The Shore Club Vs. Ritz-Carlton Turks & Caicos Vs. Amanyara. Which hotel is best?
All properties are luxury 5-star resorts. All have wonderful white sand beaches on their doorstep, and all have pools, gyms, spas, and restaurants. To be honest, all are great, but they are very different, and below, we highlight which you want to choose. Why you might prefer The Shore Club, Ritz-Carlton or Amanyara.s
When choosing the best resort for your needs in Turks and Caicos, the Shore Club is hard to beat. It’s exclusive and is located on the most private stretch of Providenciales. It can be found on a tranquil beach near Provo town and on the Providenciales’ less-developed southeast shore. The style is tropical elegance.
The Ritz-Carlton can be found on the more-developed Grace Bay. It has wonderful views and excellent facilities, but the resort lacks island charm and atmosphere. There is no doubt this is a luxury resort, but the style is modern without much character.
Amanyara is a gorgeous resort, fairly unbeatable if you like modernity in the dunes, but its location is remote, around a 45-minute drive from town on a very rustic road, so you are fairly restricted to the resort if you stay here.
Getting to Turks & Caicos is fairly easy for American travelers. Many US carriers offer nonstop flights to Providenciales International Airport (PLS). American Airlines flies from Charlotte, Miami, and New York (JFK). Delta flies from Atlanta, and Air Canada has flights from Toronto.
We dive deeper into the pros and cons of these resorts below. Read on to find out which resort is best for you.
1. Best Location: The Shore Club Vs. Ritz-Carlton Turks & Caicos Vs. Amanyara
The Shore Club (pictured above) is located in the most sought-after location on the Turks and Caicos Islands and offers a stunning, secluded beach just minutes away from Provo’s town center. It’s lovely to be able to get to the town center for bars, shopping, restaurants, and nightlife.
This is a feature that the more remote hotels like the exclusive Amanyara don’t have. At Amanyara, you must live, eat, and sleep at the property as the town is a 45-minute drive away down an extremely rustic road. At The Shore Club, you can properly enjoy the local island culture, eateries, and nightlife.
The Shore Club is located on Long Bay, a more remote location than Grace Bay Beach, where many of the hotels on the island, including the Ritz-Carlton, are located. If you are looking for a quiet and exclusive stay, Long Bay is perfect. The breeze on this side of the island is also refreshing in the sometimes oppressive Caribbean heat.
If you’re booking a stay at The Shore Club or Amanyara, we’d recommend booking through our luxury travel concierge, which offers free benefits at both these properties.
The Ritz-Carlton Turks & Caicos, by contrast, is located on the busier Grace Bay and offers beautiful views, friendly service, and good restaurants. If you are a fan of Marriott Bonvoy, you will probably be drawn to this property, but do bear in mind that its size and design mean it lacks the personal touch.
The Ritz-Carlton is newly built on the edge of the beautiful and calm Grace Bay. It’s a 15-minute drive from Providenciales International Airport (PLS). The Ritz is ten floors high and stands out as the tallest hotel in the area, making it unpopular with some locals. The hotel feels big and modern, and all rooms have ocean views.
If you’re booking a paid stay at the Ritz-Carlton Turks & Caicos, we’d recommend booking through our luxury travel concierge, which is affiliated with the Marriott STARS program. You can earn Bonvoy points when booking a Marriott STARS rate and can also take advantage of any elite benefits related to your own Bonvoy status.
2. Exclusivity
The Shore Club is a boutique hotel that feels very exclusive, far more exclusive than the Ritz. This oasis features 110 rooms, 38 suites, and three private oceanfront villas with private pools and expansive terraces. Rooms are large, and if you are traveling with a large family or group, their villas are exquisite.
Amanyara is an Aman hotel, so it is an extremely exclusive resort, and because it is located so far from anything else, it is only guests and staff who frequent this hotel. The distance this hotel is from the other resorts on these islands makes it almost impossible for guests from other hotels to pop by and have a nose around.
The Ritz-Carlton has 155 well-appointed guest rooms and 27 suites in its ten-story towers and does not feel like an exclusive club. It feels like a modern city hotel on a beach with generic rooms and modern communal areas that are immaculate but lack character. While this is undoubtedly a luxury hotel, it lacks the exclusive joie de vivre offered by The Shore Club.
