Best hotels in Formentera for 2025
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Formentera, the smallest and most southerly of the inhabited Balearic Islands, is a sun-bleached mirage adrift in the Mediterranean – a place that seems to exist in its own slowed-down dimension, where the best hotels on Formentera feel like secrets waiting to be discovered. Just a stone’s throw from the dazzle and din of Ibiza, it’s a place apart: bohemian, elemental, defiantly wild. Here, the heat sticks like honey, the roads are little more than dusty veins of gravel, and time feels like it’s moving to some older, slower rhythm. Formentera is a refuge, a fever dream, a half-remembered film shot on Super8 and forever flickering at the edges of your memory. By day, the heat shimmers like mercury on the horizon as beat-up Citroën Meharis weave their way down caminos that lead to nowhere and everywhere – rocky coves, time-warped motels, sleepy chiringuitos clinging to the coast like driftwood. Formentera’s coastline is all bone-white beaches and vertiginous cliffs, but inland it turns red and rugged, dotted with fig trees held up by sabina branches and sheep seeking shade beneath their limbs. The landscape is stubborn, parched, streaked with salt and silence. It’s shaped by four restless winds – Tramuntana, Migjorn, Llevant, Ponent – that sweep across the island like old gods, carving its contours, stirring up stories.
Once the haunt of pirates and hippies, the island still thrums with a countercultural spirit. In sleepy Sant Ferran, kids play Uno and share margaritas from the mythical Macondo pizzeria while parents sip mojitos in clouds of deep green smoke. At La Mola’s night market, time-worn hippies hawk strings of beads and knick-knacks to a barefoot, blissed-out crowd of bona-fide travellers. It’s messy, makeshift, magic. There’s no airport, no rush. Just an elemental sliver of land promising nothing and giving everything. A place where you can lose track of time, of yourself. If Ibiza is a technicolour dream, Formentera is its hazy afterimage – faded, free and utterly unforgettable. The island is that rare thing – a place where life is lived defiantly outdoors, and its hotels are a reflection of that. Lo-fi beach bungalows, retro whitewashed hostels and deeply luxurious boutique hotels all find their place – on this far-flung slip of Spain it’s the spirit, not the price tag, that counts.
For more inspiration on where to stay in Formentera, visit the best Airbnbs in Formentera, and for island hopping around the Balearics, consider the best hotels in Ibiza, the best hotels in Mallorca and the best hotels in Menorca.
hotelHannah Formentera, Formentera
With endless views of the treasured "Formentera blue" and direct sea access, this boutique hotel redefines luxury. Here, it's about embracing calm, beauty, and a connection to the island and oneself. Your day starts with breakfast by the Mediterranean and ends with a cocktail under a mauve sky. In between, memorable meals, long lingering lunches, hand-painted sunsets, and rooms where rest is elevated to an art form – all within an exquisitely curated atmosphere. The hotel's architecture is designed to blend seamlessly with its surroundings. Organic lines, whitewashed walls, and untreated woods shape a warm, sensory retreat where the interiors are designed to move and surprise. Entrepreneur Víctor Agudo and project director Óscar Romero collaborated with Alejandro Díaz and José Comins to carefully select each lamp, piece of furniture, and texture. Most of the furnishings are vintage, sourced from antique shops and unique finds, giving the space a lived-in, magnetic personality – like an inherited home reimagined with soul. Rooms feature polished concrete floors, whitewashed walls, natural linens, sun-washed wood, individually chosen furniture, and island-inspired textiles. Essential by design, with the sea framed by large windows, always taking centre stage. Maria Casbas
MarugalhotelDunas de Formentera
Featured in the Conde Nast Traveller Hot List 2025
Back in the day, Las Dunas Playa was a sandy-floored, bare-bones beach motel with a crescent slip of a swimming pool, where barefoot guests sipped cañas at the open-air tiki bar and slept in gecko-filled bungalows among scrubby sand dunes, the crash of waves just metres from their beds. When Ibiza hit peak midsummer mercury, this is where the island’s in-the-know creatives escaped to. The tempo was slower, the dawn swims longer, and the stars in the night sky here brighter than anywhere else. Now, in line with the rest of itty-bitty Formentera sharpening up its rough’n’ready allure, the hotel is smartening up, and while Formentera fiercely protects its dunes and forbids new constructions, hotelier-turned-sustainability pioneer Pablo Carrington and his peerless Marugal group (La Zambra on the Costa del Sol, Cap Rocat in Mallorca and Gecko Hotel & Beach Club here on Formentera) are experts at treading lightly. The hotel, sensitively renamed, has preserved those creamy, pared-back vibes but in more salubrious surroundings with service that is discreet and chatty. In the capacious bedrooms – some of the island’s largest – indigo daybeds and limewashed Balearic walls are the perfect foil to sabina-pine-framed Mediterranean views. Banana plants and lavender shade creamy, split-level outdoor terraces, restaurant tables and raffia chairs cluster beneath resinous evergreens (shade comes at a premium on this sun-slaked strip of Spain) while meandering boardwalks lead back to that same crescent pool and soaring tiki bar. Like the rest of Formentera, Las Dunas feels smarter and slicker, but it still echoes with the crash of the waves, and the stars shine just as brightly overhead.
