Travelers Are Flocking to Turks and Caicos Right Now, With Record Arrivals, New Hotels, and Six New Flight Routes

If it feels like everyone you know is going to Turks and Caicos right now, it’s not your imagination.

The destination just posted the highest first-quarter visitor arrivals ever recorded, welcoming 203,587 stayover visitors between January and March, a 5 percent increase over the same period last year. That comes on the heels of a year in which the islands welcomed nearly two million visitors in total.

In other words, the Caribbean’s most talked-about luxury destination keeps finding new gears.

And it’s not hard to understand why. This is the home of Grace Bay Beach, the stretch of impossibly white sand and electric turquoise water that regularly tops world’s-best-beach lists, and a destination that has built an entire identity around barefoot luxury: world-class resorts and villas, a culinary scene that gets better every season and that singular, glowing sea.

It’s also a destination that rewards you the longer you stay. Beyond Grace Bay, there’s the surreal milky-blue lagoon of Chalk Sound, the wild, kite-filled expanse of Long Bay, fresh conch pulled straight from the water and a constellation of sister islands, from the cruise energy of Grand Turk to the untouched quiet of the smaller cays, each one a reason to come back.

But the bigger story is what’s coming next, because Turks and Caicos isn’t just riding a wave of demand. It’s actively expanding to meet it, with new hotels, new restaurants and a major new slate of nonstop flights from the United States.

A Record Start, and More Rooms to Meet It

The numbers tell the story of a destination in full stride.

The record first quarter wasn’t an anomaly; it was a continuation of sustained momentum that tourism officials say reflects the islands’ enduring pull among travelers seeking exceptional beaches, standout resorts and authentic island culture.

“We are very pleased to start the year with record-breaking tourism, which is a testament to our continued position as a high-demand destination and the success of our efforts to deepen engagement with travel partners,” said Minister of Tourism Hon. Zhavargo Jolly.

To keep pace, the destination added 177 new hotel rooms in the first quarter alone. That includes the debut of the new Hotel Indigo by IHG, set just steps from Grace Bay Beach; the opening of Treasure Beach Village at Beaches Turks & Caicos; and 20 bespoke suites at Ellipse Grace Bay.

The dining scene grew right along with it. New openings include AMBRA at Beach Enclave, Anchorage at Blue Haven Marina, Il Forna at Hotel Indigo and Salina at Ellipse — four new reasons the islands’ culinary reputation keeps climbing.

And there’s a marquee opening still to come: the hotly anticipated Andaz Turks & Caicos at Grace Bay, Hyatt’s lifestyle luxury brand, is set to debut later this year.

Six New Ways to Get There

Here’s the part that matters most if you’re planning a trip: getting to Turks and Caicos is about to get significantly easier from the East Coast.

Boutique carrier BermudAir is launching a major expansion to Providenciales, with service across six routes from the United States beginning this fall and running through next spring.

The expanded schedule includes flights from Newark, with weekly nonstop Saturday service plus an additional weekly direct Thursday flight from mid-December through late April; Boston, with weekly Saturday service from mid-December through early May; and Baltimore/Washington, with weekly nonstop Thursday service from late December through late April.

The headline news, though, is a pair of firsts. BermudAir will fly twice-weekly nonstop from Raleigh-Durham on Thursdays and Sundays, and twice-weekly nonstop from St Pete-Clearwater on Mondays and Thursdays — the first-ever nonstop flights from either airport to Turks and Caicos.

Floridians get an option of their own, too: three weekly flights from Fort Lauderdale on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, beginning in late October and running into early May.

“The addition of flight routes through BermudAir further signifies a clear vote of confidence in the Turks and Caicos Islands and a meaningful step in strengthening and diversifying connectivity to key source markets,” Jolly said.

Add it all up and you have a destination with record demand, growing room inventory and more nonstop access than ever. So the only question left is the best one: where to stay.

Here are five of our favorite hotels in Turks and Caicos right now.

The Sands at Grace Bay

There’s a reason The Sands at Grace Bay has been a Caribbean Journal favorite for years: it’s the quintessential Turks and Caicos beach resort, an all-suite, low-rise property set directly on the most celebrated stretch of Grace Bay Beach.

The suites here are bright, breezy and built for real vacations, with full kitchens and the resort’s signature screened-in balconies and porches, perfect for a morning coffee with the trade winds drifting through. Three pools wind through tropical gardens, and the beachfront is the stuff of screensavers, with loungers and umbrellas set on powder-soft sand.