3. Best Pool
The Shore Club has four wonderful swimming pools, which are beautiful during the day and at night when they are lit up. The pools are arranged with an adults-only pool and a separate main resort pool for families. The wellness lap pool is ideal for optimizing your fitness.
Like the Ritz, one of the main pools has loungers that protrude on mini peninsulas into the pool, so you can step off your lounger and straight into the water. Circular outdoor sofas surrounded by fire pits overlooking the grounds and pools are a great place to hang out around the pool as the sun goes down.
The oceanside pool at the Shore Club is perfectly positioned by the sea and is teardrop in shape with decked patios, lots of loungers, and plenty of shade.
Next to the main pool area are “poolside lounges,” which are little rooms with sofas and so forth in them. The rooms only have two sides, with the other two being open to the edge of the pool and the pathway. These are nice spots to spend the day with privacy and shade but also direct pool access to cool down.
Amanyara has an amazing communal pool, plus many of the rooms have a very decent-sized pool attached to them. The views from the pool look straight out to the ocean and the horizon, so the pool is pretty magical here.
The Ritz-Carlton has two pools located beyond the three towers and near the beach. There’s a walkway directly from the lobby leading to these. The adult pool is super, with cabanas and loungers surrounding the pool. Cabanas are located directly next to the water, so you can virtually roll out of your lounger and into the ankle-deep water that surrounds the cabanas before dipping your whole body in the pool.
The family pool is less exciting in design. Both seem to have plenty of loungers even when the hotel is full. A nice touch is a complimentary sunscreen and water set out for guests. At both hotels, there is no problem getting loungers and chairs at the beach and pool.
4. Best Beach
The Shore Club is nestled on Long Bay, which is not particularly wide but has nicely sloping sands into the sea, so you can wade out quite far and still only be waist deep. The beach has perfect white sand dotted with palms. The advantage of this beach is it’s a more remote location when compared to Grace Bay, which gives it a peaceful and exclusive vibe. The Shore Club truly is a hideaway in Turks and Caicos.
The Shore Club’s Long Bay can be windy. While wind is a disadvantage on a Scottish beach, in the stifling heat of the Caribbean, a breeze is a welcome attribute. The wind also means this is the perfect place to learn and improve your kite surfing skills. The kite surfing activity makes The Shore Club a brilliant choice for the young and the young at heart, plus they are quite a spectacle to watch.
Amanyara has a beautiful beach, but the main pool at the property and many of the exclusive rooms have paths leading out onto rocky outcrops rather than the beach, which is set behind the “front” of the resort. The beach itself is great, but because of the design, the pools and horizon views seem more of the focal point here. Some rooms here do have direct beach access, so if you like the beach, be sure to select one of these. Others are located by the rocks and quite a walk from the beach, so they are less ideal for families or those who want to step straight out onto the sand.
Ritz-Carlton’s Grace Bay is also beautiful, and the beach has two layers of loungers set out on white sand. There are plenty of watersports available, but the Ritz-Carlton feels like a big resort on the beach rather than an exclusive boutique club. A nice feature of being on Grace Bay is that you can walk for miles along the sand up this beach, which is really lovely.
5. Best Style
The look and style of The Shore Club is, perhaps expectedly, in light beachy colors, blues, and sands, which brings the feel of the beach into the rooms. The lobby is impressive and immaculate, with high ceilings, stone arches, and beautifully kept tropical flower-filled grounds. The resort has a Four Seasons feel.
Amanyara has a zen, almost Asian style, with lots of ponds reflecting the sky, and is spread out in the dunes. Rooms are found in exclusive bungalows reached by paths that wind under the trees. If you are looking for a peaceful, remote, ultra-luxury retreat, this is it.
When you enter the Ritz-Carlton, you can’t help but be impressed by its huge, high-ceilinged open-air lobby. It certainly feels like a Ritz-Carlton, but it lacks an island feel with its massive ten-story towers and long, uninteresting corridors connecting luxurious but generic rooms.
