Luxury Stays in Pembrokeshire: What the Word Means Here, and Where to Look

"Luxury" is the most overused word in holiday lettings, and in Pembrokeshire it covers everything from a barn with a hot tub on a farm to a glass-fronted house on the cliffs above Whitesands. This guide is about reading it properly. We list the cottages that carry the tag on our luxury stays page; this is how to tell which kind you're looking at, and where the properly high-end places are.

What to check before you believe it

The photographs, not the adjectives. A listing that shows the view from the bed and the kitchen in daylight is confident. One that leads with the hot tub at night is telling you where the money went.

Sea view or sea glimpse. "Sea views" from an upstairs window across a field is common on the coast. The listing should say which rooms and whether you'd notice from the sofa. Our sea-view page shows the ones we've checked the provider's own text for.

Hot tub: private or shared. Some of the county's hot-tub stays are on sites where the tub is booked by the hour and shared between units. That's fine if you know; it isn't luxury if you didn't. The hot-tub guide covers it.

Parking, gate, privacy. High-end rural stays are often up a shared farm track with the owners next door. Ask.

Where the high-end stays cluster

Tenby's seafront. The Esplanade and the streets above South Beach have the county's most expensive apartments — big Victorian rooms with the Caldey view — and the hotels to match. See where to stay in Tenby.

The St Davids peninsula. Converted farms and architect-designed houses around Whitesands, Caerfai and towards St Justinian's, where the view is the point and the price follows. The hotel version is Twr y Felin or Warpool Court — see where to stay in St Davids.

Newport and the north coast. Newport has become the county's quiet-money village: restored townhouses, the East Street restaurants with rooms, and houses on the Parrog looking down the estuary.

The Cleddau estates. Inland, the old estates on the Cleddau — Slebech Park is the hotel version — and the country houses around Narberth, where the Grove sets the standard for the county.

Around Stackpole and Manorbier. Big houses near Barafundle and the Castlemartin coast, and at Penally Abbey outside Tenby.

The hotel alternative

For a weekend rather than a week, the country-house hotels do luxury with less admin than a cottage: the Grove, Twr y Felin, Warpool Court, St Brides Spa Hotel above Saundersfoot harbour, Penally Abbey, Lamphey Hall near Pembroke and Wolfscastle Country Hotel in the middle of the county. Our hotels guide has the full geography. For a couple, the romantic breaks guide is the other half of this one.

The honest bit

We haven't stayed in any of these and nothing here is a rating. The cottages on our luxury page are there because the provider's own listing says so and we've read it; the hotels are from open data with websites where the map has them. Nobody pays to appear in this guide. The Booking.com searches on the hotel lists are paid links and say so.