Deep Rest Mode: Here’s Where to Go When You Need a Reboot

The Sunset Wellness & Beauty Awards celebrate the rituals, retreats, and remedies that actually move the needle. These nine locales are the 2026 winners of the Best Restorative Resorts category. Check out the complete list of winners here. For our definitive and searchable guide to wellness in the West, click here.

The Ritz-Carlton Bacara, Santa Barbara

The Ritz-Carlton Bacara, Santa Barbara

The stunningly sited wellness center features a dedicated pool, redwood sauna, and eucalyptus steam room. New treatments include TheraFace LED masks, RecoveryAir JetBoots, CBD wellness shots, and virtual reality meditation. Signature offerings span the Sleep Ritual, AI Aescape Massage, Bacara Body Melt, Cryo-Sculpt Facial, and 50-minute Stress Relief Massage. Coastal renewal at its finest.

The Global Ambassador Hotel

The Global Ambassador

This new high-bar hospitality experience in Phoenix boasts an ultra-luxe wellness program with exclusive partners—Augustinus Bader, U Beauty, Biologique Recherche, MOVA by Camila Perez, Environ, and Oxylight Sapphire. The 16,000-square-foot spa offers advanced facials, skin enhancements, massages, sculpting, acupuncture, light therapy, IV drips, cryotherapy, hot and cold plunges, eucalyptus steam, and a Finnish sauna. It’s a next-level desert reset.

Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa

Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa

Set on 45 acres of lush gardens, olive groves, and citrus trees, Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa is a luxurious Southern California sanctuary where wellness and indulgence meet. From open-air yoga and award-winning spa treatments to a world-class gym facility, padel courts, and fresh-squeezed morning juice deliveries, every detail invites guests to unwind, reconnect, and even compete.

Four Seasons Resort Tamarindo

Four Seasons Resort Tamarindo

Tucked within a 3,000-acre private nature reserve in Mexico’s up-and-coming region of Costalegre, the resort offers a rare blend of luxury and truly wild seclusion. With copal-infused spa rituals, transformative temazcal ceremonies, chef Elena Reygadas’ award-winning cuisine, and immersive conservation experiences led by on-site biologists, it embodies the modern idea of wellness as a reconnection to nature, culture, and self.

Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal

Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal

When you step into the Waldorf Astoria Spa, serene surroundings instantly relax you, from the saltwater pools to the sauna to the luxe lounge. Indulge in treatments guided by the four phases of the moon, or enjoy Mexican folk healing rituals that were developed by local curanderos and shamans. Aside from the spa, the resort has a partnership with Alo Moves, hosting wellness retreats and integrating the brand’s fitness app ikon all room TVs.

Sol, Wellbeing by Auberge at Chileno Bay Resort & Residences

Auberge Resorts Collection

Picture this: a Bath House journey that begins with “The Attunement,” a sensory ritual of sound bowl vibrations and copal cleansing. You move through an aromatherapy steam room, an invigorating ice bar, a Himalayan salt room, a cold plunge, a vitality pool, and a self-guided reflexology pool, then unwind in the Nap Garden. Baja relaxation is rarely so refined.

Banyan Tree Veya, Valle de Guadalupe

Banyan Tree Veya, Valle de Guadalupe

Set amid the rolling vineyards of Baja’s wine country, Veya sets itself apart from rustic offerings in the area with pool villas, the valley’s first temazcal ceremony, and a world-class spa blending Asian and Indigenous healing rituals. It’s a transformative retreat where mindfulness meets Mexican terroir, setting the standard for Valle de Guadalupe.

Four Seasons Resort and Residences Cabo San Lucas at Cabo Del Sol

Joe Thomas

Tierra Mar Spa is an indoor-outdoor haven that invites you to linger. Here, you can lift weights, splash in the serene pool, and indulge in treatments such as rebozo massages, cocoa body wraps, and facials with 111SKIN and Apotheca Mía with native botanicals like cempasúchil and tepezcohuite. Hydrotherapy circuits and koi pond gardens enhance a modern hacienda setting. Wellness continues with complimentary ocean sound healing and a fitness center designed by Harley Pasternak, plus Pilates and yoga. True Baja bliss.

Castle Hot Springs

Castle Hot Springs

An adults-only, 1,100-acre Sonoran Desert icon has just 31 cabins and villas, its namesake hot springs, a working farm, via ferrata, horseback riding, and a standout spa. Once host to Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and Astors, it sits about an hour from Phoenix. With history, springs, and wide-open desert, few places restore quite like this.