Let’s buck the trend, a local marine biologist suggested.
In 2018, as the Maldives, a nation of nearly 1,200 islands in the Arabian Sea, continued its transformation into a luxury tourist destination, the country’s handbook for resort developers called sea grass meadows in the country’s shallow lagoons “aesthetically unappealing,” suggesting that it was “very important from the tourist perspective that the growth of sea grasses is eliminated.” Resorts on the islands were known to smother their meadows with sprawling sheets of plastic laid across the ocean floor in order to offer visitors aquamarine waters with endless sandy bottoms. Never mind that sea grass meadows are vital ecosystems for marine life and nearby coral reefs, or that they capture carbon in significant amounts from the atmosphere.
But at the 94-villa Six Senses Laamu resort, one Maldivian biologist wanted to “make a statement,” as Philippa Roe, the brand’s manager for regenerative impact, recalled.
Instead of killing off sea grass, the resort encouraged it to thrive, Ms. Roe said, and now has a lagoon with “different hues of green and dark blue, rather just a plain monotone crystal.” The sea grass has become a draw that gives the resort a leg up over others in the area, she said, as it attracts marine wildlife to the waters surrounding the resort’s over-water bungalows, where guests can see stingrays, sharks and turtles from the sun loungers on their decks.
The “perfect” tropical beach hardly needs to be described; it’s on the Instagram post, in the pages of a travel magazine: Fine white sand, coconut palm trees overhead, a gently sloping beach and unobstructed views out to sea. But in many cases — and especially at tourist destinations — that beach is entirely manufactured.
Now, a number of beach resorts around the world are embracing beachscapes in their more natural states. Planting or preserving native vegetation, especially between the shoreline and buildings, and focusing on a healthy overall ecosystem, strengthens natural defenses against the changing climate and provides habitat to native species, all while transforming travelers’ assumptions about what kind of tropical beach is worthy of a week’s vacation.
At the 20-bungalow Playa Viva resort on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, a native beachscape has been part of the property’s ethos since it opened in 2008. The resort has de-emphasized ocean views from the bungalows, instead framing sightlines to the sea with some of the 10 or so native plants that Playa Viva uses as a foundation for its grounds. Among them is the versatile sea grape with its robust root system, twisting branches and large round leaves that can be pruned as bushes, shrubs or trees. The dose of vegetation between each bungalow and the sand provides privacy and serves as a first line of defense for Playa Viva’s buildings on a coast that sees its share of big storms.
“The conscious design was something I thought added to the experience,” said Alexandra Avila, a 37-year-old marketing executive from Miami who booked a three-night trip specifically because of how Playa Viva had been designed and built.
Two other resorts in development in the region have since hired Amanda Harris, the permaculture specialist responsible for designing much of Playa Viva’s landscaping, to consult on their own native beachscapes.
“The thing each of these projects have in common is immersing guests in the luxury of nature while creating resilient ecosystems,” Ms. Harris said.
In the sea
In tropical and subtropical climates, seaside developers have been replicating the artificial beach since the European seaside-resort model gave way to a tropical one in the middle of the last century. Out with the intricate ecosystems — mangroves, sea grass and shade-giving trees, especially — and in with the version guests expected: an image brought on by a newfound fascination with Polynesian scenery in the wake of World War II, namely those coconut palms and often, the white sand beach itself.
Across the globe, the result has often been devastating for shorelines’ defenses against the sea.
“If you have a beach that was once, let’s say, mangroves and you clear it out, turn it into sand and plant some coconut palms, you’ve lost tons of structure, really complex, interwoven structure,” said Scott F. Jones, a coastal ecologist at the University of North Florida. “Your storm surge protection essentially vanishes, and your resilience to sea level rise goes down a whole lot, too.”
Scientists estimate that 35 percent of the world’s mangrove forests were lost by the end of the 20th century, while its sea grasses have declined by 29 percent. Both ecosystems are sustainability powerhouses; in addition to providing localized protection and biodiversity, they capture carbon in significant amounts from the atmosphere. Mangroves sequester around 10 times more carbon than mature tropical forests, while sea grass can pull in up to 15 times as much. Compared to them, the coconut palm provides little benefit.
The Six Senses Laamu resort in the Maldives has started a campaign with the Blue Marine Foundation to get other resorts in the country to allow their sea grass to flourish. A quarter of them have since committed to preserving at least 80 percent of their sea grass. In the most recent version of the country’s handbook for resort developers, released in 2023, the language calling sea grass “aesthetically unappealing” has been removed.
On the land
Onshore, the coconut palm is almost ubiquitous, and it does offer some benefits. Coconuts are exquisite natural containers of water and food, with fibers that can be used for rope and woven goods.
But on modern shorelines, these trees do little to prevent sand erosion or block wind and they provide scant shade, an increasingly valuable commodity in a warming world. They are also nonnative to many of the world’s most popular beach destinations. When Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Americas, on an island today that is part of the Bahamas, there were no coconut palms in the Caribbean. Europeans would bring them later.
At the Song Saa Private Island resort in Cambodia, the few palm trees blend into diverse vegetation that has been regenerated from the ground up, after the small island on which it sits was previously cleared for a fishing operation. The resort replanted and regrew everything, including mangroves, using samples from nearby islands. The 24 rooms were then constructed around the regenerated landscape instead of the other way around.
Song Saa’s owner, Melita Koulmandas, is particularly passionate about the area’s mangrove forests. “These forests are vital to the surrounding ecosystems, as they are one of the most effective carbon-capture ecosystems on earth, plus they stop erosion of the coastlines,” she said.
Such efforts can sometimes become part of a larger preservation project. Iberostar, the Spanish hotel brand that runs more than 85 coastal resorts around the world, has since 2017 turned native vegetation into policy. It has planted more than 16,000 mangroves across its properties as part of a larger sustainability project. In one example of many, its Iberostar Selection Albufera Resort on the Spanish island of Mallorca, which opened in 2023, prioritized native vegetation that requires little water, reducing the property’s overall water use.
Other efforts are less voluntary, with some resorts restoring native vegetation not by choice but by law. In early 2024, the Sandpiper Bay Resort in Port St Lucie, Fla., was ordered to plant 2,800 mangrove trees on its property after cutting down nearly 1,000 of them without a permit. Wyndham, which owns the resort, did not return requests for comment.
Amanda Harris, the permaculture specialist at Playa Viva, notes that diverse vegetation can serve multiple purposes in addition to shoreline protection. It creates privacy between the rooms, shade for guests in a hot climate, and a more interesting overall aesthetic, which, as she put it, invites visitors “to step into nature, to flow between the natural and built world.”
The ocean is just part of the equation.
“It doesn’t have to be this panoramic view,” she said, adding that it can be “what we call windows of sight onto the beach.”
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