FROM ON HIGH, Palm Heights is the greenest place on its stretch of Seven Mile Beach: a racy canopy of palm trees and sea grape next to minimalist gray condominiums. Built on the plot of a former Hyatt, the 50-suite boutique hotel feels like a luxuriously bohemian outlier on Grand Cayman, a place as known for its lenient tax laws as its white-sand shorelines. When hotel founder Gabriella Khalil first saw the old property, she says, "It was very manicured. I was like, It needs to be the opposite of that."
But the beach, like a Mondrian painting or that song by the Used, is a composition of yellow and blue: tanned limbs sprawled on goldenrod-striped towels, a turquoise ocean so bright you imagine that if you poured it into a glass and took a sip it would taste like a briny blue raspberry. Yolk-hued beach umbrellas propped up in sand the color of corn silk, a pale shoreline hung under an aqua sky. There are a lot of reasons to want to visit, but that blue water and those yellow umbrellas are high on the list-especially if you've encountered images of Palm Heights on your Instagram feed.
Over the past couple of years, Palm Heights has been the if-you-know-you-know destination for a host of high-profile getaways: Chloë Sevigny celebrated her bachelorette party here. Pamela Anderson shot a bikini campaign on the sand. Emily Ratajkowski and Eric André brought their short-lived canoodleship beachside. Bella Hadid rode Jet Skis, and about six months later her sister Gigi was charged while reportedly en route here for "possession of ganja." (She pleaded guilty and paid a fine, and later captioned a set of photos from Palm Heights on Instagram with: "All's well that ends well.")
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