Then there’s Hemingway’s, the resort’s beloved beachfront restaurant, where conch fritters and rum punch at sunset remain one of the island’s great simple pleasures. The location is just as good off the sand, with the shops and restaurants of central Grace Bay an easy stroll away. Families adore The Sands, couples keep coming back to it and just about everyone leaves planning a return trip. It’s Grace Bay the way you always pictured it.

The Palms Turks and Caicos

If The Sands is barefoot ease, its sister resort The Palms Turks and Caicos is full-dress glamour, one of the most elegant resorts anywhere in the Caribbean.

Set on a prime swath of Grace Bay, The Palms is all colonnaded architecture, manicured courtyards and grand Caribbean style, anchored by a stunning infinity pool that ranks among the region’s most photogenic. The oversized suites are residential in scale, with deep balconies and views that stretch across that famous turquoise water.

The resort’s 25,000-square-foot spa is a destination unto itself, regularly cited among the best in the Caribbean, with treatments set around a serene reflecting pool. And Parallel23, the resort’s signature restaurant, delivers some of the most refined dining on the island (the caesar salad alone is worth a table). This is where you go when you want Grace Bay with a flourish. That’s without mentioning the stunning new design at Si Si.

The Shore Club

On the other side of the island, The Shore Club changed the conversation about Turks and Caicos when it opened as the first resort on Long Bay Beach, and it remains one of the most spectacular properties in the entire region.

Long Bay is a different kind of beautiful: a vast, shallow, wind-brushed lagoon where kiteboarders trace lines across the horizon and the water glows in shades you didn’t know existed. The Shore Club makes the most of it, with a sprawling, sculptural campus of suites and villas, four distinct pools and a sense of space that’s increasingly rare in the Caribbean.

The dining is a draw all its own, led by Sui-Ren, the resort’s acclaimed Peruvian-Japanese restaurant, one of the most interesting tables in Turks and Caicos, along with casual beachfront and poolside options that mean you never really have to leave. For travel sophisticates who want Grace Bay-level luxury with a quieter, more dramatic setting, this is the move.

Grace Bay Club

No list of Turks and Caicos hotels is complete without the Grace Bay Club, the property that effectively invented luxury on the island and has never relinquished its place at the top.

This is a resort of legendary touches: personal butler service, oceanfront suites with sweeping terraces and the famous Infiniti Bar, a 90-foot ribbon of bar that runs straight toward the sea and remains one of the great sunset perches in the Caribbean. The resort is cleverly split into zones, with an adults-only enclave for couples and a separate villas section tailored to families, so everyone gets the version of Grace Bay Club they came for.

The dining, led by the beachfront Infiniti Restaurant and Raw Bar, is consistently among the island’s best, and the service culture here, honed over decades, is what regulars talk about most. Grace Bay Club still feels like the standard everything else is measured against.

Kokomo Botanical Resort

And then there’s the insider’s pick: Kokomo Botanical Resort, a hideaway that proves Providenciales still has secrets.

Set within five acres of lush botanical gardens in the center of the island, Kokomo (rooms from $410 right now) is a collection of private, standalone Caribbean cottages with full kitchens, shaded porches and a tranquility that’s hard to find on the beachfront strip. Nature trails wind between the villas, connecting a freshwater oasis pool, a saltwater plunge and an on-site restaurant focused on fresh, locally inspired cooking.

The clever part? Guests get access to Kokomo’s own private beach club on the western end of Grace Bay, with loungers, umbrellas and a complimentary shuttle running throughout the day, plus on-property car rentals that make exploring the island effortless. It’s also one of the best values on Providenciales, which makes it that much sweeter. Word of mouth built Kokomo’s reputation, and one stay tells you why.

The Bottom Line

Turks and Caicos has always had the raw material: the world’s most beautiful beach, water in a color all its own and a collection of resorts that can stand with any in the world.

What it has now is momentum. Record arrivals, hundreds of new rooms, a wave of new restaurants, a marquee Andaz on the way and six new flight routes that will put Providenciales within nonstop reach of even more of the United States, including two cities that have never had a nonstop link to the islands at all.

Whether your version of Turks and Caicos is a screened porch at The Sands, a spa day at The Palms, a kite-streaked horizon at The Shore Club, a sunset at the Infiniti Bar or a garden cottage at Kokomo, there has never been a better moment to book it.

The travelers flocking there already know. Now you do, too.

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