Travel

Incredibly Cool Treehouse Hotels to Channel Your Inner 10 Year Old

Check into these beautiful treehouse hotels in Mexico, Bali, and beyond.

Courtesy of Lion Sands
Courtesy of Lion Sands
Courtesy of Lion Sands

We know COVID-19 is impacting travel plans right now. For a little inspiration, we’ll continue to share stories from our favorite places around the world so you can keep daydreaming about your next adventure.

When you were ten, camping out in a treehouse-where “room service” was your mom with brownies, interrupting your game of truth or dare at the WORST possible moment-made for some pretty great overnight lodging. Now, though, treehouse hotels, eco-lodges, and Airbnbs are taking the notion of a treehouse to the next level, sometimes literally.

These are a few of the world’s most spectacular treehouses for your future vacation plans and Ewok cosplay needs, where the amenities are more than a sleeping bag and flashlight-some are full-blown resorts. At the very least, they could inspire you to step up your own backyard game and start building.

Courtesy of TreeHouse Point
Courtesy of TreeHouse Point
Courtesy of TreeHouse Point

TreeHouse Point

Issaquah, Washington
Number of rooms: 6
Cost per night: From $661
The work of a “world-renowned treehouse builder,” this B&B just outside Seattle boasts rustic-but-modern cabins decorated with leather chairs, cedar beds, and private balconies. The treehouses themselves have hippie-dippie names like Trillium, Upper Pond, and Temple of the Blue Moon. The place also rocks a summer concert series and serves as a tourable nature conservancy.

Courtesy of Lion Sands
Courtesy of Lion Sands
Courtesy of Lion Sands

Lion Sands

Kruger National Park, South Africa
Number of rooms: 3
Cost per night: From around $275 per person
Though this South African wilderness resort has lodges with equally luxurious rooms, the way to go is a night in one of their treehouses, accessible via raised wooden walkways. When you’re perched above the savannah in a king-sized bed, it’s hard to imagine staying anywhere else.

Johan Jansson
Johan Jansson
Johan Jansson

Treehotel

Harads, Sweden
Number of rooms: Seven, including Dragonfly, The Blue Cone (which is, uh, red), and The UFO
Cost per night: From $641
As much a showcase for Sweden’s top architects as it is a hotel, this enclave in a pine forest boasts modern, highly Instagrammable treehouses up to 20 feet off the ground, resembling bird nests, mirrored cubes, and UFOs. The largest room is the Dragonfly; the most invisible room is the Mirrorcube; the most extraterrestrial room is the UFO.

Courtesy of The Original Treehouse Cottages
Courtesy of The Original Treehouse Cottages
Courtesy of The Original Treehouse Cottages

Original Treehouse Cottages

Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Number of rooms: 7
Cost per night: From $179
Eureka Springs is one of America’s great mountain towns, so if you’re keen on exploring this hotel offers treehouse accommodations on a wooded hillside right by Downtown. For a more secluded experience you can opt to stay in their “Hidden Forest” about a mile away. Either way, you’re getting your own little slice of treetop luxury. There’s a jacuzzi completely encircled with windows, offering a 365-degree view of the towering pines of the Ozarks.

Courtesy of Secluded Intown Treehouse
Courtesy of Secluded Intown Treehouse
Courtesy of Secluded Intown Treehouse

Secluded Intown Treehouse

Atlanta, Georgia
Number of rooms: 1
Cost per night: $389
It’s kind of amazing that an urban treehouse-we’re literally minutes from downtown Atlanta here!-can look like this. The Secluded Intown Treehouse has three separate rooms (Mind, Body, and Spirit, the latter of which is a hammock deck) that are connected to each other with rope swing bridges. It’s supported by seven trees altogether. It looks like something designed on Pinterest, yet it is real.

RESERVA BIOLOGICA HUILOHUILO
RESERVA BIOLOGICA HUILOHUILO
RESERVA BIOLOGICA HUILOHUILO

Nothofagus Hotel & Spa

Neltume, Chile
Number of rooms: 55
Cost per night: From $210
Floor-to-ceiling windows and private balconies offer leafy views of both the Patagonian Andes and Mocho Choshuenco Volcano. Premium suites come with their own living room, whirlpool tub, and, appropriately, rainforest shower. There are also two restaurants, and a heated swimming pool and full spa below.

Courtesy of Acre Baja
Courtesy of Acre Baja
Courtesy of Acre Baja

Acre 

Baja, Mexico
Number of rooms: 12
Cost per night: $305
If you’re after tropical vibes, you’ve come to the right place. Here, you’ll wake up each morning in a thatched treehouse nestled amongst a grove of palm trees; enjoy your coffee (or perhaps mezcal?) out on your private terrace and request an in-room massage to really unwind. Also on site: organic gardens, citrus groves, farm animals, and a pool.

Courtesy of Bangkok Tree House
Courtesy of Bangkok Tree House
Courtesy of Bangkok Tree House

Bangkok Tree House

Bangkok, Thailand
Number of rooms: 10
Cost per night: From $93
Opened in 2012 and inspired by Thoreau’s Walden Pond, this elevated eco-friendly oasis in the heart of the big city admits it’s “not for everyone.” No A/C, outdoor showers-it’s treehouse life for real here. In addition to sleek treetop rooms and free cell phone rentals, the hotel rents the “View with a Room”: Sleep 23 feet off the ground in the open air under the stars.

Courtesy of Châteaux Dans Les Arbres
Courtesy of Châteaux Dans Les Arbres
Courtesy of Châteaux Dans Les Arbres

Châteaux dans les Arbres in the Dordogne

Nojals-et-Clotte, France
Number of rooms: 6
Cost per night: From $319
Modeled after a traditional French chateau, these elevated castles in Southwest France are built on stilts among chestnut and oak trees and include a terraced hot tub and ground-level infinity pool. No roughing-it attitude required here.

Courtesy of The Fusion Home
Courtesy of The Fusion Home
Courtesy of The Fusion Home

The Fusion Home

Golfito, Costa Rica
Number of rooms: 6
Cost per night: From $135
Situated in the canopy of the Costa Rican rainforest on the Pacific Coast, The Fusion Home doesn’t just come with killer views: The ultra-hospitable hosts are also happy to take you on guided night hikes, help you arrange regional excursions, or bring you fresh food from the local garden. This is just one of many rentals available in this community of eco-friendly treehouses; if The Fusion Home’s already been snatched up for the week, try Fila Tortuga, Casa Perezosa, or Casa Paraiso on for size.

Tom Chudleigh
Tom Chudleigh
Tom Chudleigh

Free Spirit Spheres

Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Number of rooms: 3
Cost per night: From $314
You’ll be gently rocked to sleep in one of three floating cedar/spruce orbs (Luna, Eryn, and Melody) dangling in an old-growth forest. Not bad, eh? The spheres are “suspended like pendants from a web of rope,” 10 to 15 feet above the forest floor.

Out'n'About Treehouse Treesort LLC (Xplorefilm.com)
Out’n’About Treehouse Treesort LLC (Xplorefilm.com)
Out’n’About Treehouse Treesort LLC (Xplorefilm.com)

Out’n’About Treehouse Treesort

Cave Junction, Oregon
Number of rooms: 17
Cost per night: From $90, depending on the season
This place has more than a mile of ziplines! It feels more like staying with your highly eccentric relatives than being in a hotel; the family-run business used to sell T-shirts to guests, whom they called “Tree Musketeers,” rather than charge them a room rate. The rooms don’t have locks-though we guess you’re relatively safe out in the middle of 36 acres near the Siskiyou National Forest. The activitrees at this treesort also include a horse-breeding ranch.

Courtesy of Treehouses of Serenity
Courtesy of Treehouses of Serenity
Courtesy of Treehouses of Serenity

Sanctuary, Treehouses of Serenity

Asheville, North Carolina
Number of rooms: 1
Cost per night: $335
Asheville, girl, you’ve done it again. Wake up early in the morning, wrap a blanket around your shoulders, and plop down in a rocking chair on the porch of this rustic treehouse to watch the sun rise over the Blue Ridge Mountains. (We felt peaceful just typing that.) Plus, if this stay isn’t available during your trip, the owners have a few other treehouses (and a hobbit house!) ready to welcome you with open, uh, branches.

