There are more than a hundred and ten Ritz-Carlton hotels across thirty-five countries. There are nine Ritz-Carlton Reserves. Those two sentences are the entire brand strategy, and Marriott states them in that order, in its own press releases, every time it announces a new one.
It is an unusual thing for a hotel company to do — to keep a tier so small that its scarcity has to be explained rather than experienced. But the arithmetic is the product. A Reserve is not a better Ritz-Carlton. It is a different business, wearing the same name for distribution reasons.
Source: Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve
What Marriott says it is
The brand’s own language: a collection of rare sanctuaries, where awe-inspiring escape, cultural connection and discreet luxury converge, for those seeking meaning over convention. The tagline is Reserved for the Rare.
The press-release version is more useful, because it is repeated verbatim across every signing: a complete escape to the unexpected, a private and transformative travel experience centered around human connection, bringing together unique elements of local culture, heritage and environment.
Strip the adjectives and what remains is three operational commitments — small, remote, locally specific. Those are the same three commitments Aman made in 1988, and Reserve isMarriott’ss answer to it.
The nine
Phulay Bay, Krabi, Thailand, 2009 — the first, and still described by the brand as the world’s first Ritz-Carlton Reserve. Dorado Beach, Puerto Rico, 2012, on land originally developed by the conservationist Laurence Rockefeller. Mandapa, Ubud, Bali, September 2015 — twenty-five pool villas and thirty-five suites on the sacred Ayung River.
Zadún, San José del Cabo, 2019, a hundred and thirteen keys where the desert meets the Sea of Cortés. Higashiyama Niseko Village, Hokkaido, 2020, fifty rooms and suites under Mount Yōtei — the only ski Reserve. Rissai Valley, Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan, 2023, eighty-seven villas beside a UNESCO nature reserve.
Nujuma, on the Saudi Red Sea, May 2024. Nekajui, Peninsula Papagayo, Costa Rica, February 2025 — the name is Chorotega for lush garden. Siari, Riviera Nayarit, late 2025, ninety rooms and suites on nine hundred and twenty acres, drawing on Huichol design.
Six of those nine opened in the last six years, and three in the last twenty-four months. A tier defined by rarity is expanding at roughly one property a year, which is a tension worth watching rather than a contradiction — Aman took thirty-five years to reach thirty-five hotels.
The tell is the job title.
Every Reserve renames the butler. At Phulay Bay the role is Ton Hong. At Mandapa it is the Patih. At Zadún it is the tosoani, a Nahuatl word for dream watcher.
One can read this cynically — a naming convention applied at head office, localization as a template. The more generous reading is that it is a discipline: it forces each property to research something specific about where it is before it can staff its front desk, and it makes a Reserve harder to open badly than a hotel with a butler.
Both readings are probably right, which is what makes it interesting. It is a corporate rule that produces a non-corporate result.
Source: Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve
Nujuma, and what a Reserve looks like in the Gulf
Nujuma sits on its own island in the Ummahat archipelago on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, master-planned and designed by WATG with interiors by Wimberly, and opened on 27 May 2024. It was the first Ritz-Carlton Reserve in the Middle East.
Sixty-three villas at opening; the property now lists sixty-five. Four dining venues — Sita for Levantine out of a clay oven, Jamaa outdoors, Tabrah for seafood, and Maia, a cocktail bar built around astronomy. Neyrah Spa runs five sea-facing treatment rooms and three outdoor cabins, with sunrise and lunar yoga and treatments built on oud and on Moringa Peregrina oil pressed in AlUla.
It is reached by chartered boat or seaplane from Red Sea International, about thirty kilometers away, and there is no shuttle. That last detail is not an inconvenience; it is the product. Marriott’s opening rate was published at 2,980 dollars a night including taxes, and what you are paying for is substantially the impossibility of arriving by accident.
How it differs from a Ritz-Carlton, honestly
Marriott has never published a side-by-side comparison, and there is no disclosed staff-to-guest ratio for the tier. What can be observed is scale: the nine Reserves run from fifty keys to a hundred and thirteen, against Ritz-Carlton hotels that routinely carry four hundred. The Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh has four hundred and ninety-three.
That difference does most of the work. At fifty to a hundred keys, a property can know its guests; at five hundred, it can only process them well. Everything else the tier claims — cultural specificity, discretion, transformation — is downstream of the room count, and it is why the tier cannot grow without changing.
Source: Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve
What it costs, and who it is for
Nujuma opened at 2,980 dollars a night including taxes. Nujuma in Costa Rica opens at around 1,600. Siari, the newest, has been reported opening from roughly 800 before taxes. The tier does not have one price; it has a floor that moves with the market it is in.
What it consistently has is a redemption rate. Every Reserve is bookable with Bonvoy points — Nujuma at around 198,000 a night — which makes it the only ultra-luxury collection in the world that a points balance can reach; for a certain kind of traveler, that single fact is worth more than any amenity in the building.
Children are handled property by property rather than by brand rule. Nujuma runs a supervised club for four- to twelve-year-olds, which will surprise anyone who assumed a private-island Reserve was adults-only by definition.
Where the next ones are going
Two of the announced Reserves are in the Gulf. Marriott signed with NEOM in April 2024 for a Reserve at Trojena with around sixty villas, and with Eagle Hills in July 2024 for fifty villas on Ramhan Island in Abu Dhabi — including what the release describes as the region’s first floating villas — slated for 2029. A further Reserve has been announced for Pottuvil in Sri Lanka, and one for South America.
Three Reserves in the Gulf, one open and two announced, in a tier of nine. For a collection whose organizing idea is that it barely exists, that is a striking concentration, and it says something about where Marriott thinks the money and the empty landscape both are.
Read also: The Red Sea sells itself as year-round. Winter is when it is actually good.
Is it Aman
No, and the difference is instructive. Aman operates around thirty-five hotels in twenty countries and has spent nearly four decades building a clientele that follows the brand rather than the destination. Six Senses runs somewhere near twenty-eight properties on an explicitly wellness-led proposition. Reserve has nine and a loyalty program with two hundred million members attached to it.
That last point is the actual strategy. A Reserve stay earns Bonvoy points and can be booked with them. Aman has no such machine. What Marriott has built is an Aman-shaped product plugged into the largest distribution system in hospitality — which is either the smartest thing anyone has done in ultra-luxury hotels this decade, or the beginning of the end of what made the tier scarce.
Nine properties in seventeen years suggests the former. The three that opened since 2024 suggest the question is still open.
Featured Image Source: Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve
