Luxury stays, curated by Boulevard
Private travel recommendations from Asia-Pacific’s leading prestige property platform
The last time we were shooting in Phuket, an agent asked—almost in passing—whether Boulevard did holiday rentals. Every villa on the schedule that week was for sale and for rent both. Within the month a travel concierge had arrived at the same subject from the other direction, wanting photography, film and floorplans of a standard the private-stay market rarely produces; then an owner wrote to ask whether we would represent his house directly, rather than watch it sit on a platform between properties asking a twentieth of his nightly rate.
Three prompts, one conclusion. We have spent years inside these houses with a camera and a floorplan, engaged to present them for sale—a peculiar kind of access, and one that turns out to serve a traveller about as well as it serves a buyer. Luxury Stays is what follows from it: residences we know at first hand, or through the owners, agents and hoteliers we already work alongside, gathered for people who would rather take a house than a suite.
The Destinations
Boulevard’s first stays draw on the markets we know—and love—through our experience, access and network in prestige real estate: the ski architecture of Niseko, the beachfront villas of Bali and Koh Samui, the clifftop estates of Phuket, the harbourfronts of Sydney, and beyond.
In each market, we’ve seen a rise in private travel: a growing desire to go beyond the beaten path of hotel accommodation, and an increasing number of extraordinary properties that offer precisely that.
On the Horizon
New Zealand is next—a country that puts glacier, vineyard and coastline within an afternoon of one another and still has the room to keep them private.
After that, yacht charters—complete with customisable itineraries and one-of-a-kind experiences, and the natural extension of the private-island and resort-buyout stays we already curate, for those who’d rather the destination came to them.
The Properties
A first set of highlights while the collection fills out—four houses that between them cover most of what we mean by a Boulevard stay.
Este Estate — Wategos, Byron Bay
Cut into the hillside above Wategos, Este is really two houses—North and South—which can be taken together or separately, and so solves the difficulty every large group eventually meets: how to be together without being on top of one another. Italian stone and local timber throughout, a rainforest courtyard at the foot of the house and a pool, bar and lounge on the roof. Six suites, sixteen at full capacity, and not a room that looks at anything but the canopy or the Pacific.
Corniche Hirafu — Middle Hirafu, Niseko
Riccardo Tossani’s 2024 chalet on Hirafu’s Millionaires’ Row does what good alpine architecture must: it makes six metres of ceiling and a wall of glass read as warm rather than exposed, with Mount Yotei framed dead centre. The onsen is fed by the chalet’s own hot spring well, with a sauna and cold plunge alongside for anyone who treats the mountain as a discipline. What held our attention, though, was the boot room and the heated driveway—the deeply unromantic apparatus that separates a house which works in four metres of snow from one that merely photographs well in it.
Villa Sawan — Kamala Beach, Phuket
Better than 36,000 square feet of ocean frontage above Kamala, and seven bedrooms arranged for the sort of holiday where three generations turn up at once. The glass does what the best of these houses do, which is hand you the horizon from more or less anywhere you happen to be standing. Then there is the entertainment room—table tennis, air hockey, foosball—which is the tell of a house meant to be used rather than admired.
Sydney Harbour Private — Rose Bay, Sydney
The postcard is all present and correct: Rose Bay in the foreground, the Opera House and the bridge behind it, glass doors that open the living level onto the water. The detail that matters more is the private boatshed and the water access beneath it, which in this stretch of Sydney is scarcer than the view and a great deal harder to come by. Four bedrooms, eight guests, a pool on the terrace, and a seven-night minimum that tells you what sort of stay it was built for.
The Concierge
Our judgement here is not only our own. It is built from what we have seen at close range, and from the people we work alongside—hoteliers and resort principals, designers, and the concierges who arrange private travel for a living.
We are not a booking engine, and not an aggregator. A good deal of what appears on these pages, and rather more that does not appear at all, is taken up by application. The first step is a conversation with the Boulevard Travel Concierge: for a recommendation, an introduction, a preview of where we’re headed next—and why you should, too.