NAVIS Dec'25/Jan'26

Each year, the NAVIS Curated Collection brings together a rare assembly of properties that exemplify the highest expression of luxury across hospitality, gastronomy, wellness, and yachting. Selected through the NAVIS Curated Protocol, our rigorous in-person evaluation spanning more than seventy review points, these distinctions are awarded only to those experiences that achieve exceptional performance within our confidential scoring algorithm. Every recognized property earns its place with unwavering excellence, a mastery of craft, and a capacity to create moments that linger long after the journey ends.

The 2025 edition celebrates a portfolio that has elevated the global standard of refinement. From Dubai’s most compelling culinary stages to transformational spa journeys, from alpine elegance to island sanctuaries in the Maldives, from Tokyo’s sophisticated urban hospitality to the unique realm of yacht-based exploration, each honoree stands as the best in innovation and artistry at the pinnacle of its field.

Across these pages, readers will find the Golden Compass Rose recipients in Gastronomy; the standout achievements in Spa and Wellness; the distinguished hotels and resorts redefining hospitality; and the exceptional entry representing the apex of Yacht Hospitality. Each profile includes a concise portrait of the experience, its NAVIS in-person review grading, and the signature attribute that sets it apart within the global landscape of luxury.

This is the NAVIS Curated Collection 2025, an annual compendium of the world’s most remarkable places, shaped by enduring excellence.

Benetti’s 67-Meter Kasper 7 Sets A Pleasant, Playful Atmosphere

The Benetti full custom yacht Kasper smoothly transforms the 67-meter design into a bona fide beach home on the water. Taking cues from the Livorno shipyard, from Giorgio Maria Cassetta of the Rome exterior design firm Cassetta Yacht Designers, and from owner Nisrine Karagulla and her deep experience in interior design, Kasper’s persona embraces spacious, radiant, chic, and playful details.

Kasper was delivered in August of 2023 and continues to gather attention and hardware at awards ceremonies and yacht shows, underscoring the merits of her form and function. The owners’ vision of their new home on the water was skillfully interpreted by Giorgio Maria Casseta, breathing life into their aspirations as they transformed from concept to lines on paper, and finally to the actual build.

The owner, who founded the Askdeco Interior Design Studio in Beirut, made use of her considerable design experience in luxury real estate, contributing through selections of style, interior décor, wood selection, and interior layout.

Among yachts of considerable size, the 77-meter Amels motor yacht Energy sails with an aura of peaceful distinction. She does not shout. There is no need. She gently whispers her virtues among privileged guests on board. The magic comes from brilliant design that presents the feeling of a much larger yacht than she actually measures.

Similar to exquisite tsugi joinery, the talents of Espen Øino and François Zuretti fit together perfectly, strengthening the connection between enclosed and alfresco spaces. Energy beckons guests through gentle curves, seeming to echo the purposeful movements of Tai Chi, eyes wide open and curious through enormous full-height glass. Energy is attentive, engaged, and alive. In a word, she is exceptional.

This year’s show held a number of pleasant surprises, many focused around the full reopening of Pier Sixty-Six during the 66th edition of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The yachts were the stars of the show, but the stylish new offices and exhibits in and around Pier Sixty-Six pumped it up a notch. Thursday evening proved a very crowded time slot for elegant parties in all of the stunning new superyacht offices with balconies overlooking beautiful yachts on the water. Refreshing, festive, and luxurious, the collection of yachtbuilders on display here really made an impression.

While many of the show’s numbers continue to deliver broad interpretation, the show’s ownership stated that there were more than 100,000 visitors and 818 exhibitors. This year’s show also featured more than 1300 vessels, covered nearly 90,000 acres of exhibit space, and contributed a $1.78 billion economic impact to the state of Florida.

A Year in Motion, a Pause in Art

There are years that ask for motion, for discovery through contrast, through the shock of the new, the thrill of the far. Mine had been a year like that: reaching the forgotten islands of Setouchi, diving through the coral reefs of Dhevvadhoo, tracing winding passes through the Julian Alps, and witnessing the opulence of Atlantis The Royal rise out of the desert’s edge. Every journey had been extraordinary. Every setting had left its mark. But somewhere between jet bridges and passport stamps, I began to feel the quiet weight of saturation. I found myself longing not for somewhere else, but for something closer.

