The Beach Club Barbuda — Robert De Niro’s Nobu resort on two miles of Barbuda’s southwest coast — is taking bookings for two beachfront tented suites from late December 2026, a year before its 36-room Nobu Beach Inn opens in late 2027. From $3,500 plus tax per night, with a Nobu team, breakfast and a beach barbecue dinner included.
Most hotels open all at once: a ribbon, a launch rate, a rush of first guests. The Beach Club Barbuda is doing something rarer. The resort proper — Nobu Beach Inn, with its 36 bedrooms, spa, beach club and padel courts — is still a year away. What is open, or nearly, is a pair of tents on the sand, with a Nobu chef a few steps away and almost nobody else on the beach.
It is a preview of a resort that has been in the making for over 30 years, and the window is small: two tents, a limited number of stays, from late December until the Inn opens. The idea is that you see Barbuda before Barbuda has a hotel of this kind at all.
The Beach Club Barbuda: Key Facts
- What’s open: two beachfront tented suites, bookable for a limited number of stays from late December 2026, ahead of the resort’s official opening in 2027
- Where: nearly 400 acres on Barbuda’s southwest coast, along two miles of shoreline beside Princess Diana Beach — once a hideaway of the Princess herself
- The owner: Robert De Niro, co-founder of Nobu — this is the only Nobu resort he owns, and the realisation of a 30-year plan for the site
- The tents: designed by Luxury Frontiers; air-conditioned, with a king bed, freestanding soaking tub, outdoor shower, private shaded terrace and indoor-outdoor living space. Both can be booked together for up to four guests
- Service: a dedicated Nobu team to plan each day, plus resident watersports specialists
- Dining: Nobu Barbuda, the Caribbean’s only Nobu, is on the property — beachfront barbecues of the day’s catch, and private omakase dinners by the executive chef on request
- The sky: a Class 2 site on the Bortle dark-sky scale, among the darkest skies in the world
- What’s coming: Nobu Beach Inn, slated for late 2027 — 36 bedrooms, signature Nobu dining, beach club and restaurant, indoor and outdoor spa, oceanfront pool, tennis and padel courts, kids’ club, and a full boating and watersports programme
- Rates: from $3,500 plus tax per night, including breakfast, a beach barbecue dinner and non-motorised watersports. Bookable now
Two Tents on Princess Diana Beach
The tents are by Luxury Frontiers, specialists in high-end tented camps, and they are built to the standard of a suite rather than a safari: air-conditioning, a king bed, a freestanding soaking tub, an outdoor shower and a shaded private terrace facing the water, with proper indoor and outdoor living space. Each takes a couple comfortably, and the two can be reserved together for a family or two couples who want the beach to themselves.
The point is the setting. Barbuda’s beaches are famously empty and famously pink, and this stretch — named for Princess Diana, who came here to disappear — is the one the resort is being built around. For now, two tents and a Nobu kitchen are the only things on it.
A Nobu Chef, a Dark Sky and an Empty Sea
What turns a tent into a $3,500 night is the team around it. A dedicated Nobu host plans each day: breakfast and a massage on the terrace in the morning, then out on the water with the resident watersports specialists — paddleboards, kayaks, a boat to a sandbar nobody else can reach, snorkelling on the offshore reefs, or a trip to Barbuda’s famous frigate bird sanctuary.
Dinner is where it earns the Nobu name. Nobu Barbuda is the Caribbean’s only Nobu, and the included evening is a beachfront barbecue of the day’s fresh catch; a private omakase dinner by the executive chef can be arranged. Then the lights go off. The property is a Class 2 site on the Bortle dark-sky scale — the second-darkest classification there is — which puts the Milky Way directly over your terrace.
What Opens in 2027
The tents are the preview; Nobu Beach Inn is the main event. Slated for late 2027, it brings 36 bedrooms, signature Nobu dining, a beach club and restaurant, an indoor and outdoor spa, an oceanfront pool, tennis and padel courts, a kids’ club and a full boating and watersports programme, with a rotating calendar of visiting chefs, wellness practitioners and cultural programming curated by dedicated hosts.
Around it, The Beach Club is also a residential community: 27 Nobu Beach Inn Residences, 23 Beach Club Villa lots and seven Beach Club Estate lots, whose owners get The Clubhouse, a private beachfront space with its own pool and dining. That matters for a guest, because it tells you the kind of place this is meant to become — a small, private, members-and-residents-and-a-few-hotel-guests resort rather than a 200-key Caribbean hotel.
Getting to Barbuda
Barbuda sits a short hop north of Antigua. From Antigua’s V.C. Bird International Airport it is about 15 minutes by light aircraft or 45 minutes by boat, and the resort has its own helipad; Barbuda’s Burton-Nibbs airport, which takes regional flights and private jets, is around ten minutes’ drive from the property. Antigua is roughly 4 hours 15 from New York, 3 hours 15 from Miami and 8 hours 30 from London. Transfers to and from Barbuda are not included in the rate, but the team arranges them.
How Much Does The Beach Club Barbuda Cost?
The tented suites are priced from $3,500 plus tax per night, including breakfast, a beach barbecue dinner and non-motorised watersports — paddleboards, kayaks and the like. Transfers to and from Barbuda are not included. Both tents together, for up to four guests, means the beach is yours.
Because this is a pre-opening stay with only two tents, it is not listed on the usual booking platforms, and availability is confirmed date by date. Treat the rate as a starting point and expect the Christmas and New Year weeks to be the first to go.
The Lens I’m Reading This Through
I am usually wary of “pre-opening” stays — too often they mean a building site with a discount. This is the opposite: full price, no building site, and a deliberately tiny product that will never exist again once the Inn opens. Two tents, a Nobu chef and an empty pink beach is a proposition I understand immediately, and the Bortle Class 2 sky is the detail that would get me on the plane.
What I can’t judge from a press kit is whether the tents live up to the renderings, and how finished the rest of the 400 acres feels while the Inn is still under construction. The resort is not hosting press before the full opening, so for now this is what the announcements tell us — and I’ll be watching for late 2027. For what has already opened this year, see our new hotel openings.
Tip: Book both tents and bring another couple. The rate per person falls, the beach stays private, and the omakase dinner under the stars is a better evening for four than for two.
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This preview is based on official announcements — I haven’t stayed yet. Read more about how I review or visit my Work With Me page.
