With a year’s worth of pent-up travel demand on the brink of bursting as summer approaches, Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel guidance platform this month announced its annual Travelers’ Choice® Best of the Best Awards for Hotels, giving people the inspiration they need to finally turn their daydreams into real trips.
And as an intimate hotel that consistently makes a big impression, The Lodge at Chaa Creek was awarded “Best Of The Best” in Tripadvisor’s Top 25 Small Hotels in Central America!
Every year, Tripadvisor combs through the millions of reviews from its global community of travelers to surface the hotels that people raved about most, and this year is no different.
To humble-brag for just a second, this is no small feat in a period like 2020-2021. And it’s all thanks to you—our guests. Being named a Travellers’ Choice Award winner is a harbinger of good news to come, and a treasured tribute to the service excellency mantra our staff consistently provides to our guests.
Spanning six continents and 83 countries, we are absolutely elated to be recognized alongside ten more Belize properties! Based on a full year of reviews from customers from January 2020 to December 2020, this award speaks to the great service and experience provided to our guests—even in the midst of a pandemic. Naturally, our melting pot of the experiences and personalities of our staff is our strength—much like Belize’s very own cultural diversity.
As challenging as the past year was, The Lodge at Chaa Creek stood out by continuously delighting its guests—the very same ones that chose this award.
One guest, mdglobetrotter on TripAdvisor, shared, “The people at Chaa Creek are really what make it great—you just won’t find a nicer or harder working group anywhere.” Meanwhile, another guest, colleenTD on TripAdvisor, says, “We have travelled all over the world, and I honestly would say this staff, as a whole, ranks as one of the best we’ve encountered.”
Sure, you come to the Lodge at Chaa Creek for the early-morning bird-watching tours, to visit the medicine trails, to immerse yourself in a swathe of colors inside the Blue Morpho Butterfly Farm. All the while sleeping in an Eco-luxe cottage, Macal River View Suite, or Treetop Villa. But—you’ll stay for the elegantly warm service, for the details, and for the old-world charm.
It’s not just exploration of lush interiors that brings guests back time and time again to this plot of land in Western Belize.
You see, at Chaa Creek, it’s the little things that matter most to us.
Why The Little Things Take Up The Most Memories
That looks different to every guest, because each experience in Belize is singular. Alice remembers you asked for an extra serving of fried plantain the night before, and makes sure to add it to tonight’s meal at Mariposa Restaurant—without prompt.
Meshach—your guide to the medicinal plant world—notices your bug bites from a day of exploring and cuts an Aloe Vera leaf for a homemade topical relief.
On arrival, your personal concierge Candy explains the magic of the jungle awaiting inside your room, perfectly timed for your stay: a cocooning Blue Morpho butterfly.
And of course, owners Mick and Lucy as familiar faces on property, ready to pitch in whenever necessary—all with a smile under their mask. While the entirety of staff are vaccinated, The Lodge at Chaa Creek takes health and safety just as safely as day 1 of the pandemic.
Lucy Fleming shares, “The Fleming Family is thrilled by the recognition awarded Chaa Creek as one of the ‘Best of the Best’ top 25 resorts in the world. We would like to pass this award along to our greater family, our management and staff, who create the magical environment that colors every visitor’s experience with bright shades of contentment.”
After all, The Lodge at Chaa Creek practically pioneered adventure travel in Belize, carving out a space for Eco-tourism long before the term was coined. Acknowledging such, “Our forty years of evolution have been fashioned by the grit, dedication and skill of these kind Belizean professionals who along with the traveling community have guided our vision with authentic expectations. Thank you is too small a salutation, so ‘mil gracias’ will have to suffice for this truly awesome honor.”
Hotels and resorts are full of life during busy seasons, but the action doesn’t stop when the guests go home. The majority of our staff hold over a decade of service with us, where time at work feels more like a second family, and our guests an extension of that.
An elegant jungle sanctuary with old-world charm, Chaa Creek’s story begins back in the 1980s. When the country was on the cusp of newly founded independence, The Lodge opened its doors and was pivotal in transforming the sleepy prospect of inland Belizean tourism into a congenial, wildly civilized escape.
Today, the accommodations at Chaa Creek include personal plunge pools, al fresco showers, sprawling sundecks, and an array of onsite activities inside its 400 acres of private nature reserve. While that’s a very different product from the Flemings’ small family farm evolution in 1981, one thing remains the same: a commitment to service, only now as a full service Eco-resort.
To understand what it feels like to enjoy the top 1% of small resorts in Central America—to feel the wildflowers on your jeans as you cut through grasslands on horseback en route to the Xunantunich Maya Site, to sip on fresh Allspice infused local rum cocktails, to simply unwind in your private plunge pool after kayaking the Macal River—one must experience The Lodge at Chaa Creek.
