Bora Bora

There are places that cannot live up to the photographs, and then there is Bora Bora, which is one of the very few that comfortably does. The lagoon really is that colour – an absurd, graduated turquoise that changes about six times between your deck and the reef – and Mount Otemanu really does stand there in the middle of it like a piece of stage scenery, and no photograph has ever got it right because what a photograph cannot carry is the scale.

What has changed is the hotel landscape, and it has changed a great deal. Since early 2025 both Sofitels have ceased operations, Le Meridien has reopened as a Westin, and the InterContinental Thalasso – for twenty years the Otemanu-view booking – closed in June 2026 and will reopen as a Regent in late 2027. A fifth of the island’s rooms were under renovation this year. The listings sites have not caught up, and people are still being sold nights at hotels that no longer exist.

The upside is that what remains is a tighter, better field, and that French Polynesia now has its own MICHELIN Key selection to measure it by. Four nights is the right length. Five if you add Moorea or Taha’a on the way through, which I would.