The Sanya EDITION – Hainan, China
A private ocean, monumental architecture and Ian Schrager cool on the shores of Haitang Bay
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● Ian Schrager’s first EDITION in China, bringing the brand’s restrained glamour to a vast 50-acre tropical resort designed with SCDA, CAP Atelier and landscape architect Madison Cox.
● The extraordinary five-acre man-made “private ocean” turns a practical response to the South China Sea’s rough waters into the architectural and experiential heart of the resort.
● Contemporary Chinese art, floating teak pavilions, monumental reflecting pools and 512 remarkably serene rooms prove that a large-scale resort can still have a strong design identity.
Go Big or Go Home
EDITION hotels tend to be sophisticated, sociable and meticulously controlled. In Sanya, Ian Schrager took that formula and supersized it. The setting helps. The resort occupies more than 50 acres on Haitang Bay, on the southern coast of Hainan Island, where seemingly every international luxury hotel group has planted a flag. Standing out here requires something more than another infinity pool. The Sanya EDITION responds with architecture, landscape and water on an almost cinematic scale—yet somehow retains the visual restraint that defines the brand.
A Very Grand Entrance
Arrival provides the first indication that this isn’t going to be a modest affair. Tropical rain trees lead towards an enormous porte cochère, where soaring timber ceilings shelter a composition of teak pavilions, bamboo and polished black-granite reflecting pools. Rather than one conventional lobby, a sequence of pavilion-like spaces unfolds across the water, housing reception, lounges, retail and the spa entrance. Their horizontal forms appear to float above the pools, while views continue beyond towards the gardens and South China Sea. SCDA created the architecture, with interiors developed by Schrager’s team and CAP Atelier, while Madison Cox Associates shaped the extraordinary tropical landscape. The result has scale without the usual resort bombast.
The Five-Acre Ocean
Then there is the hotel’s most audacious feature. Swimming in the sea off Haitang Bay can be restricted because of its currents, so the designers created another one: a vast five-acre private ocean filled with treated seawater. Calling it a swimming pool hardly does it justice. Wrapped in tropical planting and crossed by boardwalks, this enormous body of water becomes a landscape in itself. Guests can take to the water, retreat to hammocks and firepits along its edges or, after dark, dine on a floating wooden barge surrounded by lanterns. It’s both extravagant and surprisingly poetic. In a resort full of enormous gestures, this is the one you’re unlikely to forget.
512 Rooms, Turn the Volume Down
After all that drama, the guestrooms do something clever: almost nothing. The 512 rooms and suites are deliberately calm, with pale limestone floors, light oak, white fabrics and a restrained coastal palette. Expansive windows and balconies keep attention directed towards the sea rather than the furniture. Circular bathtubs add a little theatricality, but otherwise the rooms function as quiet counterpoints to the energy elsewhere. Schrager’s idea was simple: public spaces can buzz; bedrooms should let you recover from them. It works.
China, Not Generic Tropics
The most interesting details prevent The Sanya EDITION from becoming another internationally styled beach resort that could have been dropped anywhere. Chinese references are integrated rather than pasted on. A silk screen depicts a plum tree; contemporary works by Chinese artists punctuate the interiors; landscaping takes inspiration from Beijing’s Summer Palace. Most significantly, three art galleries curated with Beijing’s UCCA bring contemporary Chinese culture directly into the resort. There is even a double-height bookshop filled with substantial art, architecture and cultural titles—a wonderfully serious diversion in a place where spending the afternoon beside a pool would be perfectly understandable.
From Market to Sky Bar
The scale also allows the hotel’s social life to change character throughout the day. Market references Sanya’s historic position within maritime trading routes, while its private dining rooms become elaborate installations of plants, shells and hundreds of handmade ceramic vessels. Upstairs, Sky Bar takes the EDITION formula in a more nocturnal direction. Maroon velvet, dark oak and a monumental elm bar sit beneath a shimmering ceiling composed of thousands of crystal drops. It’s glamorous, but distinctly more grown-up than tropical-resort nightlife usually suggests. And somewhere between these extremes are restaurants, bars, gardens, pools, galleries and quiet corners that make the property feel more like a small world than a hotel.
An EDITION at Resort Scale
Large resorts often lose precisely what makes good hotels interesting: personality. The Sanya EDITION manages the opposite. Its scale becomes part of its identity. The vast lagoon, floating pavilions, black reflecting pools, bamboo groves, contemporary art and tropical gardens create a succession of experiences rather than one enormous hospitality machine. Yet beneath all that spectacle is the same tension that makes the best EDITION hotels work: public drama versus private calm, glamour versus restraint, social energy versus somewhere to disappear. The Sanya EDITION may be one of Ian Schrager’s biggest hotel statements, but its cleverest trick is making all that scale occasionally feel surprisingly intimate.
