This fall the iconic Malliouhana resort in Anguilla celebrates its 40th anniversary—and also its independence. After nearly a decade under the management of a major resort collection, the five-star property parted ways with the luxury hospitality group in 2023 to revert to a more independent approach in keeping with its origins.
Malliouhana, originally opened by British tycoon Leon Roydon, has occupied an idyllic 20-acre beachfront site overlooking pristine Meads Bay and Turtle Cove since 1984. It operated as a family-run resort for the first 30 years, until Roydon’s passing in 2014 prompted it to join the larger luxury hotel chain. You could now say Malliouhana has returned to its upper-class roots, and the results are not to be missed.
When it initially opened, Malliouhana had 44 exclusive, expansive villa-like suites, ranging well over 1,000 square feet. One of the first guests was designer Giorgio Armani, then at the height of his fame. Needless to say its reputation as a fashionably chic place to escape the typical beach-vacationing crowds was quickly established. In the 1980s when the cookie cutter likes of Club Med were all the rage, Malliouhana offered a much more soulful and stylish stay.
As a Los Angeles Times review noted in 1989, Malliouhana was a completely different animal, “classy, unmistakably sensual and unquestionably expensive,” with service that sometimes verged on “imperious.” Anguilla, in the British West Indies, has come a long way since then as well; when the resort first opened, the island was all but unknown, without paved roads, streetlights or even electricity in some areas. It’s fair to say that Malliouhana put Anguilla on the map—or as the L.A. Times put it, thrust the island “into the conversation of Caribbean cognoscenti and onto the holiday itineraries of the world’s rich and famous.”
And the country is still evolving. Only in the past year have upgrades to its airport permitted larger jets to operate, and there are now direct flights to Miami for the first time in history; the planes are still relatively small, which suits an island that’s only 16 miles long. Crucially, Anguilla doesn’t allow cruise ships to dock there. Malliouhana’s longtime sommelier Albert Lake, who started at the property when it opened and recently returned to the fold, notes that the fact that there was a two-week minimum stay at the time helped establish the resort among the bon ton.
“It meant that the people coming here had to have that amount of time on their hands for a vacation,” he says. “So they were not other people’s employees, they were CEOs. They had a lot of ownership, and a lot of clout.” Most of them kept returning for the next 30 years, “and to get the suite they wanted, they had to put deposits down well in advance,” Lake recounts. There was plenty of competition for the 44 suites—since expanded to 63, but no less in demand, especially the most sprawling, and expensive, among them.
Asked about his high-end clientele by the L.A. Times in the 1989 article, Roydon declared, “We don’t want bodyguards; it spoils the atmosphere. And we don’t give out names. We assure privacy, and we respect anonymity.” Though 40 years is nothing to sneeze at, part of Malliouhana’s appeal is that it looks like it has been around a lot longer. Always in the best of taste—Roydon never wanted it to be flashy or trendy— the property’s style has now evolved into something more timeless, an amalgamation of island chic and Palm Springs cool.
The vibe is what the resort has taken to calling “Elizabeth Taylor meets Tom Ford”—the sort of place Slim Aarons would have loved, filled with “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” And indeed the famed photographer did visit the island in the early 1990s, and couldn’t have resisted looking in on Malliouhana, we have to think. In any case, walking onto the property now is like entering one of his iconic photographs from an earlier decade, in more ways than one. Much of this aesthetic was established during an $80 million renovation nine years ago, along with subsequent upgrades.
Aarons would find a lot more to like since his visit to Anguilla. The hotel, known for its signature pops of yellow, now has an Instagram-famous two-tiered infinity pool, world-class dining experiences centered on Celeste, which blends the best of Caribbean and Mediterranean cooking, a beach bar, rum tastings, an expansive new spa offering every pampering treatment under the sun, an indoor and outdoor gym, plus basketball, tennis and pickleball courts. The timeless quality is not altogether incidental—there are literally no clocks on the property, while televisions, a recent concession to modernity that were never installed previously, are cleverly concealed behind mirrors so as not to spoil the vintage-inspired décor.
Another thing that Malliouhana has always been justly proud of is its food and wine. From the start Roydon, a collector of fine wine, insisted it rival anything to be found in the famous beach resorts of Europe—and at one time it had the largest wine cellar in the Caribbean, filled with vintage Petrus, Dom Pérignon and other famous labels, with Michelin-starred chefs from France flying in to prepare special wine dinners—which the CEOs’ wives attended wearing couture gowns.
And that A-list culinary tradition is now being revived, starting with the wine cellar, which is currently being rebuilt. Last year James Beard Award–winning sommelier Shelley Lindgren signed on, and soon partnered with Tansy Wines to create a limited-edition, private-label Vermentino and rosé for the resort, the perfect thing to pour in celebration of the 40th anniversary. Anguilla is often now frequently referred to as the culinary capital of the Caribbean, and it all started with Malliouhana.
Meanwhile the property has inked a new operating contract with Storey Hotel Management Group, which operates a small portfolio of independent luxury hotels, resorts and villas around the world, “celebrating the unique story, spirit and history of each property and location to create magical and memorable experiences for guests.” The perfect partner, in other words, to take Malliouhana into the next 40 years in the style that first made it world famous.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Maxim magazine.