ASSOULINE Travel|The Ocean Club

Discover one of the globe’s most storied and iconic hotels in The Ocean Club, the definitive tome on the Bahamian property founded by notorious supermarket heir Huntington Hartford in 1962. A favorite haunt of Slim Aarons and the jet-set crowd—and the location of two Bond movies—the resort, now celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, continues to set the standard in singular and star-studded tropical luxury.

Featuring the remains of a twelfth-century Franciscan monastery imported from France and regal terraced gardens in the style of Versailles, the hotel opened with a gala, the legendary Bal du Paradis, covered all around the world and attended by Zsa Zsa Gabor, five United States senators, and European’s most glamorous prince and princesses. Over the years, the Ocean Club would continue its legacy-building, hosting the Beatles, a career-making performance by Whitney Houston, the wedding of Cindy Crawford to Casamigos creator Rande Gerber, and, most memorably, two Bond movies, 1965’s Thunderball, starring Sean Connery and 2006’s Casino Royale.

In 2017, the Ocean Club became a Four Seasons Resort, a development that has only burnished the property’s luxury credentials as the Caribbean’s most exclusive destination. Today, guests can sample cuisine from chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s ocean-side restaurant, indulge in three pools and an award-winning spa, play golf and tennis at the hotel’s best-in-class course and courts, and delight in the Ocean Club’s most precious resource, it’s collection of longtime employees, some of whom have been working there since day one. “It’s thirty-five acres for 107 room keys. That will never happen again, especially on a location like this,” says the resort’s general manager, John Conway. Indeed, for six decades the Ocean Club has offered its guests a very special experience: their own piece of paradise.