Courtesy of Treehouse Blue Mountains
Courtesy of Treehouse Blue Mountains
Courtesy of Treehouse Blue Mountains

Treehouse Blue Mountains

Bilpin, New South Wales, Australia
Number of rooms: 1
Cost per night: $456
I mean … look at it. Built on 600 acres of private land, this treehouse comes with a spa, fireplace, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a hot tub. It makes a great home base for exploring not one but two nearby national parks. There’s great mountain biking to be done in the area, but it honestly looks like it would be very hard to get out of bed here.

Courtesy of Green Village
Courtesy of Green Village
Courtesy of Green Village

Green Village

Bali, Indonesia
Number of rooms: 12
Cost per night: From $151
This eco-community in Bali may be the grandest collection of treehouse vacation homes in the world. You can actually rent a six-story bamboo villa-and since most of them don’t have what you’d call “walls,” you’re basically sleeping in nature, but like, still in the complete lap of luxury.

Want more Thrillist? Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Matt Meltzer, Dave Baldwin, Kastalia Medrano, and Tiana Attride contributed to reporting for this story. 

Travel

Ditch your Phone for ‘Dome Life’ in this Pastoral Paradise Outside Port Macquarie 

A responsible, sustainable travel choice for escaping big city life for a few days.

nature domes port macquarie
Photo: Nature Domes

The urge to get as far away as possible from the incessant noise and pressures of ‘big city life’ has witnessed increasingly more of us turn to off-grid adventures for our holidays: Booking.com polled travellers at the start of 2023 and 55% of us wanted to spend our holidays ‘off-grid’.  Achieving total disconnection from the unyielding demands of our digitised lives via some kind of off-grid nature time—soft or adventurous—is positioned not only as a holiday but, indeed, a necessity for our mental health. 

Tom’s Creek Nature Domes, an accommodation collection of geodesic domes dotted across a lush rural property in Greater Port Macquarie (a few hours’ drive from Sydney, NSW), offers a travel experience that is truly ‘off-grid’. In the figurative ‘wellness travel’ sense of the word, and literally, they run on their own independent power supply—bolstered by solar—and rely not on the town grid. 

Ten minutes before you arrive at the gates for a stay at Tom’s Creek Nature Domes, your phone goes into ‘SOS ONLY’. Apple Maps gives up, and you’re pushed out of your comfort zone, driving down unsealed roads in the dark, dodging dozens of dozing cows. Then, you must ditch your car altogether and hoist yourself into an open-air, all-terrain 4WD with gargantuan wheels. It’s great fun being driven through muddy gullies in this buggy; you feel like Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.  As your buggy pulls in front of your personal Nature Dome, it’s not far off that “Welcome…to Jurassic Park” jaw-dropping moment—your futuristic-looking home is completely engulfed by thriving native bushland; beyond the outdoor campfire lie expansive hills and valleys of green farmland, dotted with sheep and trees. You’re almost waiting to see a roaming brachiosaurus glide past, munching on a towering gum tree…instead, a few inquisitive llamas trot past your Dome to check out their new visitor. 

To fully capture the awe of inhabiting a geodesic dome for a few days, a little history of these futuristic-looking spherical structures helps. Consisting of interlocking triangular skeletal struts supported by (often transparent) light walls, geodesic domes were developed in the 20th century by American engineer and architect R. Buckminster Fuller, and were used for arenas. Smaller incarnations have evolved into a ‘future-proof’ form of modern housing: domes are able to withstand harsh elements due to the stability provided by the durable materials of their construction and their large surface area to volume ratio (which helps minimize wind impact and prevents the structure from collapsing). As housing, they’re also hugely energy efficient – their curved shape helps to conserve heat and reduce energy costs, making them less susceptible to temperature changes outside. The ample light let in by their panels further reduces the need for artificial power. 