Address: Lugar Venda de Ses Clotades 4499, 07872 Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms from around €358 per night
hotelTeranka
Teranka, an intimate boutique bolthole between the dunes and the shores of Playa Mitjorn, exemplifies Formentera’s countercultural yet grown-up spirit. Curated by Katrina Phillips, of iconic Notting Hill interiors shop 99 Portobello Road, Teranka tells the stories of Formentera through art and artisans, through textures and tales, weaving a rich narrative that links nature, nurture, craft and creativity using the visual and sensory dialogue of the island. The extraordinary body of art that Phillips has commissioned for Teranka – including a four-metre ceramic installation by French-born, Ibiza-based Natalie Rich Fernández – is largely female-made, a nod to Formentera’s reputation as an ‘island of women’ (historically, menfolk would often leave the island to find more profitable work elsewhere). Whilst defying easy categorisation, Teranka’s visual identity is one that draws on academia, on authenticity, on the lost arts of craftsmanship and on the subtle beauty of the found object. As a dual journey between Phillips and Teranka owner Jennica Shamoon Arazi (of the Costa del Sol’s mythical Marbella Club), the hotel both honours and is humbled by its natural location. Luminous and light flooded, Teranka’s 35 rooms and suites – many with private terraces and gardens - capture the essence of Formentera and harness the energy of the island and its heritage, creating a cocooning sanctuary immersed between fragrant pine forests, lucid blue waters and Formentera’s protected sand dunes. At once a laidback retreat, a joyful refuge and a nourishing restaurant, Teranka is inspired by the notion of terre d’ancrage – a safe harbour between land, sea and sky. Great emphasis is placed on wellbeing, and Teranka takes its wellness programme seriously, with bespoke nature-based meditations, world-class practitioner visits and a series of immersive, shoulder-season retreats.
Address: Carrer Sant Agustí KM 10.7, Playa des Arenals, 07872 Es Caló de Sant Agustí, Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms from around €600 per night
Casbah
A Formentera classic, Casbah’s clutch of largely interconnected, whitewashed casitas are tucked discreetly among the pines just moments from the sugary sands of Playa Migjorn. Peppered around a central pool and clubhouse, Casbah attracts families and couples alike, who return year on year for the nostalgic spirit of the finca-style bar, the familiar staff and the lo-fi, laidback atmosphere. Kids love to play among the grassy lawns and the pretty pool (there’s a dedicated children’s pool, too), while adults – both residents and visitors alike – rave about the extraordinary signature fine-dining restaurant, where a contemporary twist on Balearic classics make it easily one of the best spots for a smart supper on the island. While not as glossy as Formentera’s newer neighbours, Casbah retains the romantic spirit of yesteryear, with a barefoot, bohemian and offbeat vibe that’s becoming harder to find as the island sharpens up its act. A two-minute stroll through a sandy, pine-fragranced path leads to the gently undulating sand dunes and Formentera’s mythical white sands, making it the ideal choice for parents with small children for whom nipping back and forth from the bedroom for naps, feeds and shady timeouts is helpful.
Address: Es Mal Pas, s/n, 07860 Sant Francesc de Formentera, Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms start from around €218 per night
Es Marès
Tucked behind a quiet plaza in the pretty island capital of Sant Francesc Xavier, Hotel Es Marès is Formentera’s version of townhouse chic – low-key, luminous and quietly confident. A family-run boutique hotel with roots sunk deep into the island’s white-stoned heart, it blends traditional architecture with crisp, contemporary design. Everything here feels pared-back and intentional: from the smooth limestone walls to the olive-wood furniture and warm, neutral linens that whisper of sun and sea. There are just 18 rooms, each a minimalist cocoon of calm, with vast beds dressed in natural cottons, rainfall showers and shutters that let in the cheerful chatter of the bustling church plaza beyond. Some rooms open onto private terraces edged with rosemary and jasmine; others look out over the cobbled streets of the old town, where church bells chime like clockwork and bicycles lean lazily against the walls. Days begin slowly with breakfast served in a quiet courtyard – think freshly baked ensaïmadas, tart orange juice and the thrum of bees in the lavender. Later, guests drift between the cool stone spa (one of the only full wellness centres on the island), with its hammam, sauna, and treatment rooms, or the sun-dappled pool tucked behind low stone walls, shaded by fig trees and trailing bougainvillaea. The in-house restaurant is understated but excellent, offering island-sourced plates – salted fish, garden herbs, soft cheeses and rosé that blushes like the evening sky. And when the sun dips behind the chapel roof, the terrace hums gently with conversation, the scent of fennel and woodsmoke curling into the night. Elegant but not remotely ostentatious, Es Marès is a grown-up escape for those who want to be close to the island’s bohemian village rhythm.
