Someplace in Butcher & Nonetheless, the fashionable steak home on the 4 Seasons Resort Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, a hidden elevator results in the Hideaway, a secret room two ranges under. Inside, diners sip Prohibition-style cocktails surrounded by cupboards and show circumstances stuffed with objects impressed by the period, together with lavish fur coats and jewellery. The one method to discover the house, which is accessible solely for buyouts, is with the assistance of a lodge worker.
The Hideaway is consultant of a brand new era of speakeasies and equally covert cocktail corners being created by among the world’s main resorts. And, by all accounts, vacationers are more and more trying to uncover them. “It was concerning the Instagrammable moments at resorts, however now individuals wish to do what nobody else is doing and go to locations nobody else has,” says Tania Swasbrook, a journey advisor and cofounder of the company Vgari.
Courtesy of Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp; Courtesy of The Spy Bar
The duvet has been blown on some, reminiscent of London’s Spy Bar, a subterranean storage room turned labeled consuming spot contained in the Raffles London on the OWO. As soon as the only purview of these within the know, it now turns up on Google—and the lodge’s personal web site. Then there’s Charles H., which is tucked away within the basement of the 4 Seasons Resort Seoul and made the 2021 World’s 50 Greatest Bars record.
But loads of hush-hush spots stay laborious to search out: this sort of element is the coin of the realm amongst concierges, butlers, and well-connected journey advisors. “It’s those you’ll be able to’t discover on-line that hark again to the origin of the speakeasy,” Swasbrook says.
Courtesy of Volga
One among them is Minos Sound Room, the whispered-about speakeasy on the just lately opened Resort Volga that hosts the most popular DJs in Mexico Metropolis. One other is the key parlor with seating for 2 contained in the literary-themed Blue Cigar Author’s Lounge at Raffles Doha, in Qatar. If you realize of it in any respect, likelihood is you can even pinpoint which bookshelf you push to disclose it.
At Malliouhana, the Anguilla resort, some visitors are offered with a puzzle field that opens to disclose a custom-made paper invite to Albert’s, the resort’s authentic wine cellar, which has been freshly renovated to supply hush-hush tastings. “The invitation is normally spontaneous, which is probably the most enjoyable factor about it,” says Beth Flowers, an advisor on the company Brownell Journey.
Some spots are nonetheless decidedly laborious to search out. At Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp, a Thirteenth-century monastic complicated that’s now a five-star lodge, dimly lit cellars amplify the cloak-and-dagger nature of the Unprecedented, a rare-whiskey membership that has its HQ someplace on property. “We don’t actively market it, and there’s no signage,” says Sandrine Versavel, the lodge’s director of gross sales and advertising and marketing. Nonetheless, membership members will often invite resorts visitors for tastings and occasions, supplied they adhere to a strict no-phones, no-photography coverage. Think about it proof that some secrets and techniques are higher when shared.
A model of this story first appeared within the Might 2025 subject of Journey + Leisure underneath the headlines “Spirit of Secrecy.”