The morning ferry from Porto Cervo to Spargi at the end of last August carried a roster of names that, ten years ago, would have been on the deck of a tender headed for Pampelonne — two Milanese families on their second week, a Monaco-based banker and his daughters, a Greek owner who had moved his hundred-metre from Saint-Tropez to Sardinia for the first time since 2019. None of them mentioned the move. All of them had made it.
The shift along the Costa Smeralda has been, by design, a quiet one. The Aga Khan's original 1960s development was built on the principle that the architecture should be invisible from the water, that the marketing should be minimal, and that the clientele should be self-selecting. Six decades later, the discipline still holds. There is no equivalent of Club 55 here, no rolling press cycle around a beach club opening, no Instagram address. The point has always been to be elsewhere.
Hotel Cala di Volpe, the original 1963 Jacques Couëlle commission and now a Marriott Luxury Collection property, reopened in mid-April after another round of refurbishment. The Dolce & Gabbana-decorated pool, introduced last season, has stayed; the suites have been refreshed without being modernised; the dining offer continues to lean on Sardinian ingredients in a way the kitchen at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc would never quite commit to. Pitrizza, the smaller Couëlle sister property at the tip of the Liscia di Vacca peninsula, remains the address for the families who do not want to be seen at Cala di Volpe. Romazzino, recently reopened after a long renovation, has rejoined the rotation. Pevero Golf, between the three, is the unspoken reason a certain kind of guest stays a full week.
The clientele has shifted in two directions at once. The Italian families who summered in Forte dei Marmi and Capri have moved north and west to the Smeralda for the privacy. The Monaco set — French, Belgian, Russian, Lebanese — has been crossing the Tyrrhenian by tender or short-hop jet from NCE and treating Porto Cervo as the new Pampelonne, with the difference that the water is actually clear. The American arrivals, formerly content with the Amalfi loop, have started asking about Sardinia by name.
The risk is the obvious one. A coastline that has held its discretion for sixty years is now showing up in three travel magazines a season. Last summer's tender traffic between Cala di Volpe and Soffi was the heaviest in memory. Reservations at La Pelosa beach, two hours up the coast in Stintino, now require a permit booked weeks ahead. The Smeralda will absorb another two seasons of growth before the question of capacity becomes a question of character. After that, the families who arrived in 2023 will start looking for the next quiet place — which is, of course, exactly how this cycle always works.
For now, the move is still on. The yacht is still in Porto Cervo. Saint-Tropez is, for the first time in a generation, the second choice.
— Camille Vedy