Address: Carrer de Santa Maria, 15, 07860, Sant Francesc Xavier, Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms from around €418 per nightGecko Hotel and Beach Club
Another alumnus of the peerless Marugal Group, Gecko Beach Club is where you come to exhale in style. Set just back from the southern curve of Playa de Migjorn, where the sea turns aquamarine and the sand hums with heat, Gecko is a polished slice of old-school Riviera glamour – if the Riviera had a wild streak and went to yoga at sunrise. Mornings begin early here. The beach still cool underfoot, and the sea like glass, reflecting a sky still rubbing the sleep from its eyes. There’s a hush before the day unfurls – sun salutations whispered under the sabinas, bare toes pressed into the earth, breath syncing with the rhythm of the tide. The wellness program at Gecko is gentle, rhythmic, and deeply woven into the land. It’s not about transformation – it’s about remembering. The hotel itself is dipped in soft whites and sandy tones, a kind of coastal minimalism that feels both luxurious and lived in. Rooms are capacious, with smart yachty elements and vivid sea views. Daybeds lounge by the saltwater pool, wide-brimmed hats and paperbacks abandoned to the breeze. Lemon trees lean lazily over the patio, and somewhere, someone is slicing watermelon. Lunch might be grilled sea bass and icy verdejo under the pergola, the air pulsing with cicadas and Nina Simone. The pace is dreamy, deliberate.
Address: Gecko Hotel & Beach Club, Ca Marí, Playa de Migjorn, 07871, Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms from around €220 per night
Hotel Cala Saona
Tucked into a curve of honeyed sand on Formentera’s western flank, Hotel Cala Saona is the island’s original upscale hotel. The beach here is a slip of white gold, bookended by burnt-orange cliffs and lapped by water so clear it’s almost fictional. From the hotel’s airy, white-on-white terrace, you can watch children skim stones at dusk while waiters slip between tables with cold glasses of Verdejo and bowls of salted almonds. It’s not flashy, but it has a cool and contemporary vibe that belies its longstanding heritage – Grace Kelly once sunned herself on the hotel’s discreet pool deck. Rooms are unfussy but elegant and polished: cool terrazzo floors, wide beds dressed in crisp cotton, and big, blue-framed windows that swing open to let in salt and birdsong. There’s a small spa tucked beneath the pool terrace, with a hammam and a treatment menu that leans into sea minerals and slow living. Early risers stretch into sun salutations on the rooftop yoga deck, where the only soundtrack is cicadas and the distant thump of waves. For those with restless legs, the hotel’s padel courts beckon just behind the pines. Afterwards, a barefoot beer at the beach bar or a plunge in the infinity pool feels like the reward it is. Cala Saona has always been a beach for the barefoot and sun-slicked, but the hotel elevates that languid magic into something smartly luxurious.
Address: Carrer Cala Saona, s/n, 07860 Cala Saona, Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms from around €250 per nightCan Tres
Tucked inland, just beyond the dust-scratched caminos and sleepy fig groves, Can Tres is one of those rare places that feels found rather than booked. A collection of whitewashed villas tucked amid whispering pines and wild fennel; it’s more barefoot commune than hotel. At Can Tres, days stretch like warm toffee. Mornings begin with coffee steaming in terracotta mugs, taken barefoot on the terrace while cicadas start their endless song. Hammocks sway lazily between weather-worn sabina pines, and lizards flash emerald-green across the stones. Everything is sun-bleached, hand-built, frayed at the edges in the most beautiful way. The linen is soft from countless washes, the colourful straw hats on the walls are the perfect lo-fi décor and the kitchen tiles are just the right side of cracked.
There are bicycles with wicker baskets for market runs, a low-slung pool with a pink blush at dusk, and enough silence to hear your own breath. The kind of place where kids roam dusty-footed and feral, and nights are lit by stars and citronella candles, the air thick with lavender and the occasional burst of laughter.
Address: Camí de Can Simonet, 07860 Sant Francesc Xavier, Formentera, Spain
Price: Double rooms from around €220 per night
