Travel · Portfolio · ALS Private
The Portfolio Behind the World’s Most Private Escapes
Necker, Velaa, Amangiri, The Brando. One London company holds the keys to all of them.
ALS Private is not a villa website. It is a small, deliberately discreet travel company founded by Bella Syme, built on long-standing relationships with the owners and managers of houses that are rarely advertised anywhere. Its portfolio is organised into three words: Snow, Sun and Sea.
What sits behind those words is a list most travellers will recognise instantly. A private island in the British Virgin Islands. A Maldivian island with its own submarine. A Polynesian atoll once kept for Marlon Brando. A restored 19th-century fortress in the Adriatic. Here is what the collection actually holds, and why it reads so directly to a Gulf traveller.
British Virgin Islands
Necker Island, All 74 Acres of It
Sir Richard Branson’s island is the portfolio’s most recognisable name and still one of the few places on earth a family can take an entire island. Seventy-four acres in the North Sound of the British Virgin Islands, 24 rooms and suites across four separate villas, and an infinity pool attached to each one.
There is a spa, there are two tennis courts, and there is the sort of staff-to-guest ratio that makes an itinerary unnecessary. Snorkelling, kitesurfing and private boat expeditions run off the beach.
Two Ways In
Necker works in two modes. Exclusive use hands the whole island to one group, which is how most families take it and the surest way to secure the dates you want. During selected weeks of the year, Virgin Limited Edition also releases individual rooms, or a few rooms in one of the island’s Balinese houses, without a full buyout.
That second option is the interesting one. It is the difference between a private island being a fantasy and being a booking, and knowing when those weeks open is exactly the sort of thing a company like ALS Private exists to know.
Maldives
Velaa Private Island, and the Submarine
Velaa runs to 47 villas and residences, each with a private pool and either beach or lagoon access. The island holds a golf academy designed by José María Olazábal, a spa, several fine dining restaurants and a kids’ club that earns its keep on a long stay.
It also has a submarine. Not a metaphor: an actual submersible for exploring the reef, which is the kind of detail that separates a good Maldivian resort from a memorable one.
Rooms
A Pool, a Beach, and Nobody Else
Every villa opens onto its own stretch of sand or lagoon. For Gulf families who travel to the Maldives every year, Velaa’s appeal is the ratio of space to guests rather than the length of the amenity list.
A Short Flight and a Seaplane
Velaa is reached by seaplane from Malé. From Kuwait, Doha or Dubai the Maldives remain among the shortest genuinely tropical flights available, which is why the archipelago has become the default Gulf escape when the summer heat sets in.
Mozambique
Kisawa, on Benguerra Island
Kisawa Sanctuary occupies 300 hectares of forest, beach and sand dune on the southern tip of Benguerra Island, fourteen kilometres off the Mozambican coast. Twelve residences of one to three bedrooms sit across it, the three-bedroom houses with their own pools.
Founder and creative director Nina Flohr built it with island artisans alongside patented 3D-printing technology, and roughly ninety per cent of the operational team is Mozambican. The design is what people remember: thatched roofs, hand-woven interiors and a palette taken from the dunes outside.
Whales, Reefs and a Wellness Centre
Benguerra sits in the Bazaruto Archipelago, beside a national marine park holding some of the least explored subtropical ecosystems in the Indian Ocean. Whales pass through between June and September.
On land there is the Natural Wellness Center, sunrise yoga, and dinner at Baracca. It is a long way from the Gulf. It is also one of the few places in the portfolio that still feels undiscovered.
Madagascar
Miavana, on Nosy Ankao
Miavana by Time + Tide sits on the private island of Nosy Ankao off the north-east coast of Madagascar, roughly ten square kilometres of it, with fourteen villas set along the beach. Each has a private pool and an uninterrupted ocean view.
Helicopters do the heavy lifting here, and not only on arrival: heli-kiting, island-hopping, and drops onto beaches nobody else reaches.
Diving, Snorkelling and the Wildlife
Madagascar’s wildlife is the reason to come, and Miavana is built around getting to it: snorkelling and diving off the reef, wildlife excursions across the island chain, and the sort of guiding that turns a beach holiday into something else.
Families
Built for Children Who Are Bored of Pools
The island reads as a resort for adults until you watch it work with children. The piazza pool, the boats and the guides are the reason families come back.
French Polynesia
The Brando, and Its Michelin Kitchen
Marlon Brando bought Tetiaroa in the 1960s and asked that anything built there should tread lightly. The result, decades later, is a 35-villa resort on a turquoise lagoon, run as an eco-conscious property with Polynesian cultural programming at its centre.
Two restaurants, one of them led by Michelin-starred chef Guy Martin, cover French, Polynesian and international cooking built on locally sourced produce.
The Longest Flight in the Portfolio
Tetiaroa is reached by light aircraft from Tahiti, and Tahiti is a long way from anywhere. That distance is the point. The Brando is the property people book when they want to be genuinely unreachable, and the lagoon, the spa and Bob’s Bar do the rest.