Due to their low environmental impact, they’re an ideal sustainable travel choice. Of course, Tom’s Creek Nature Domes’ owner-operators, Cardia and Lee Forsyth, know all this, which is why they have set up their one-of-a-kind Nature Domes experience for the modern traveller. It’s also no surprise to learn that owner Lee is an electrical engineer—experienced in renewable energy—and that he designed the whole set-up. As well as the off-grid power supply, rainwater tanks are used, and the outdoor hot tub is heated by a wood fire—your campfire heats up your tub water via a large metal coil. Like most places in regional Australia, the nights get cold – but rather than blast a heater, the Domes provide you with hot water bottles, warm blankets, lush robes and heavy curtains to ward off the chill.

nature domes port macquarie
Photo: Nature Domes

You’ll need to be self-sufficient during your stay at the Domes, bringing your own food. Support local businesses and stock up in the town of Wauchope on your drive-in (and grab some pastries and coffee at Baked Culture while you’re at it). There’s a stovetop, fridge (stocked as per a mini bar), BBQs, lanterns and mozzie coils, and you can even order DIY S’More packs for fireside fun. The interiors of the Domes have a cosy, stylish fit-out, with a modern bathroom (and a proper flushing toilet—none of that drop bush toilet stuff). As there’s no mobile reception, pack a good book or make the most of treasures that lie waiting to be discovered at every turn: a bed chest full of board games, a cupboard crammed with retro DVDs, a stargazing telescope (the skies are ablaze come night time). Many of these activities are ideal for couples, but there’s plenty on offer for solo travellers, such as yoga mats, locally-made face masks and bath bombs for hot tub soaks. 

It’s these thoughtful human touches that reinforce the benefit of making a responsible travel choice by booking local and giving your money to a tourism operator in the Greater Port Macquarie Region, such as Tom’s Creek Nature Domes. The owners are still working on the property following the setbacks of COVID-19, and flooding in the region —a new series of Domes designed with families and groups in mind is under construction, along with an open-air, barn-style dining hall and garden stage. Once ready, the venue will be ideal for wedding celebrations, with wedding parties able to book out the property. They’ve already got one couple—who honeymooned at the Domes—ready and waiting. Just need to train up the llamas for ring-bearer duties! 

An abundance of favourite moments come to mind from my two-night stay at Tom’s Creek: sipping champagne and gourmet picnicking at the top of a hill on a giant swing under a tree, with a bird’s eye view of the entire property (the ‘Mountain Top picnic’ is a must-do activity add on during your stay), lying on a deckchair at night wrapped in a blanket gazing up at starry constellations and eating hot melted marshmallows, to revelling in the joys of travellers before me, scrawled on notes in a jar of wishes left by the telescope (you’re encouraged to write your own to add to the jar). But I’ll leave you with a gratitude journal entry I made while staying there. I will preface this by saying that I don’t actually keep a gratitude journal, but Tom’s Creek Nature Domes is just the kind of place that makes you want to start one. And so, waking up on my second morning at Tom’s —lacking any 4G bars to facilitate my bad habit of a morning Instagram scroll—I finally opened up a notebook and made my first journal entry:

‘I am grateful to wake up after a deep sleep and breathe in the biggest breaths of this clean air, purified by nature and scented with eucalyptus and rain. I am grateful for this steaming hot coffee brewed on a fire. I feel accomplished at having made myself. I am grateful for the skittish sheep that made me laugh as I enjoyed a long nature walk at dawn and the animated billy goats and friendly llamas overlooking my shoulder as I write this: agreeable company for any solo traveller. I’m grateful for total peace, absolute stillness.” 

Off-grid holiday status: unlocked.

Where: Tom’s Creek Nature Domes, Port Macquarie, 2001 Toms Creek Rd
Price: $450 per night, book at the Natura Domes website.

Get the latest from Thrillist Australia delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here.

Related

Our Best Stories, Delivered Daily
The best decision you'll make all day.