The tasting menu at Uberto ends, like many others at restaurants of this caliber, with mignardises. Roughly translated from French, the word means “dainty preciousness.” Roughly translated from fine dining, it means the macarons, truffles, and other bijou sweets designed to soften the blow of an eye-popping bill.
What makes the tasting menu at Uberto unlike most others—besides the fact that it’s located in Gay, Ga., a country town known for its semiannual Cotton Pickin’ Festival—is that there is no check accompanying the miso-andchanterelle bonbon, amber canelé, and freeze-dried lemon-verbena ice cream that tastes, in the best possible way, like Trix. Provided you’re staying on-site, that is, in one of the four impeccable cabins of Quercus, a 3,800-acre cattle ranch and microresort where the $2,700 nightly rate includes dinner and so much more.
The all-inclusive vacation is easy to mock as tacky—as in the TikTok meme satirizing British tour company Jet2holidays. The humor lies in the gulf between the illusion of luxury and abundance advertised, and the sometimes rather dismal actual experience.
But in recent years, the relatively tiny ultrahigh-end segment of the all-inclusive sector has rocketed from tourism’s bottom-dweller to luxe travel industry darling.
Quercus’s version includes no all-you-can-eat buffets or spa vouchers. Instead, the biodynamic farm offers a private woodfired sauna, horse-training lessons, and kayaking and fishing on the Flint River.
At Quercus, in Georgia, the special touches feel both elegant and homey.
“For us, it was important that this feel like you’re a guest in someone’s home,” Chiara Visconti di Modrone, Quercus’s owner and a clinical nutritionist, explains as we rumble down a cow-flanked dirt road in her moss-green Ram pickup. “That feeling of home is hard to achieve when you’re signing a check every two minutes.”
And the property is indeed her home; she and her husband, financierturned-farmer Angelos Pervanas, live on the estate with their kids and a sweet Australian shepherd, Bluey, who was curled up by my feet. Visconti di Modrone spent most of her childhood here; her parents, descended from Milanese nobility and the inventor of the Vespa, bought the land in the 1970s
The term “all-inclusive” was a buzzword in October at the International Luxury Travel Market conference in the Bahamas. While some properties, including Quercus and Montana’s the Green O (from $2,290 per night), were founded with an inclusive pricing model, others—like San Ysidro Ranch (from $2,800 per night) in Santa Barbara—have seen customer interest, and gradually pivoted.
Beanie Babies billionaire Ty Warner, who purchased San Ysidro in 2000, gave the green light to fold parking, then resort fees, then dining into the rate at the property— which was the home of Franciscan monks in the 1700s, and hosted John F. and Jackie Kennedy on their honeymoon. But he told his staff he’s committed to keeping the quality at an absolute premium. “If we’re going to do this, we cannot value-engineer down,” says general manager Ian Williams. “When people read the menu, it should be a [pleasant] surprise.” Consequently, the Stonehouse restaurant goes through eight pounds of osetra caviar a week.
The all-inclusive pricing helps avoid sticker shock or nasty surprises at the checkout desk. “In our industry, people will talk a lot about getting the first 15 minutes on the property perfect, and nobody talks about getting the last 15 minutes perfect,” Williams says. “You’re in a blissful mood, then the front desk turns the bill toward you, and checkout becomes a defensive process.”
Meanwhile, the big brands are salivating like cartoon coyotes. Marriott will add six new luxury all-inclusives between 2026 and 2029 in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Brazil.
And Four Seasons planted the 15 jungle bungalows of Naviva (from $1,915 per night) on the Pacific coast of Nayarit, Mexico, in 2022. Its “beyond all-inclusive” concept centers the guest in a bespoke, frictionless stay. “You want to have breakfast at 2 p.m., we do breakfast at 2 p.m.,” operations manager Luis Miguel Moreno Jiménez tells me. Guests can dine at Copal Cocina, the heart of the resort, or “in tent”—where sliding glass walls open to a gleaming wood deck and private plunge pool sheltered in flowering plumeria and palms.
Besides food, Naviva includes an intuitive 90-minute massage per guest and daily activities. And the hotel, unlike many ultra-luxe all-inclusives, offers unrestricted alcoholic drinks. “Just like if you come into my casa, whatever I have behind the bar, you have,” Moreno says, before inviting me to grab a bottle of tequila and pour myself a shot. (No disrespect to Don Julio, but I opt for a thoughtful tasting of natural wines from Mexico’s leading women winemakers instead.) So far, “beyond all-inclusive” has been a hit, with 75% of guests returning.
After less than a year in business, Quercus has also already had return guests. Visconti di Modrone and Pervanas—with their partners, chef Ryan Smith and Kara Hidinger of Atlanta’s renowned Staplehouse—go to absurd lengths to make sure every detail feels special, from a house florist to the best hotel bed I’ve ever slept in. The kind of milk you prefer in your morning coffee gets pre-stocked in the minibar. Le Chameau Wellington boots in your size await in the wardrobe for exploring the emerald ponds and pecan groves.
And exploring is encouraged, both on property and off. While Quercus fosters a feeling of remoteness and unplugging, guests are not trapped (as one might feel at a large all-inclusive resort). I could easily have walked to a brewery right outside the entrance, or driven five minutes down the road to a steak house.
But why would I, when Smith is cooking? Dinner at Uberto is an almanac of what’s growing on the farm and what’s been preserved from harvests past: sweet strawberries turned into vinegar and set into gelée for the chickenliver tart; lemongrass and galangal from the tropical greenhouse distilled into a crystal-clear curry poured over shrimp noodles; beeswax-and-pine-cured rutabaga to go with the dry-aged duck and Smith’s grandmother Lillian’s potato rolls.
Giving in to a curated experience—even one this exquisite—requires some adjustment, Visconti di Modrone tells me: “We definitely push people a little bit out of their comfort zone.” But for alpha travelers who are used to calling the shots at work and elsewhere in their lives, relinquishing some control is perhaps the ultimate luxury.
“There is decision fatigue,” she says. By the end of the stay, they’re asking, “Can someone please just choose for me?”
It’s all included
You won’t find an endless buffet or bingo night at these all-inclusive resorts, but you won’t miss them
Quercus, Georgia
On an idyllic ranch outside Atlanta, everything from the minibar to Flint River kayaking and fishing is included for guests staying in the four country-luxe cottages.
San Ysidro Ranch, California
A legend since 1893, this former farm folded dining—caviar, seafood towers, and all—into its nightly rate after the pandemic.
Naviva, Mexico
Four Seasons’ all-inclusive entrée features 15 forested bungalows and your-wish-is-our-command service. Midnight tacos? Champagne? Temazcal ceremony? Say less.
The Green O, Montana
At this 37,000-acre adults-only luxury enclave within the Paws Up resort, guests can tool around in a loaner Lexus SUV—useful for getting from archery practice to dinner at the Scandinavian Social Haus.
This article appears in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of Fortune with the headline: “A blissful escape from decision fatigue.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
