Side by side Belmond Copacabana Palace vs Deplar Farm

The case for booking the Copacabana Palace hasn't changed since 1923: Joseph Gire's Art Deco building, a private stretch of Copacabana Beach, and a pool team that keeps its head at full Carnival capacity, sunbeds cleared and water topped up without anyone chasing it. Front desk and concierge get named constantly and specifically. One guest's server, Edson, made soothing tea for a mother's cough and mint tea for her daughter after a service issue; another traveller had Anderson Azevedo, head of the hotel's Les Clefs d'Or concierges, talk them through something genuinely stressful with what they called real calm. That's the level of staff this hotel keeps producing.

Breakfast and the in-house restaurants are the real weak spot, and it's not one bad morning: cold cuts, underripe fruit in a country full of good fruit, a bowl of chicken soup with what one guest called crunchy potatoes. A four-star kitchen on a five-star bill, as one traveller put it. There's also a construction wrinkle right now. A new pool wing and five-floor wellness expansion mean a temporary gym by the tennis courts, and some recent guests found the noise reached the pool deck and a few rooms, though others staying the same months noticed nothing at all. New rooms are expected by late 2026, so this is a tax on the stay now, not a permanent one. Frequent weddings and conferences add another layer some guests weren't warned about, including one wedding with music running to midnight.

Book it for the building, the beach, and staff who still remember your name on a fifth visit; skip the restaurants for anything beyond convenience and check what's on the events calendar before you book. On the history and the location, nothing else in Rio is close.

Deplar Farm is a turf-roofed sheep farm in a valley on the Troll Peninsula that Chad Pike turned into a sixteen-room lodge, and what you're paying for is the guide assigned to your room and the geothermal pool with the swim-up bar at the end of a day of heli-skiing, horseback riding or e-biking to a waterfall. The ratio of staff to guests is close to five to one, and it shows: one couple got a full day of low-impact alternatives arranged on the spot after a fall from a horse, another was walked through mocktail pairings all week because one of them doesn't drink. The all-inclusive activities and private guiding are the real reason this works at the price.

The catch is dinner. Breakfast and dinner default to a single 32-person communal table, and opting out costs extra, ISK 20,000 a head by one account, $180 flat by another. Some guests end up loving the forced mingling; others call it the opposite of what they wanted from a remote romantic trip, and more than one found the food itself just okay for what they'd paid, with a wine list that keeps getting upsold even when premium bottles were already included. Price the communal table in before you book, not after, because the rest of the stay is not built around opting out of things.

If what you want is wide-open adventure terrain and a staff that treats you like a returning relative rather than a guest, this earns the splurge. If you want a quiet two-top dinner every night without a surcharge, or guaranteed powder on the heli-ski days, you'll be fighting the format. For everyone else, book it for the valley, the pool, and the guide who'll rearrange your whole week around you.