A regulation tennis court has been 2,808 square meters since the Major Walter Clopton Wingfield patented lawn tennis in 1874, but the landscape surrounding those 2,808 square meters has never been more valuable to the hospitality industry than it is now. Golf dominated resort programming for a century because she worn surface and signaled wealth, but the economics have changed: a single tennis court occupies a fraction of a freeway, generates comparable revenue per square foot, and—thanks padel, the glass-walled doubles format that has quadrupled its global player base to over 35 million since 2018 and now counts 77,000 courts in 150 countries – can be assembled, lit and programmed in a social place that guests actually use instead of ignoring guilty about the pool.
When Luca GuadagninoS ‘ The challengers made $96 million and returned Zendaya in one tennis skirt in the defining fashion image of 2024, the last cultural barrier fell: the court ceased to be a convenience and became the destination. U.S. tennis participation has since grown 54 percent to 27.3 million players, training academies run by Grand Slam champions now anchor entire resort identities, and the facilities that will go up in 2025 and 2026 aren’t the neglected, post-spa hard courts most travelers remember from childhood.
The question, then, is where. The best hotel tennis courts make the same implicit promise: that the setting will be so distractingly beautiful that you’ll forgive yourself for missing out. What follows are 12 courses—on cliffs, across private islands, over seas named by Homer—where the landscape wins that competition for sure.