Montenegro
Mamula Island, a Fortress in the Adriatic
This is the portfolio’s most unusual property and, for our money, its most interesting. Mamula is a small island in the Adriatic off the Montenegrin coast, entirely occupied by a 19th-century fortress restored into a 32-room hotel and spa.
The circular walls now enclose an atrium and a courtyard. The barrel-vaulted interiors have become suites, a gym and a spa, and the sea sits a few steps beyond every one of them.
Stone, Water and Very Little Else
You arrive by boat. There is no road, no town and no traffic, only the fortress and the water around it, with private boat trips, swimming and hiking making up the day.
For a Gulf traveller looking for a European summer that is not the South of France, Montenegro and the UNESCO-listed Bay of Kotor beyond it remain one of the Mediterranean’s genuine surprises.
St Barths
Villa Rockstar, and the Recording Studio
Part of Eden Rock in St Barths, Villa Rockstar has been described as a two-hundred-million-dollar yacht on land, which is either marketing or an understatement depending on the day. Six bedrooms, a private twenty-metre pool, a cinema and a gym.
And a fully equipped recording studio, which is where the name comes from. Guests also have direct access to Eden Rock’s hotel facilities, so the villa is private without being isolated.
Corfu
Ultima Corfu, and the Private Dock
A six-bedroom villa on the tranquil island of Corfu, with a dramatic infinity pool, a wellness spa and its own private dock and beach. The design is eco-conscious and low-slung, built into the hillside rather than on top of it.
The dock matters more than it sounds. It turns the villa into a base for the Ionian rather than a house with a view of it.
Folegandros
Gundari, on the Island Nobody Goes To
Folegandros is the Cyclades without the crowds, and Gundari is the reason to go: 27 suites and villas set into eighty acres of raw cliffside above the Aegean, designed by the Athens studio Block722 in the ancient tones of the island itself.
Dinner is at Orizon, the spa runs on Greek herbs and ritual, and the whole place is built around slow living rather than a list of facilities.
Utah
Amangiri, in the Red Rock
Amangiri occupies 900 acres of untouched red-rock desert on the Colorado Plateau, at Canyon Point in southern Utah. Thirty-four modernist suites, an Aman Spa, and a pool built around a rock formation so that the water appears to run into the mesa itself.
A stone’s throw from the main house, Camp Sarika adds ten canvas-topped pavilions, each with its own private pool and firepit, plus a restaurant, lounge and spa suites for guests who want the desert closer.
Scotland
Aldourie Castle, on Loch Ness
The Highlands are the portfolio’s counter-programming, and Aldourie is the headline. A historic exclusive-use castle on the shores of Loch Ness with twelve rooms and suites, taken in its entirety rather than by the room.
For larger multi-generational gatherings, the castle can be booked alongside six estate cottages as a full buyout. Boating, fishing and the Highlands are on the doorstep.
Glenfeshie Lodge, in the Cairngorms
South of Inverness, Glenfeshie Lodge sits inside the Cairngorms National Park on an estate known internationally for its rewilding work. Seven rooms and suites, open fires, and the kind of interiors that make a Scottish August feel like a good idea.
Hill walking, fishing and wildlife watching are run by the estate team. Dinner is served at one long table.
Snow
The Third Word: Snow
Alongside Sun and Sea, ALS Private keeps a substantial winter portfolio. In the Alps that includes Chalet Bruxellois in Courchevel 1850, Chalet Marmottière and Chalet Vicuña in Verbier, Etoile du Nord in Val d’Isère and Ultima Chalet in Crans Montana.
It reaches well beyond them too: Deplar Farm in Iceland, Octola in Finnish Lapland, Muwa in Niseko and Caldera House in Jackson Hole.
Booked Early, or Not at All
The chalets follow the same logic as the islands. The best weeks in the best houses rarely reach the open market at all, which is the entire argument for working through a company that holds the relationships rather than the listings.
Verbier
Wood, Fire and a Long Table
Chalet Vicuña is the portfolio in miniature: a private house, fully staffed, in a place where the alternative is a very good hotel and a great deal less privacy.
The Summer Villas
Five ALS Private Villas Available This Season
Alongside the wider portfolio, ALS Private has released a tightly curated group of European villas for the 2026 summer season, available across key dates through the school holidays:
Villa Puesta del Sol, Mallorca, a contemporary Mediterranean retreat with sweeping sea views. Villa Palmira, above Cannes, with manicured gardens and panoramic coastal views. Villa Blue Dream, Ibiza, a waterfront house close to Ibiza Town. Villa Elysium, Mykonos, a Cycladic escape over the Aegean. L’Etoile des Baux, Provence, a restored estate among olive groves.
Enquiries and full portfolio at alsprivate.com. ALS Private Limited is registered in England and Wales.
What You Are Actually Paying For
For Boujeez, the interesting thing about a company like this is not the addresses. Anyone can find out that Necker exists. What is scarce is the relationship: the call that gets answered in August, the owner who releases a week that was never listed, the manager who knows a family is arriving with three generations and adjusts before being asked.
That is the quiet economy of luxury travel, and it is the part no platform has managed to replace. The Gulf understands this instinctively, because it is how hospitality has always worked here. You are not buying the house. You are buying the person who knows the house.