6. Best For fitness
The Shore Club offers kite surfing, a gym, a spa, other water sports, free bicycle rental, and tennis courts. The pools are arranged in an adults-only pool and a separate main resort pool for families. The wellness lap pool is ideal for optimizing your fitness.
Amanyara has a yoga sala complemented by a Pilates studio at the Fitness Centre, four tennis courts, a multi-sport field, and a volleyball court. Amanyara’s extensive facilities and training programs can help guests looking to improve both general fitness and individual sporting performance, with personal trainers, tennis instruction for all ages, and boxercise sessions in the dedicated studio. Private sessions covering a range of techniques are available, including Pilates in the fully equipped studio, restorative yoga, and guided breathing and meditation.
The Ritz also has water sports and a rather uninspiring corporate-style gym. There is no lap pool, so we prefer The Shore Club.
7. Best For Families
The Shore Club offers 32 island-inspired, multibedroom suites that are bathed in natural light and brilliant ocean views. Book a one-bedroom suite with a fully stocked kitchen and a study that converts to a children’s bedroom. They’ll be happy as clams climbing in the Kids Club tree house while you’re slathered in a mix of honey, brown sugar, and vanilla at the Dune Spa.
The Shore Club is ideal for families with toddlers and younger kits because of the shallow waters, but also for older kids due to the additional kite surfing activity. There’s also a complimentary Kids Club at The Shore Club and little touches like a telescope for watching the stars and watersports to keep the kids interested. Overall, the Shore Club offers more for families, in our opinion.
Amanyara is great but quiet. It does have all the activities you would want but is remote and peaceful. While couples may love this, older kids may prefer the activities and liveliness of the Shore Club. For very young children, the tranquility pools may prove a hazard as they are difficult to avoid, so you will need to keep a close eye on where they are wandering.
At the Ritz-Carlton, Ritz Kids, designed for ages 4-12, sparks curiosity with locally inspired environmental and cultural experiences. There are also child-friendly amenities and menus at The Ritz-Carlton.
8. Best Restaurant
The Shore Club has three spectacular restaurants offering wood-fired pizzas, candlelit dinners of Peruvian-Japanese fusion, and local seafood. Breakfast here is excellent. There’s also a complimentary shuttle to The Palms if you want a change of scene.
The Ritz-Carlton main restaurant, Coralli Restaurant, where you have breakfast, is modern and is set just behind the dunes in front of the beach, so the inner and outer patios are really lovely with stunning views. The lunch here is also decent, with sandwiches, burgers, and salads.
The Ritz-Carlton also has BLT Steak for dinner, which apparently has good cuts of meat, but being an almost vegetarian for environmental reasons, this doesn’t serve up anything I can eat. The location is near the hotel’s entrance at the back of the plot, so it lacks views, but it does have an alfresco section under palms, which is pretty.
Casa Nonna is Ritz-Carlton’s Italian restaurant. It offers pasta and other Italian dishes with stunning views out over the dunes and to the ocean.
9. Best Bar
At the Shore Club, not much beats enjoying a drink in the hanging basket chairs next to the pool while dipping your toes in the water. In the rest of the poolside lounge, you can sit out around fire pits and sip your drink. This is a fantastic place to hang out in the evening. Part of the lounge area is shaded with a wooden slatted ceiling, and the whole feel of the bar area feels very Caribbean.
The Ritz also offers a nice bar area. Coralli Restaurant at the Ritz has a bar set on the edge of the dunes overlooking the beach. It’s a lovely modern space. Like the rest of the hotel, it’s luxurious with nice alfresco bar stools and comfy sofas, but it lacks an island atmosphere. The Lobby Lounge also offers drinks and runs from the open-air lobby into the grounds so you can sit outside. Again, this is a lovely modern space but lacks island charm.
10. Best Rooms
The Shore Club has 38 units, which are then subdivided to create 110 rooms. We recommend the Shore Club Deluxe one-bedroom Oceanfront Suite if you travel as a couple. At 1700 ft², this is a huge space and opens up to a patio with an ocean view. A large living area includes a full kitchen, living room with sofa bed, dining area, and outdoor patio.
