The catch at Four Seasons Resort Mallorca at Formentor

Hotel Formentor opened on 24 August 1929 and became the island's literary address, but the building you sleep in is not that one. Its interior was gutted in 2021 and its last outer walls came down in 2022. Estudio Lamela rebuilt it on the same line, copying the façade and its windows so that from the bay it looks much as it did, and it opened as a Four Seasons in August 2024 with 110 rooms, where the old hotel had 122. What was kept is the setting: the garden terraces, the main steps down to the sea and the pine wood along the shore. The rooms are new, pale and natural, with glass walls that fold back onto a terrace.

Every room faces the bay side of the building, but what you see depends on the floor. The Pine-View Room, the 40 m² entry level on the second to fourth floors, looks into the gardens and the pines; for Tuesday 11 May 2027 it was 1,829 euros a night for two. The Grand Pine-View Room, 110 euros more, adds space and a partial sea view from the second floor. A full view of the bay starts with the Sea-View Room, on the third and fourth floors, at 2,300 euros, and the Grand Sea-View Room on the same floors was 2,410. The Garden-View Room with Plunge Pool costs more than the Sea-View Room and looks at the garden.

The hotel is 71 minutes by car from Palma airport, 75 km, and there is no village around it: Port de Pollença is 19 minutes away and Pollença's old town 28, so every meal away from the hotel's own tables is a drive or a taxi. In summer, from 10:00 to 22:00, the road to Formentor beach runs through an automatic barrier that admits only authorised vehicles once the beach car park is full, and the lighthouse road beyond it is closed to private cars and taxis over the same hours, leaving the public shuttle bus. Parking at the hotel is free for guests, and the hotel arranges airport cars, hire cars and a boat from Port de Pollença.

Platja de Formentor, nearly a kilometre of pine-shaded sand, belongs to everyone. The hotel stands at its eastern end, above the garden steps, and keeps its own loungers and service on the sand below, but the rest of the beach fills with visitors who drive in until the car park is full and who come over on the ferry that runs daily from Port de Pollença, a 25-minute crossing to the jetty at the public end. In late summer 2025, towels filled the whole strip of sand between the hotel's loungers and the water. The private alternative is the hotel's two pools, one for families and one for adults only.

The menus set the level. Shima's 2026 omakase is 150 euros a head; at Llum i Sal on the beach, the senyoret seafood rice is 45 euros a head for two or more; a continental breakfast in the room is 36 euros. Breakfast comes with some rates and not with others. Llum i Sal opens for lunch from 1 May and serves dinner only from 15 May to 30 September, so an October stay has one restaurant fewer at night, and the hotel itself closes from November to mid-March. Dinner off the hotel's bill means a drive of about 19 minutes to Port de Pollença, where a paella at Celler La Parra is 13.50 euros a head.