Caribbean Sea

29 records across ten countries, and the oldest private-island market in the world. Whole-island rental was invented here — Necker in 1978 set the pattern everyone else copied — and the sea still holds more islands let to one party than any other.

Belize is the concentration that surprises people: eleven records, most of them small cayes let entire, competing not on facilities but on the mechanics of privacy. Two of them house their staff on a separate islet so the party has the land to itself after dinner, which is a finer distinction than anything the brochures draw. The Grenadines answer differently, with societies rather than rentals: Mustique and Petit St. Vincent are communities that admit guests.

The sea's weakness is weather and its history is hurricanes. Several entries here are new buildings on old footprints — Peter Island was flattened by Irma and shut for years — and the register says which, because a review written before 2017 describes a hotel that no longer exists.