Summer’s Last Great Excuse: Where to Stay for Labor Day 2026

Photo Credit: The Wauwinet

Labor Day may technically signal the end of summer, but we prefer to think of it as summer’s last great excuse. One final long weekend to trade the laptop for a lobster roll in Nantucket, disappear into the mountains of Jackson Hole, squeeze in a few more Mediterranean swims, or simply refuse to acknowledge that fall is coming at all. Haute Living has covered pieces of this territory before, but this year’s list widens the lens well past New England. And while there are plenty of places worth visiting over the holiday weekend, the right hotel can turn three days away into something considerably more memorable. From the grand dames of New England to the sun-soaked shores of Capri, Mykonos and Ibiza, these are the destinations, and hotels, worth making one last summer escape for.

Nantucket, Massachusetts: The Wauwinet

If Labor Day had an official uniform, it would probably involve Nantucket reds, boat shoes, and a cocktail overlooking the water. And while the island has no shortage of places to stay, The Wauwinet offers the sort of old-school Nantucket fantasy we’re after. The historic property has been welcoming guests since 1875 and sits in splendid isolation on the island’s northeastern edge, between Nantucket Bay and the Atlantic. There are just 32 rooms and suites plus four cottages, two private beaches, complimentary bikes, kayaks and paddleboards, and TOPPER’S for seafood and sunset drinks overlooking the bay. Even better, guests can arrive or depart aboard the Wauwinet Lady, because naturally the proper way to do Nantucket involves a boat.

The Hamptons, New York: Topping Rose House

There is Labor Day weekend, and then there is Labor Day weekend in the Hamptons. Topping Rose House puts you right in Bridgehampton in a reimagined 19th-century mansion that manages to feel historic without sacrificing any of the things we actually want from a luxury hotel. Its 22 rooms and suites come dressed in Frette, Matouk, and SFERRA; there’s a heated outdoor pool, spa treatments, and complimentary BMW transportation around the immediate area. The restaurant is Jean-Georges, naturally, and the beaches are only minutes away. Consider it a very civilized headquarters for the final social sprint of Hamptons summer.

Newport, Rhode Island: Castle Hill Inn

Newport knows how to do summer properly: yachts, mansions, Champagne and absolutely no need to pretend subtlety is the point. Castle Hill Inn occupies 40 acres along Ocean Drive with a half-mile of coastline and accommodations that include rooms and private Beach Cottages tucked beside the sand. The Relais & Châteaux property is particularly dreamy over Labor Day, when lunch on The Lawn can turn into cocktails as sailboats drift through Narragansett Bay. One important 2026 wrinkle: a February fire damaged the historic Agassiz Mansion, and while its ground floor, restaurants and public spaces reopened in time for the summer season, the Mansion’s guest rooms remain on a longer timeline, with a return to service expected in early 2027. The Beach Cottage, Beach House and Harbor House accommodations are unaffected and available now.

Watch Hill, Rhode Island: Ocean House

If you want New England nostalgia with absolutely none of the rustic inconvenience, Ocean House is your answer. The butter-yellow Victorian grande dame sits high above the Atlantic in Watch Hill and is Rhode Island’s only AAA Five Diamond and Forbes Five-Star hotel. In fact, its hotel, COAST restaurant, and Ocean & Harvest Spa all hold Forbes Five-Star ratings. The 49 rooms have also recently received a refresh, while the resort offers beach cabanas, sailing and yachting, a 12,000-square-foot spa and enough activities to make leaving the property entirely optional. Labor Day weekend here feels less like the end of summer than an argument for extending it indefinitely.

Malibu, California: Nobu Ryokan Malibu

With only 16 rooms and suites, Nobu Ryokan Malibu tells you almost everything you need to know. This is not Malibu for people interested in making new friends by the pool. It’s Malibu for people interested in disappearing. Sitting directly on Carbon Beach, the first Nobu Ryokan combines the restrained serenity of a traditional Japanese inn with the rather less restrained pleasures of having the Pacific Ocean outside your door. Think teak, limestone, soaking tubs, fireplaces, private terraces and the kind of privacy that attracts people who generally don’t want anyone knowing where they’re spending Labor Day.

Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts: Harbor View Hotel

For a Labor Day weekend that feels straight out of a Nancy Meyers movie, make for Edgartown. Harbor View Hotel sits overlooking Edgartown Harbor and Chappaquiddick, within walking distance of the town’s boutiques, galleries and beaches, meaning the car can remain blissfully irrelevant. This is classic Great American Summer territory: clapboard architecture, boats bobbing in the harbor, cocktails on the veranda and long afternoons beside the pool. Bettini handles the upscale dining duties, but the real draw is simply being in the middle of one of New England’s prettiest towns for summer’s unofficial finale.

Maui, Hawaii: Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea

There are worse ways to bid farewell to summer than barefoot on Wailea Beach. Four Seasons Resort Maui occupies 15 oceanfront acres along Maui’s famously sunny southwestern coast, with 383 rooms and suites and easy access to everything from golf to the Road to Hana. But 2026 provides an especially good reason to return: the resort has just completed a major transformation that includes the new Kai Holo Spa, with an aquathermal wellness experience, and a redesigned 26-room Club Floor with its own private lounge and dedicated concierge. In other words, the Maui classic has had a rather fabulous glow-up just in time for Labor Day.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming: Amangani

Beach people get the Hamptons. Mountain people get Jackson Hole. And few places make the case for trading ocean views for the Tetons quite like Amangani. Aman’s secluded mountain retreat sits high above Jackson Hole with enormous views across the valley toward the surrounding peaks, bringing the brand’s signature minimalism to the American West. Labor Day hits a particularly lovely sweet spot here: hiking and wildlife-filled days without winter’s ski crowds, followed by cocktails, spa time and sunset over the mountains. Cowboy country, yes, but make it Aman.

Big Sur, California: Post Ranch Inn

If the objective is to vanish for Labor Day, Big Sur is difficult to beat. Post Ranch Inn sits 1,200 feet above the Pacific on 100 acres, with just 40 rooms and private homes folded into the landscape. There are no televisions and no reason to care. Instead, there are infinity pools, yoga, meditation, nature walks, stargazing, and private decks overlooking some of the most dramatic coastline in California. Sierra Mar adds a Wine Spectator Grand Award-winning cellar and daily-changing menus to the equation. Highway 1 is currently fully open from both north and south, making the journey considerably easier, although once you arrive, we’d recommend going nowhere.

Photo Credit: AVABLU / Ryan Forbes

Montecito, California: Rosewood Miramar Beach

Rosewood Miramar Beach doesn’t merely sit near the ocean; it occupies one of Montecito’s most coveted stretches of coastline with direct access to Miramar Beach. And it has the accolades to match the address: in 2026, the hotel, Sense spa, and Michelin-starred Caruso’s restaurant each earned Forbes Five-Star recognition for the third consecutive year. Spend Labor Day moving between the sand, spa and pool before dinner at Caruso’s overlooking the Pacific, perhaps with a little shopping at the resort’s collection of luxury boutiques in between. This is California summer polished to a very high shine.

Aspen, Colorado: The Little Nell

Aspen isn’t just for ski season, and Labor Day might be one of the best times to prove it. The Little Nell is the town’s grande dame and the obvious base for a long weekend filled with hiking, biking, dining and one last dose of mountain sunshine before the snow arrives. Summer 2026 brings an expanded calendar of culinary, outdoor, cultural and wellness programming, and the hotel’s famously polished service remains firmly intact. There’s also something delicious about doing Aspen when everyone else is still thinking beach.

Capri, Italy: J.K. Place Capri

Capri in August is a contact sport. Capri in early September? Much more civilized. J.K. Place Capri sits above Marina Grande looking across the Bay of Naples and feels less like a conventional five-star hotel than the impossibly stylish Mediterranean home of someone you desperately want to befriend. Marine blues and whites, elegant terraces, a spa and panoramic Mediterranean dining set the mood, while the hotel’s intimate scale keeps things decidedly personal. J.K. Place was also named the No. 1 hotel in Italy in the 2025 Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards. Summer isn’t over until Capri says it is.

