rather than in anything you'd call "boutique." The kitchen picked up a Michelin star and guests keep singling out the tasting menu and the picnics laid out in a small retreat with its own fire. It is not flawless: one guest's dessert went missing at the Cellar Bar with no real apology to follow, another found the service slow and the grounds under-tended on a quieter November stay, and a couple of would-be guests describe being turned away at the gate for a same-day walk-in in terms sharp enough to note here, even if it reads like an access issue rather than a pattern in how booked guests are treated. Book ahead and this stops being a concern.

This suits solitude-seekers, honeymooners, and anyone who wants falconry and clay shooting on the same afternoon as a five-course dinner, more than anyone chasing a lively bar scene or a beach. It is not cheap, and a few say the portions on the à la carte side run small next to the tasting menu, but for a night that feels like a private house party rather than a hotel stay, book it for the mansion and the kitchen.

Nihi costs upward of $2,000 a night and what you get for it is a private 2.5km beach with almost nobody else on it, horses that walk into the ocean with you, and a spa experience built around a trek to open-air treatment bales above the water. Families who spend a full week keep saying the same practical thing: there's enough on property (padel, deep-sea fishing, a turtle hatchery, a chocolate factory for the kids) that boredom never sets in, even without leaving the grounds. The Spa Safari is the one activity nobody skips, and it's the kind of thing that's genuinely hard to replicate anywhere else.

The honest catch is getting there. Only budget domestic airlines fly Bali to Sumba, and delays and cancellations are common enough that one couple's departure got pushed three days with no seats to spare. Book flights through Nihi rather than independently, because the staff can actually intervene when things go sideways, and they can't help you if you didn't. Villas vary a lot too: some have full air conditioning and indoor bathrooms, others are open-air with weaker AC, so ask specifically about your villa before you book rather than trusting the category name alone. One guest paying $2,200 a night for a surf villa found the outdoor bathroom and slow butler communication genuinely disappointing for the price, even as most other stays that same season came back raving.

Four nights is the real minimum given the travel involved, five is better, and three will leave you feeling like you paid a lot for a long trip to get there and back. This is for people who want a real beach, real horses, and a spa day unlike anything else on their list, not for anyone chasing the polish of a five-star hotel in a city center.