Build it and they will come. The problem for anyone looking to construct a five-star hotel in Ibiza isn’t the lack of pent-up demand. The problem is the building bit. Thanks to some budgie-smuggler-tight construction regulations, getting proposals for new-builds past the White Isle’s planning department is akin to getting Gary Lineker to a champagne spray party at his younger brother’s O Beach club (we’ll run into that white-haired Lothario, believe it or not, a little later).

Ibiza’s coastline can barely be touched and anything added to the interior of the island must be in keeping with what’s already there. It’s why most of the ‘five-star’ hotels that have sprung up since Ushuaïa opened in 2011 have launched in the shells of former, how shall we put it, crappier hotels.

Ushuaïa, which kick-started Ibiza’s transition from mainstream dance Mecca to VIP playground, was formerly the three-star Fiesta Club. Neighbouring Ushuaïa Tower, which opened in 2012, used to be the three-star Hotel Playa d’en Bossa. The no-frills Don Toni Hotel became the Hard Rock Hotel in 2014; a year later, the even less-frills Fiesta Club Palm Beach became the Grand Palladium.

Oku, which opened in 2021, is, partly, a reconfigured apartment block; workers on Six Senses Ibiza, the most ambitious reconfiguring of a former hotel yet, had to down tools when a group of dogged environmentalists managed to prove that developers had failed to gain proper planning permission (the hotel eventually opened in 2021, much to the chagrin of said eco-warriors). The only building purpose-built as a five-star crashpad remains the Ibiza Gran Hotel, which, at the tail end of last year, became the first hotel on the island to be awarded a Michelin star.

If you’ve ever booked what’s been advertised as a ‘five-star’ hotel in Ibiza and turned up to a matchbox room with a poky bathroom and weird layout, you now know why. You can’t always polish a turd.

The story of 7Pines Ibiza is a little different. A cliff-top development consisting of dozens of boxy whitewashed houses in the style of a traditional Ibizan village, the resort – as it exists today – is the vision of Dusseldorf-based investment group 12.18, which, in 2018, finished transforming a half-built hotel into an all-suite complex with three restaurants and three bars (one of which was designed by the Pershing Yachting group). The hotel briefly operated under the Kempinksi umbrella, before joining the Hyatt group in 2021 – the hospitality giant’s first foray into Ibiza.

The only clue that the original development probably wasn’t aiming to open with five stars next to its name is the size of the bedrooms and bathrooms – claustrophobics be warned. Almost everything else (the shabby lobby doesn’t exactly scream ‘five star’) is pretty much bang on the money.

7Pines Ibiza styles itself as a ‘resort’ but ‘retreat’ might be a better word. It’s not just that the hotel is off the beaten track – it emerges out of a pine forest, hence the name, after a five-minute drive down an isolated dirt track – but its vast footprint (it covers the size of eight football pitches) and all-white colour scheme create the sense that you’re staying in a kind of sanctuary. There’s no road noise. No thudding background music. You can’t even hear the sea crashing against the cliffs below. It’s all very zen. The sort of place Russell Brand might once have checked himself into. Born-again, conspiracist Brand, you would imagine, would be all over the hotel’s full-moon yoga classes. We preferred the steam baths and saunas in the hotel’s ultramodern ocean-facing spa. It looks like a wing of Tony Stark’s gaff.

Santorini has Therasia. Ibiza has Es Vedrà. Both claim to mark the spot where Atlantis disappeared. Rumour has it that Es Vedrà is the third most magnetic point on the planet (at which geologists might raise an eyebrow). It’s shaped like a spike on the back of a stegosaurus. During the day you can marvel at the giant submerged dinosaur from the hotel’s glass-ended, adults-only infinity pool. Come evening, you can track the sun sinking behind the uninhabited island from 7Pines’ Cone Club. A DJ serenades the process.

Come morning, Cone Club is also where breakfast is served. A clean, chic, sophisticated space. Not, in a word, the sort of setting you expect to bump into Wayne Lineker. But there he was (told you). What’s the rest of the crowd like? Worth a few bob, you’d have to say. But, then, anyone who wears a work shirt with swimming shorts looks like they’re worth a few bob, don’t they? It’s the Billionaire-on-tour look. Post-divorce Jeff Bezos glowing-up in St Tropez. Tatty old baseball cap knocking about? Bullseye.

We spoke to a DJ from Manchester, a wedding party from Surrey and a man who wasn’t Peter Stringfellow. He was a football fan from Frankfurt, about to catch a flight to the Europa League final. You got the impression on his own private jet. Everyone was lovely.

Ibiza changed a while back. It’s now home to the most expensive restaurant in the world, a badge Sublimotion wears with not-inconsiderable pride (it cost around £2,000 per head when I visited on a press beano a few years ago) and a cabaret club that used to hand out wads of fake cash for you to wave at scantily-clad dancers (Lío might still do that, I’ve not been for a while). 7Pines isn’t that. You won’t find anyone spraying champagne around the pool here. Although, if that is your sort of thing, you might bump into a man who can help.

From approx £255 per night on a B&B basis, 7pines.com

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