There is a kind of travel that changes the way you see the world. Not because of where you went, but because of what was asked of you while you were there — to slow down, to pay attention, to understand that the most extraordinary places on Earth are extraordinary precisely because something has worked very hard to keep them that way.
This is the travel Ownia Collection was built for. And these are the places we have spent years looking for.
The largest addition to Ownia Collection this year comes through a new partnership with Beckons — formerly known as Baillie Lodges — one of the world’s most celebrated portfolios of remote wilderness lodges. Eight properties, across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Chile. Each one built in a place that most people will never see. Each one committed to making sure it stays that way.
Silky Oaks Lodge is where the Daintree Rainforest — the oldest tropical rainforest on Earth, older than the Amazon — meets the Great Barrier Reef. Treehouse suites built into the canopy. The sound of the Mossman River below. A spa that draws its philosophy from the same ancient ecosystem that surrounds it. This is Queensland at its most elemental.
The Louise in South Australia’s Barossa Valley is a different kind of wilderness — one shaped by 170 years of patience, red clay soil, and the singular pursuit of exceptional wine. Fifteen suites tucked into the vineyard landscape. A kitchen that has driven Australia’s culinary conversation for two decades. A stillness that only a place shaped by a single, long purpose can offer.
Longitude 131° sits in the red heart of Australia, where the Anangu people have lived for more than 60,000 years. Twelve tented pavilions face Uluru — one of the most sacred and geologically ancient landforms on Earth — and the experience of watching it change colour from ochre to crimson to violet at sunrise, from the deck of your own pavilion, is one of those moments that travel writers reach for superlatives and still fall short. The lodge operates in deep partnership with the Anangu community, with Indigenous guides, storytelling, and employment central to every stay.
Capella Lodge is as close to a secret as a world-class lodge can be. Lord Howe Island — a UNESCO World Heritage archipelago in the Pacific — constitutionally limits visitors to 400 at any given time. Capella’s nine suites are the only luxury accommodation on the island. The surrounding coral lagoon is one of the most biodiverse marine environments on Earth, and the island’s rare woodhen bird has recovered from near-extinction through one of the most ambitious conservation programs in Australian history.
Southern Ocean Lodge perches on limestone cliffs above the roaring Southern Ocean on Kangaroo Island — a lodge that has set a global benchmark for wilderness luxury since 2009, and came back after the devastating 2020 bushfires with even stronger commitments to habitat restoration. Sea lions on the beach. Rare glossy black cockatoos overhead. The kind of wildlife encounter that makes you reconsider the word ‘encounter.’
Across the Tasman, Huka Lodge has been welcoming guests to the banks of the Waikato River in New Zealand since 1924. A century of extraordinary hospitality, a river the colour of tourmaline, and a landscape defined by geothermal energy and autumn light. It remains one of the southern hemisphere’s most quietly legendary addresses.
In the Pacific rainforest of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge arrived before ‘sustainable luxury’ was a category. For over 25 years it has protected the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve — one of the largest intact temperate rainforests left on Earth — operating entirely on solar and micro-hydro power, with no roads in. You arrive by floatplane or horseback. You leave, as guests consistently report, fundamentally different.
In Chile, the two Tierra lodges anchor opposite ends of the country’s most dramatic geography. Tierra Patagonia faces the granite towers of Torres del Paine across the windswept Patagonian steppe, a lodge that has not tried to compete with the landscape but simply surrendered to it — and in doing so became one of the finest places to experience wilderness in the southern hemisphere.
Tierra Atacama sits at 2,400 metres in the world’s driest desert, where the Lickanantay people have navigated salt flats and altiplano for 11,000 years, and where the night sky holds more observable stars than almost anywhere else on Earth.
On the shores of Lake Petén Itzá in Guatemala’s northern jungle, Bolontiku — meaning Nine Lords of the Night in Classic Maya — is the most extraordinary ecolodge in Central America, joining us through the celebrated Cayuga Collection.
Two new private villas in Guanacaste round out this year’s additions — and they arrive with the best possible origin stories.
Both villas operate without single-use plastics, source exclusively from local Guanacaste farms, and direct a portion of each booking to wildlife corridor protection in the Nicoya Peninsula.
Casa Puma was named after puma tracks discovered on the property during its construction. The villa was built anyway, carefully, around the trails they left. A contemporary jungle villa with a private infinity pool, open-air living, and direct access to the Pacific coast.
Casa Tres Monos began with three spider monkeys who chose this particular stand of trees to make their home. The owners, to their credit, took the hint. The villa was built around them — elevated platforms and walkways woven through the canopy so that guests wake up not next to the forest but inside it.
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