Aman Resorts will open a secluded ranch retreat in Texas within the next eighteen months, marking the brand's first deliberate pivot into regional U.S. properties outside coastal gateway cities. The move follows a $500 million joint venture with South Korea's Shinsegae Group announced earlier this year, intended to accelerate Aman's global footprint from 35 properties to 50 by 2027. Separately, Sonu Shivdasani—founder of Soneva and the original architect of Aman's barefoot-luxury DNA—will open a luxury farm resort in Japan next month, his first property in Northeast Asia since exiting Aman in 1998.
The Texas property will occupy a working ranch, location undisclosed, with fewer than 30 keys and pricing expected north of $2,000 per night. Aman has historically avoided tertiary U.S. markets, preferring Manhattan penthouses and Malibu cliffsides. The shift suggests a calculation: post-2021, American allocators—family offices, in particular—demonstrated willingness to pay gateway-market rates for properties within three hours' drive of home bases, provided the scarcity signal held. Texas offers ranch scale, helicopter accessibility from Dallas and Houston, and a regulatory environment friendlier to private-aviation infrastructure than California or New York. Aman's CEO, Vlad Doronin, has spent the past two years raising capital to scale the brand without diluting per-key revenue, which averages $1,800 globally. The ranch model—low density, high ADR, minimal staff relative to urban flagships—fits that mandate.
Shivdasani's Japan property, meanwhile, returns to his original thesis: that the ultrawealthy will pay for agricultural theatre if it is staged with precision. The resort will occupy a 40-acre organic farm in a mountainous prefecture, exact location undisclosed, with 12 suites and a working kitchen sourcing from on-site vegetables, rice paddies, and livestock. Soneva already operates two farm-forward properties—one in the Maldives, one in Thailand—but this is the first cold-climate iteration. Japan's inbound tourism remains 23% below 2019 levels, yet private bookings from Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern family offices have recovered to 140% of pre-pandemic spend, according to third-quarter data from luxury-villa aggregator Virtuoso. Shivdasani is betting that scarcity—both in supply and cultural access—will command rates near $3,500 per night despite the absence of ocean views.
The divergence between Aman and Soneva is instructive. Aman, now backed by institutional capital and Doronin's development machinery, is moving toward real-estate-led expansion: branded residences, urban flagships, and properties that generate ancillary revenue through sales, not just nightly rates. Soneva remains a two-property brand controlled entirely by Shivdasani, who has resisted scale in favor of margin. The Texas ranch and Japan farm represent two answers to the same question: how do you sell scarcity when the ultrawealthy can buy access to almost anything? Aman's answer is proximity and infrastructure. Soneva's is isolation and narrative.
Operators should track permitting activity in West Texas and Montana, where Aman has quietly toured ranch properties over the past six months, according to three hospitality advisors with knowledge of the discussions. If the Texas property performs—defined as 85% occupancy at ADRs above $2,200—expect Aman to announce a second U.S. ranch within twelve months. For Shivdasani's Japan property, the tell will be whether he secures a second cold-climate site within two years. Soneva has historically moved slowly, but the Japan opening comes just 18 months after announcement, faster than the brand's Maldives and Thailand expansions, which each took three years from land acquisition to first guest.
The agrarian turn in ultraluxury hospitality is not aesthetic. It is operational. Farms and ranches offer defensible moats—land scale, zoning restrictions, agricultural tax advantages—that urban and coastal properties cannot replicate. The question is whether allocators will follow.
The takeaway
Aman's Texas ranch and Soneva's Japan farm test whether agrarian scarcity can command gateway-market rates in tertiary locations.
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