About
On the record.
Private Island Resorts is a permanent register of resorts that occupy an island of their own — and of the islands that come close, the islands that once did, and the islands that will. Every entry holds a code from the day it is written. A code is issued once and never points at a second subject.
The register does not rate or rank. It records how an island is lived: who runs it, who else can be on it, how many people it holds, and how it is reached. Where two sources disagree, both are carried and the disagreement is flagged.
One Island. One Resort. Another World. The question this collection asks of every record: Does the island itself define the experience? It sees the island and is blind to everything else. That blindness is the design.
- 01 · IdentityThe code outlives the resortLHL-I-022 is North Island and will never be anything else. When an operator changes, the island gets a new entry and the old one stays — closed, linked, on the record.
- 02 · OrderModel before geographyIslands are grouped by how they are lived. Where they sit is recorded by the water around them rather than the continent they are filed under.
- 03 · ToneEvery entry names who it is wrong forA register that only praises is a brochure, and a brochure cannot help you choose between two islands that both look perfect from a seaplane.
The numbering
Codes were issued twice during the pilot, before publication, while the register was still being sorted. Edition 2026 is the first official sequence: LHL-I-001 to LHL-I-233, frozen on publication and never re-sorted again. A crosswalk from the two pilot drafts is kept so that any code quoted in an earlier document still resolves. LHL-I-232 was retired rather than reused, which is why the range has 233 numbers and 232 records.
The register does not rank
No field here means better or worse. Entries are described, not scored. Where a property is one day marked Preferred, that will be a commercial relationship, labelled as one, and kept out of the editorial fields entirely.
How complete an entry is
The register is published while it is being written, and every entry says which state it is in: structured record, editorial entry, source-verified, property-confirmed. A separate field marks the islands we have visited in person, and where there is a film of the visit it is shown on the entry. Nothing is presented as confirmed before it is.
Tiers
Core · Selected · Extended · Watchlist · Historic — identical on every surface of the House. A property's tier may differ between collections.
Privacy level
P5 The whole island is yours. P4 One resort, its guests and its staff. P3 A resort beside private houses under one system. P2 Villages, other hotels or owners share the island. P1 Day visitors, a marina, a public restaurant, a city.
The House
Private Island Resorts is one collection of The Resort Collection House. Overlaps with other collections are shown on each record as Also in the Library, never merged: one property may hold several cards, each a different text.