Even the base room at Amanyara is large. Surrounded by natural vegetation and situated on the edge of tranquil ponds, Amanyara’s 700 ft² Pavilions afford guests their own serene retreat. Timber-shingled, the pavilions fit seamlessly into their beautiful surroundings, with expansive outdoor terraces, high ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling windows to make the most of the great outdoors. Each pavilion has a king-sized bed, a living area with a reading chair and writing desk, and an oversized bathroom with a huge deep-soaking bathtub for evenings spent in peaceful seclusion. For families and groups, Aman offers four and five-bedroom tranquility and beach villas.
Ritz Carlton offers 155 well-appointed guest rooms and 27 suites. All rooms here have ocean views, so rooms are oceanview or oceanfront. Even the base rooms here are large, at 442 ft², but they lack island charm, and if you pull the curtains closed, you could easily imagine you are in a luxury city or airport hotel anywhere in the world. Of course, being at the Ritz, the decor is luxurious, the bed is comfortable, and the bathroom is large with luxury amenities.
The balconies at the Ritz-Carlton are large, with glass rails and comfy rattan armchairs. Because of the height of the buildings, the views are impressive, but as the hotel is made up of several towers, some of the towers intrude on the view because the buildings are so large unless you are in the waterfront block, which is located on the seafront.
If you are traveling in a large group, the Shore Club will cater to you perfectly. The Shore Club offers beachfront four to six-bedroom villas that have access to The Shore Club’s resort amenities, beach, and pools. Each villa is nearly 9,00 ft², with a private pool and private elevator. Villa guests also get a butler service, VIP airport transfers, fast-track airport arrival and departure, and breakfast daily in the villa. These two-story villas have a gourmet kitchen and a private path down to the beach.
11. Best Spa
The Shore Club and Amanyara win. The Shore Club’s spa cabanas are hidden in the sand dunes so that you can enjoy treatments next to the ocean and overlooking the beach. By comparison, The Aman Spa’s experienced therapists combine global wellness practices with the traditional healing practices of the islands and natural ingredients sourced from the surroundings and the Caribbean Sea. Various island massage techniques are used in synergy with Provos organic cold-pressed virgin coconut oil, known for its healing and anti-aging properties.
The Ritz-Carlton also has an impressive state-of-the-art spa, home to a wealth of holistic treatments that harness the healing power of indigenous plants. But we prefer The Shore Club and Amanyara.
12. Club Lounge
The Ritz-Carlton Turks & Caicos has a club lounge. The Shore Club and Amanyara do not. The Club Lounge combines intimacy, comfort, and exclusivity with the personalized service and attention to detail that are the hallmarks of The Ritz-Carlton. This refreshed oasis is often referred to as a hotel within a hotel, where a dedicated concierge attends to individual needs in a well-appointed, relaxed lounge environment.
Located on the 9th floor, The Club Lounge is open daily. A dedicated Club Concierge is available to assist with any need you may have during your stay, including dining and spa reservations, as well as island excursions and resort activities.
Reserved exclusively for the comfort and convenience of guests with Club Level access, the Club Lounge features a daily rotating menu of five food offerings of exquisite culinary specialties created by talented chefs and complimentary refreshments and cocktails.
13. Conclusion
The Shore Club, Amanyara, and Ritz-Carlton Turks & Caicos are all wonderful hotels. If you are choosing between, then you have a nice decision to make. In our opinion, Amanyara and The Shore Club win on most counts. Amanyara is perfect for couples, particularly honeymooners, who want to escape and are looking for peace. Families with deep pockets who can afford the beach villas may also want to choose Amanyara.
However, families may prefer The Shore Club. Amanyara’s tranquility pools are not toddler-friendly and are everywhere! Teenagers may also run out of things to do at Amanyara. The Shore Club offers the best of both worlds with more to do whilst retaining a high level of luxury. It offers more character and activities like kite surfing and feels less corporate than the Ritz. I suppose in an ideal world, I’d stay at both. Amanyara for the peace, The Shore Club for the Caribbean vibe with lots to do. Whichever hotel you choose, you are bound to enjoy it as all properties are stunning.
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