Naples in January is the reason people put up with Naples in August. Mid-seventies, no humidity, the Gulf flat and green, and a sunset every evening that empties the restaurants onto the sand for ten minutes.
That’s when the biggest resort on that stretch of beach reopens under a new name.
Naples Grande Beach Resort becomes Signia Hilton Naples Grande Beach Resort in January 2027, the first Signia on Florida’s Gulf Coast and the third in the state. Hilton announced the signing this week. Reservations are already live for stays starting January 1.
The property is 474 rooms, fifty of them villas, and it’s in the middle of the largest renovation in its almost forty years — rooms and suites redone, new restaurants, more wellness space, the public areas rebuilt. There’s a full spa, several pools, championship tennis courts, and three miles of beach out front. If you book early in the window, stays of three nights or more between January 15 and July 15 pick up 5,000 extra Honors points.
Here’s what makes the location work, and it has nothing to do with the renovation. The resort sits behind the mangrove forest at Clam Pass, which means you don’t walk straight out onto sand. You go through the mangroves first, on a boardwalk that runs through the trees with the water moving underneath, and there are trams if you’d rather ride. On the far side the beach opens up and the pass itself forms a shallow, slow-moving channel that locals float down like a lazy river. Manatees come through. Rays too. It’s the rare hotel beach that’s also a genuinely interesting piece of Florida.
Ten minutes north sits Waterside Shops on Tamiami Trail, which spent 2026 pulling itself apart and putting itself back together — the old department store footprint is being replaced with standalone rooms, Dior and Hermès among them. Behind it on Pelican Bay Boulevard is Artis—Naples, home of the Baker Museum and the Naples Philharmonic. The museum runs Art After Hours on the last Wednesday of every month, six to nine, free admission and live music. The orchestra’s 2026-27 season works through all nine Beethoven symphonies.
Now the eating, which is the actual reason to go anywhere.
Third Street South is the older, quieter of the two downtown strips, and it has the two best tables. Sea Salt at 1186 Third St. S. is the seafood room, open 11:30 to nine every day, with a patio that’s worth requesting. Order the grilled octopus and the branzino, and if there’s crab bisque on that day’s menu, get it. Across the street at 1177, Campiello does house-made pasta in a courtyard strung with lights. There’s a back room called the Club Room with its own bar, a jazz trio most nights, and a balsamic short rib that comes out alongside spaghetti. Ask for it when you book.
Fifth Avenue South is the busier strip, and Bar Tulia at 462 is the one to sit at. Dinner only, five to ten-thirty, small and dark and built like a side-street bar in Paris. The pizza is the order, truffle if you’re splurging, and the bar program is better than it needs to be. There’s a second Bar Tulia up at Mercato in North Naples that opens for lunch and runs a three-course deal in the afternoon.
For the meal you’ll actually remember, drive north to The Turtle Club at 9225 Gulf Shore Dr. Tables sit on the sand. Lunch runs eleven to two-thirty and dinner five to nine, and the whole point is to be there when the sun goes down. Trigger fish and butter fish when they have them, the shrimp and crab napoleon to start, apple pie after. They don’t take reservations for the sunset tables, so show up early and wait with a drink.
One more, and it’s the best value in the county. Naples Botanical Garden at 4820 Bayshore Dr. covers 170 acres of Brazilian, Caribbean and Asian plantings with a café inside. Summer hours run eight to two and it’s closed Tuesdays, so check before you drive. Go in the morning while it’s cool.
The beaches are the other reason to come, and they’re not interchangeable. Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park at 11135 Gulf Shore Dr. is the best of them, a mile of sugar sand with parking lots spaced along it so you’re never hauling gear far. Six dollars gets a whole car in. Rangers patrol it because of the turtle nests, there’s no fishing on the beach, and the far end near the pass is where the shelling is.
Barefoot Beach Preserve in Bonita Springs, twenty minutes north, is the wild one — two miles of undeveloped shoreline reached by a palm-lined drive past some absurd houses, then a walk of about three quarters of a mile through the trees from the lot. Eight to six, ten dollars, card only. No food, no drinks, no alcohol, so pack in what you need. Gopher tortoises live in the dunes.
Closer to the resort, Vanderbilt Beach is wide, flat and family-friendly with sandbars that let you wade a long way out. There’s a parking garage a couple hundred feet off the sand, ten dollars for the day, which in this county is a luxury. No lifeguards. Umbrella rentals sell out by mid-morning in season.
And Lowdermilk Park at 1301 Gulf Shore Blvd. N. is the one with everything — gazebos, a grassy field, a snack shack, clean restrooms and outdoor showers. Open five in the morning to eleven at night, which makes it the sunrise option as well as the sunset one. Parking fills by mid-morning.
Inland, two things are worth the drive. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on Sanctuary Road is an Audubon preserve holding one of the last old-growth bald cypress forests in Florida, with a two-mile boardwalk through it. Open eight to one, around seventeen dollars, and you’ll want ninety minutes to two hours. Wear long sleeves and long pants, because the bugs are not theoretical. Alligators, limpkins, herons, hawks.
And Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens on Goodlette-Frank is better than a small-city zoo has any right to be, built inside a 1919 botanical garden. Admission includes a boat ride around islands where the primates live, which is the part kids talk about afterward. Eight to three daily.
One thing to know before you plan around it. The Naples Pier is closed. Hurricane Ian took out a large section in 2022, the city broke ground on a full rebuild in January of this year, and the work runs about eighteen months, which puts reopening somewhere around the middle of 2027. Every travel guide still runs a photo of it. The beach underneath is open and the sunset is unchanged, but the pier itself is a fenced construction site, and it will probably still be one when the resort reopens.
Book the room, take the boardwalk through the mangroves, eat on the sand at the Turtle Club at least once, and don’t drive down to the pier expecting to walk out over the water.