I wanted to find art again. Not the curated kind, not sculpture halls or museums full of masterpieces, but the other kind. The kind we miss when we’re moving too quickly to see. Because if you look carefully, art is everywhere: in the composition of a table laid for two, in the warmth of wood chosen by hand, in the rhythm of a well-plated dish served by someone who believes in it. There is art in the quiet mastery of a perfectly executed hotel stay. In a landscape shaped by time and seasons. And above all, there is art in nature, the ultimate, patient artist, who once a year, paints the Northeast in gold, ember, and flame, only to watch it disappear again into winter’s gray. That was the moment I chose to go, to return to something I had missed entirely: the sensation of being still while the world moves around you.

There is a particular kind of stillness found only on the road, not in staying, but in gliding through space with no urgency. I wanted a journey that allowed me to dissolve into that feeling, to move without rush, to let the landscape unfold at its own quiet pace. For that, I needed a companion that understood calm. Not simply a machine, but an artwork in motion, one shaped by many hands, each adding intention, precision, and care. The Rolls-Royce Ghost Series II felt like the only possible choice. She is a dynamic composition, crafted with the same reverence that nature shows in painting the Northeast each fall, layer by layer, tone by tone, texture by texture. Just as autumn spreads gold and crimson across hillsides with quiet confidence, the Ghost reveals her artistry not through spectacle, but through presence. She is a creation born of patience, of deep listening, of human skill made visible. And like the landscape she would travel through, she invites you not to hurry, but to notice.

And so, with a destination defined by fall foliage and the artistry of hospitality, and with a vessel built by many artists working in harmony, we packed our cameras, shed the weight of expectations, and turned north. We were not chasing art on this journey.

We were moving inside it.

Even if the bright lights of Broadway never existed, New York would still be theatrical. Manhattan is a place where boutiques and department stores, museums, entertainment performances, bars, clubs, restaurants, and hotels all vie for attention with increasingly over-the-top gestures. A recent return here revealed all that in a gloriously vibrant northeastern autumn. A brief, much-anticipated stay at The Peninsula New York, reaffirmed the enduring beauty of subtlety with the hotel’s recently completed transformation. Orchestrated by the award-winning Bill Rooney Studio, it revealed something altogether more compelling than overt drama, namely a masterclass in understated excellence. After its comprehensive refurbishment completed in September 2024, this Fifth Avenue landmark has emerged not louder, but more assured, channeling the sophisticated restraint of some of this historic building’s prior incarnations through a decidedly contemporary lens.

The year-long project eschewed the predictable grandstanding one might expect from such an undertaking. The results whisper rather than shout, assured in the wisdom that astute guests who understand the facets of true luxury will appreciate the extraordinary attention paid to every surface, every sightline and, indeed, every moment of the guest experience. So when one returns to this New York City icon, the epic double-height entrance space still greets warmly, proffering the dramatic double staircase, but refreshed and magically brightened. The dramatic, nature-inspired triptych by Ricardo Mazal in the atrium reaffirms the hotel’s ongoing focus on contemporary artists.

I stepped into the Hôtel de Paris just before noon, but time seemed to loosen its hold at the threshold. The Monte-Carlo sun hung high outside, glinting off the marble facades of Casino Square, but within the quiet vestibule, light behaved differently. It flooded the space gently, diffused through glass and gold, illuminating a reception like an antechamber to a palace.

A hundred hydrangeas lined the corridor in towering arrangements, their scent faint but insistent, sweetening the air with a softness that blurred the boundary between artifice and nature. We were early, the first guests of service, and as we were led toward the dining room, I found myself slowing my step.

The Maserati MC20 was already operating in the rarefied space of physics and art, and the new MCPURA sharpens both sides of that knife. The numbers are familiar: 621 horsepower, sub-three-second sprints, carbon monocoque, but this is a car that does more than translate spec sheets into motion. On the long layout of The Concours Club, I found myself reaching for more throttle earlier, carrying more speed into late apexes, and trusting the brakes like they were coded into my DNA. Every lap was an acceleration of understanding.

And the setting couldn’t have been more surgical. The Concours Club in Miami feels like a modern design museum. Precision-poured concrete, carefully combed turf, architectural pit suites. But out on track, none of that matters. What matters is the space between throttle and apex, and whether the car you’re in is a co-conspirator or a nervous stranger.

The MCPURA? It’s fluent. In every language you can speak at speed.