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The Verdict —
La Residencia, A Belmond Hotel, Mallorca
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The main pool, with the village behind it and the whole valley behind that.
The Location
I came up the Tramuntana road from Palma with the sea appearing and disappearing on my left, and the hotel does not announce itself until the last bend – and then there it is, honey-coloured stone set into the hillside above Deià, looking like it has been there as long as the terraces have.
That position is the whole thing. You are above the village, not in it, which means you get the view back at it and the five-minute walk down into it whenever you want. Deià has about seven hundred people, one street, a Michelin-starred restaurant and a cemetery with Robert Graves in it, and that is more or less the entire menu of things to do – which, after a few days, you stop minding at all.
Palma airport is forty minutes away and the last twenty are switchbacks. Take the transfer rather than collecting a car at the airport; the hotel will have the hire car delivered to you the next morning if you want one, and the valet parking is free, which in a village with almost no parking is not a small thing.
The Vibe
Heritage Estate, Old World Romance
The Story
The buildings are two manor houses from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the kind of fortified farmhouse the Tramuntana is full of, surrounded by olive and citrus terraces that are still worked.
The part people enjoy most is the modern history: Richard Branson bought it in the 1980s, turned it into a hotel, and ran it through the nineties – which is why there is a slightly eccentric, artistic undertow to the place that you do not get at other grand country hotels. He sold it to the group that became Belmond in 2002, and it has been in their hands since. He is also back on the island these days, with Son Bunyola down the coast at Banyalbufar, which makes for a nice bit of symmetry.
What Belmond has kept is the sense that this is an estate rather than a resort – vaulted ceilings, stone floors, antiques in the sitting rooms, and a collection of Mallorcan art on the walls that is better than it needs to be. There is a sculpture garden, an on-site gallery, and resident artists in and out through the year. It still feels like a house that grew, which is the hardest thing to fake.
Lunch under the trees, which is where most of the day happens.
Room Count 73 rooms and suites, across two sixteenth and seventeenth-century manor houses
The Rooms
I had a Deluxe Junior Suite and stayed a week, which is long enough to know whether a room works. The terracotta floors stayed cool all day, which in a Mallorcan July is the detail that matters most. There was a sitting area big enough to actually use, a marble bathroom with double sinks, a separate shower and a soaking tub, Bvlgari in the bathroom and a Nespresso machine and a few local wines on the side.
The balcony is what I remember. I ended up on it every single evening with a glass of something, watching the light come off the mountains, and I did not once feel I should be somewhere else.
The 73 rooms and suites are spread across the two houses and the hillside, and they are genuinely not interchangeable. The ones in the original buildings have the beams, the thick walls and the character; the newer hillside suites have more privacy and, in the top categories, private pools and terraces with the view running right round. The trade-off is stairs – a lot of them, and this is a steep site. If stairs are a problem, say so when you book and ask for the main building; it is an easy fix in advance and an impossible one on arrival.
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The Food & Beverage
El Olivo is set in the estate’s five-hundred-year-old olive press, with the beams and the press stones still in place, and it is the reason to put on something decent. My dinner there was the best meal of the week – the slow-cooked suckling pig in particular, the skin properly crisp and the meat going at the first touch of a fork – and the sommelier earned his pairings rather than reciting them. Ask for a terrace table and eat early enough to watch the sun go off the mountains.
Café Miró is the other one, and the one I used far more – casual, by the pool, open through the day. I arrived before the three o’clock check-in and had lunch there while I waited, which the hotel encourages rather than tolerates; you can use the whole property from the moment you turn up.
Breakfast is the long kind, outside under the trees, and the kitchen will do Mallorcan things properly if you ask – the pa amb oli with the local tomato rubbed into it rather than a continental buffet plate.
And it is worth knowing that Es Racó d’es Teix, which holds a Michelin star, is a seven-minute walk down into the village. Not every country hotel can say the competition is that close and that good.
The Wellness
The spa sits in the olive groves below the main house, which means you walk to it through the terraces rather than down a corridor – and that walk does about half the work before anything has started. The treatments lean on local ingredients, olive oil and herbs from the estate, and there are longer programmes if you want the week structured around them.
Book mornings. I learned this on day two: an early appointment leaves the whole afternoon at the pool, and the spa is noticeably quieter before eleven.
There are two outdoor pools and the main one is the social centre of the hotel – cypresses, loungers, the village across the valley and a bar that does not keep you waiting. There is also a tennis court, a gym, and a botanical garden that is worth twenty minutes with a coffee.
The thing I did not expect to love was the donkey trail: you walk out through the olive groves with one of the estate donkeys – mine was called Pancho – and it finishes with a picnic of local things under the trees. It sounds like a gimmick. It is one of my favourite mornings anywhere.
What Missed The Mark
There is no property tour for first-time guests, and on a site this size and this vertical there should be. Check-in was warm and the orientation was thorough on paper, but I spent the first day and a half finding things by accident – the spa, the gallery, the short way down to the village. Twenty minutes with somebody on arrival would have changed the shape of my first two days, and it is the one thing I would ask Belmond to add.
Don’t Miss
The donkey walk through the olive terraces, with the picnic at the end. Ask for Pancho.
Dinner at El Olivo in the old press, on the terrace, booked early enough to get the last of the light – and the suckling pig.
The walk down to Cala Deià, which takes about forty minutes from the hotel through the olive groves, with lunch on the rocks at Ca’s Patró March at the bottom. Walk down, and let the hotel collect you if the climb back does not appeal.
And ask the concierge where to swim. Mine sent me to a cove I would never have found, and it turned into one of the best afternoons of the week.
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Good To Know
The estate is steep. Flag any mobility issue at booking and ask for the main building – the hillside suites are lovely and they are a climb.
Book the complimentary boat trip the moment you arrive. It is included, there are limited places, and in high season it is gone by the second day. Same with spa treatments; take a morning slot.
You can use the hotel before check-in – pool, lunch, the lot – so an early flight is not a wasted morning.
For families: the Smile Club runs for ages four to twelve with proper supervised activities, there are family cooking classes and art workshops, child-sized robes and babysitting. It manages to be a honeymoon hotel and a family hotel at once, which almost nothing does.
Shoulder season – May to June, September to October – is warm, quieter and materially cheaper than July and August.
value added perks
with booking with Coco Tran:
- Daily Breakfast for Two, Per Bedroom
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- Welcome Amenity
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- Hotel Credit: USD 100
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- One Category Room Upgrade at Time of Arrival, Based on Availability
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- Early Check-In/Late Check-Out, Based on Availability
Last Thoughts
I stayed a week here and I have thought about it a lot since, which is the only review metric I really trust. La Residencia is for people who want a place rather than a resort – who will take the olive terraces, the donkeys, the art on the walls and the seven-hundred-person village over a beach club and a DJ. Honeymooners, certainly. Families, genuinely, which is rarer than the brochures suggest. Anyone who photographs anything.
It is not for you if you need the sea at the bottom of the garden – the nearest swim is a forty-minute walk down and a longer one back – or if stairs are a problem, or if you want a town with a life of its own in the evening.
From around five hundred euros in the quiet months it is one of the better values in the Belmond portfolio, because so much is included once you are there: the boat, the donkeys, the kids’ club, the gardens. In August at peak rates the maths is harder and the answer depends entirely on whether a week of doing very little in an olive grove is your idea of a holiday. Mine, it turns out, is.