La Reserve

La Reserve is not the best hotel in St-Tropez. It is one of the best hotels in France. The distinction matters: at €1,200/night in high season you are not competing with the Airelles properties for the St-Tropez crown, you are competing with the best hotels on the continent. La Reserve belongs in that conversation.

Not the best hotel in St-Tropez. One of the best hotels in France.

The spa is the serious one in the South of France. A dedicated medical wellness team, the kind of treatments that require a consultation rather than an appointment, and a hydrotherapy circuit that justifies an entire day. The beach below is private and calm. The rooms are very large. All of these things are consistent with what €1,200 a night should buy.

The property was designed by the architect Philippe Starck's father Yves Starck in the 1960s and substantially renovated in the 2010s by Jean-Louis Sibuet, who runs a small collection of exceptional properties. The design is contemporary without being cold — warm materials, good light, the kind of room where you can read in the afternoon and not feel like you're in a hotel.

Book two months in advance minimum for summer. Book six months ahead if you want the best rooms. The hotel doesn't need to advertise, which tells you everything about its reputation among the people who matter.

La Reserve sits above the Salins coastline in a position that communicates its register immediately: the approach is by private drive, the building is low and horizontal, and the sea is visible from the entrance. There is no confusion about what this hotel is.

The design — Jean-Louis Sibuet's renovation of the 1960s original — is contemporary without being cold. Warm materials: stone, wood, textiles in the natural palette of the Provençal coastline. The lobby is a room you'd want to stay in, which is the test. Staff appear as needed and disappear otherwise.

The rooms are very large. This is not incidental — at €1,200 a night the room needs to be the kind of space that changes your relationship to the concept of a hotel room. La Reserve achieves this: the sea-facing suites have the proportions of a well-appointed apartment, with terraces that look directly over the private beach below.

The best rooms face the water with nothing between you and the sea. Request a sea-facing suite with a private terrace. The interior-facing rooms are also large and beautiful, but at this rate the sea view is the point of the address.

La Voile — the restaurant — is good enough to be a destination for non-guests, which at this price level is the correct standard. Mediterranean produce, technical precision, a wine list that takes the southern French appellations seriously. Dinner on the terrace, with the sea below and the Maures hills behind, is the best meal available in St-Tropez.

The beach club below the hotel serves lunch with the kind of service that €1,200-a-night guests expect. Cold rosé, grilled fish, the private beach staffed correctly. The quality is consistent with the room rate.

La Reserve sits on the Route des Salins east of the port, on a stretch of private coastline that begins where the public road ends. The beach below is private. The position is deliberately separate from the port's chaos — a ten-minute drive gets you to the village if you want it, but nothing about the property requires you to go.

Les Salins beach (the town beach at the end of the Route des Salins) is a short walk away for a public-beach morning. The port and the market are accessible by taxi. Pampelonne is fifteen minutes. La Reserve works best as a destination in itself rather than a base for the surrounding area.