Park Hyatt moved its Phu Quoc opening forward by three months on October 29, 2026, now landing December 8 instead of March 2027. Raffles opened on Shura Island in the Red Sea on October 15. Between those two, a Milan debut slipped the other way, and Mandarin Oriental added a 1918 grand hotel in Budapest to its pipeline.
Park Hyatt Phu Quoc moves up to December 8
Park Hyatt Phu Quoc was first announced back in 2022 and had drifted as far out as March 2027. The date just came in the other direction: doors open December 8, 2026, on Phu Quoc's southwest coast, and reservations are live now for stays from opening night. The resort is built as a village rather than a tower: 114 rooms and suites, 54 pool villas, and The Manor, an eight-bedroom house for families travelling together, spread across 65 hectares of lotus lakes and paddy fields above 1.7 kilometres of beach.
Six restaurants and bars sit around a central courtyard. Fisherman's is a floating restaurant where you pick your seafood from a live tank; Herbs & Spice is the all-day room, cooking a Vietnamese family's recipes handed down three generations. The spa, SOMA Wellbeing, sits by its own lotus lake and times treatments to the hour of day rather than running one menu all day long. First guests arrive in time for a festive programme running December 20 to January 6, so anyone chasing a Christmas or New Year booking now has a real date to aim at instead of a moving target.
Raffles lands on Shura Island
Raffles The Red Sea opened in October 2026 on Shura Island, the dolphin-shaped centrepiece of Saudi Arabia's Red Sea destination, a short drive from Red Sea International Airport. It's 168 keys in total: 121 rooms, 14 suites and 33 private villas, with five restaurants and a Raffles Spa. Accor already runs a Fairmont on the same island, and Shura Links golf and a marina with its own shops sit within reach.
What we're watching here is whether a brand built on a century of grand hotels in old cities carries that weight on an island that didn't exist a decade ago, and whether the villas feel like Raffles or like one more resort on a man-made coastline. It isn't bookable through us yet; we'll know more once rates and room categories are confirmed.
Six Senses Milan pushes into 2027
Six Senses Milan was tracking for late 2026 and has now moved into 2027, which pushes the brand's first Italian city hotel back a season. The site is Via Brera, directly across from the Pinacoteca, in Milan's gallery district rather than anywhere resort-quiet. It's a compact 69 keys: 53 rooms and 16 suites, two of the suites with their own plunge pools, with interiors from Tara Bernerd & Partners built around arabescato marble and smoked glass.
The spa is the reason to watch this one. A 15-metre pool, saunas, a steam room and a cold plunge sit on a dedicated floor, with a hidden courtyard and a rooftop bar above it. A brand that made its name on remote wellness retreats is trying that formula inside a dense, walkable city quarter, and a 69-key building has to carry a pool-heavy spa floor without crowding it. We haven't stayed and won't have a view until it opens.
Budapest's Gellért joins the pipeline as a Mandarin Oriental
We've started following Mandarin Oriental Gellert, Budapest, the restoration of Budapest's 1918 Art Nouveau grand hotel on the Buda bank by the Liberty Bridge. It's been shut since December 2021, and Mandarin Oriental will reopen it with 143 rooms and suites, keeping the Art Nouveau structure rather than rebuilding around it. The spa is where the project means to prove itself, drawing on Hungary's own thermal bathing tradition in a city where the Gellért's historic baths next door are already famous on their own. It was once pencilled for 2027; it's now reported for 2028.
What opens next month
Two resorts open in December. Singita Elela is Singita's first property in Botswana, eight stilted circular camps raised above the Okavango Delta's floodplain on the 175,000-hectare NG26 concession, opening December 11. Park Hyatt Phu Quoc opens December 8, as above. Mandarin Oriental Makati, Manila is also pencilled for the same window, around 275 rooms above Ayala Triangle Gardens, marking Mandarin Oriental's return to a city it left when the original Makati hotel closed in 2014. The official site points to November 2026 for Makati; developer Ayala Land says December 14. Reservations there haven't opened yet.
The full, running list of what's opened, delayed and newly tracked sits at /openings.
If you want the Phu Quoc opening, book a pool villa for the December 20 to January 6 festive window and confirm your room category directly against the 114-room, 54-villa count before you pay a deposit.