Mykonos, Greece: Kalesma Mykonos

By September, Mykonos has begun to exhale, slightly. The parties haven’t stopped, the water is still warm, and the restaurants and beach clubs are very much alive, but the August frenzy is finally beginning to loosen its grip. Kalesma provides an elegant refuge from all of it. Set on a hill in Aleomandra overlooking Delos, the whitewashed retreat was positioned specifically to capture both sunrise and sunset, with a contemporary take on Cycladic architecture that feels more like a private villa than a party hotel. Go out when you want the Mykonos madness; come home when you’ve had enough.

Lake Como, Italy: Passalacqua

Some hotels are places to sleep. Passalacqua is an argument for canceling every plan you had after check-in. The 18th-century villa in Moltrasio was conceived as a country retreat for friends, love, food and the very Italian art of doing absolutely nothing beautifully, a philosophy its current incarnation embraces wholeheartedly. Rooms and suites are spread among the Villa, Palazz and Casa al Lago, while terraced gardens tumble toward the water and a rose-framed pool looks almost offensively photogenic. The hotel itself calls September part of Como’s magical transition toward fall, and we can’t think of a better place to practice dolce far niente for a long weekend.

Saint-Tropez, France: Hôtel Byblos

If you’re going to spend Labor Day in Saint-Tropez, there is no reason to suddenly develop restraint. Hôtel Byblos has been part of the town’s mythology since the 1960s: colorful, glamorous and unapologetically Tropezian. This is where you spend lazy afternoons by the pool before dinner stretches into drinks and drinks inevitably turn into a night at legendary nightclub Les Caves du Roy. By early September, the Riviera is still very much in summer mode, only without quite the same August crush. Think of it as Saint-Tropez with slightly more breathing room, but certainly no less Champagne.

Positano, Italy: Le Sirenuse

Yes, Positano is crowded. Yes, those stairs are real. And yes, we’d still go, especially if Le Sirenuse is involved. The former Sersale family home has evolved into one of the Amalfi Coast’s most iconic hotels without losing the feeling that you’ve somehow been invited into an extraordinarily glamorous Italian house party. There is La Sponda for dinner, three bars for the necessary Aperol-and-people-watching portion of proceedings, a pool overlooking Positano and the new Le Sirenuse Mare for days beside the sea. Labor Day weekend here is less farewell to summer than full-blown denial that summer ever needs to end.

Comporta, Portugal: Sublime Comporta

Comporta has long been where fashionable Europeans go when they want to look as though they haven’t tried very hard, despite everything being, naturally, immaculate. An hour or so south of Lisbon, the region trades the Mediterranean scene for rice fields, pine forests, Atlantic beaches and a deliberately low-key rhythm. Sublime Comporta embodies the aesthetic with contemporary villas and suites spread through a sprawling natural estate. This is the Labor Day choice for anyone who has already done Capri, Mykonos and Ibiza and would now like everyone to know they’re slightly ahead of the curve. Comporta’s luxury scene is growing rapidly, which makes this a particularly good year to get there before everybody else does.

Ibiza, Spain: Nobu Hotel Ibiza Bay

Ibiza in early September is a very specific kind of perfection: the season is still going strong, the Mediterranean is warm and the island hasn’t remotely considered going to bed yet. Nobu Hotel Ibiza Bay puts you on Talamanca Bay, close enough to dip into Ibiza Town, Marina Botafoch and the clubs but far enough away to recover the next morning properly. There are 152 rooms and suites, two pools, direct beach access, a spa, Chambao by the Beach and, obviously, Nobu itself. Pacha is two minutes away by car; Hï and Ushuaïa are around 12 — that’s what we call strategic positioning.

Seville, Spain: Hotel Alfonso XIII

Beach? No. Fabulous? Absolutely. Seville is our wildcard, and Hotel Alfonso XIII is precisely why it belongs here. Commissioned by the King of Spain to house international dignitaries during the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition, the hotel remains one of Spain’s great urban grande dames, dripping in Moorish detailing, Andalusian tiles, arches, courtyards and unapologetic old-world glamour. Its location beside the Real Alcázar and Seville Cathedral puts the city at your feet, while the outdoor pool and gardens provide somewhere to retreat when the Andalusian sun reminds you that early September is still very much summer in southern Spain. For anyone who has had enough of beaches by Labor Day, consider this your very glamorous alternative

For more on Haute Living’s travel coverage, check out The Best Luxury Hotels in the Hamptons & Montauk