Pull up the Oyom Hotel & Spa page on Kaiya Beach Resort's own website and you will find two lines doing a lot of quiet work. The first says the hotel is opening soon. The second says the opening date is still to be announced. Neither line is a placeholder that someone forgot to update. It has read this way through a construction update, a national hospitality feature, and at least one guest asking on Tripadvisor when the promised restaurant would finally seat a table.
That single detail is the thesis of this piece. Kaiya opened as a residential resort in 2024 on a 32-acre former peach farm along Scenic Highway 30A in Inlet Beach. A Hotel Online feature published in March 2026 traced the project back further still, noting that construction had begun about five years earlier, meaning ground broke a few years before the doors ever opened. Two years after that opening, the number that still has not moved is the one that actually determines what you are buying: the completion date on the hospitality wing the whole community is built around.
The Piece That's Still Missing
Kaiya's own site describes Oyom as a 30-suite sanctuary with a farm-to-table restaurant, a courtyard pool, a rooftop terrace with a pool and ocean views, a spa, and a fitness center. A March 2026 feature on Hotel Online, drawn from Times-Picayune reporting, described the same expansion as a 40-suite hotel with a 4,000-square-foot spa and fitness center. That is not a small rounding difference. The suite count grew by a third between the community's own page and a national trade outlet's description of the same building, and no public update has reconciled the two.
That gap is not a red flag on its own. New-development amenity programs shift in scope while they are being designed and permitted. But it is a useful signal for anyone comparing brochure language to what actually gets built. A number that grows by a third without an accompanying announcement tells you the plan is still being drawn, not delivered.
What You Can Actually Use Today
Strip away the pending hotel and Kaiya's current amenity roster is shorter, but it is real and operating. The Kaiya Beach House anchors 250 feet of private beach with an infinity pool and beach service for Kaiya Club members. Omaire Gallery, led by creative director Terry Slaughter, shows contemporary classicism work, from paintings to marble sculpture, in a space Slaughter has described as closer to a museum than a retail gallery. Thisday Café handles coffee, pastries, smoothies, and light fare through the day. According to the resort's own FAQ, there is currently no separate on-site fitness center in operation. Yoga and private training are arranged through concierge instead, which is a workaround, not a finished amenity.
A guest-facing update on Kaiya's Tripadvisor page also surfaced a name for the still-pending restaurant: Lamuse D'or, described as opening soon, alongside a note that new guest programming is being developed for 2027. That detail matters because it moves the community's own internal horizon past the "this year" language used in the spring 2026 hotel coverage. The timeline is not just unannounced. It has already slipped once in the telling.
The Paperwork That Matters More Than the Rendering
None of this changes whether you can close on a residence at Kaiya today. What it changes is what you should be reading before you do.
Florida Statute 718.503 governs sales of condominium units before construction is complete, and it is worth knowing in plain terms rather than trusting a summary. The statute requires that complete plans and specifications for the unit and common elements be available for a buyer's inspection when a residential condominium parcel is sold before completion. It also generally gives buyers a 15-day period after signing and receiving the required disclosure documents to void the contract, and a fresh 15-day window if a later amendment materially and adversely changes the offering.
At a community where the hospitality wing anchoring the resort still carries no delivery date, that disclosure package is the actual contract for what you are purchasing, not the renderings on the website. If the hotel, spa, and restaurant are part of what you were told you were buying into, ask whether any of that is captured in a recorded document or whether it lives entirely in marketing copy that can change without triggering your voidability window.
Pricing already reflects a finished-resort expectation. Strand Villas on Kaiya's ownership page run from 4 bedrooms and 3,618 square feet priced from $8 million to $11.5 million. Based on twelve months of closed sales reported through mid-2026, average pricing across the community has run roughly $1,335 per square foot on closed sales and up to $1,585 per square foot on current listings, with only about seven properties changing hands in that period. That is buy-and-hold pricing in a low-volume market, which raises the stakes on knowing exactly what is contractually guaranteed versus what is still aspirational.
Measuring Kaiya Against Its Neighbors
Kaiya sits at 25 Kaiya Ave, directly west of Rosemary Beach and next door to Alys Beach, both of which have decades of built-out town center, retail, and dining already operating at street level. Kaiya's architecture comes from Khoury-Vogt Architects, the same firm behind Alys Beach's white masonry and courtyard language, with master planning by PLACE Alliance. The design pedigree is comparable to its established neighbors. The built-out hospitality program is not there yet, and that is simply where a two-year-old resort sits relative to communities with a longer runway.
That gap closes with time, and it is not a criticism of the vision Romair has described. His stated goal was a lower-density, wellness-oriented alternative to busier stretches of the Gulf Coast, and the residences, gallery, and beach house already reflect that. The honest way to evaluate Kaiya today is to separate what is finished from what is still in progress, and to price your expectations accordingly rather than assuming the hotel photos on the website represent something you can walk into this season.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
- Request the current, dated disclosure package rather than relying on the public marketing site, since only the former carries legal weight under Florida Statute 718.503.
- Ask whether any amendment has been filed since your initial disclosure, and if so, what changed and whether it reopens your voidability window.
- Ask for a written explanation if you notice a discrepancy between reported specifications, such as the 30-suite versus 40-suite descriptions of Oyom.
- Ask which amenities are guaranteed at closing under recorded documents versus promised for a future phase with no delivery date.
- Ask what recourse, if any, exists if the hospitality wing's completion slips beyond the timeline discussed at the time you signed.
A Few Common Questions
Is Kaiya a place to live full time, or mostly a second-home and rental community? Nothing in the governing structure prohibits full-time residency, but the market behaves like a buy-and-hold, second-home environment right now, with only about seven closed sales in the trailing twelve months reported through mid-2026 and pricing well above typical primary-residence ranges on 30A.
Does the unfinished hotel affect whether I can close on a residence today? No. Closing depends on the residence itself and the documents governing your specific unit. The open question is whether any hospitality amenity you were told about is part of that legal package or lives only in marketing language that can change.
Will Kaiya's amenity timeline end up looking like Alys Beach's? The two communities share an architecture firm, but each rollout is its own. Judge Kaiya by its current disclosure documents and construction status rather than by comparison to a neighbor with a longer operating history.
If you are weighing a purchase at Kaiya against other options on the east end of 30A, from Rosemary Beach to Alys Beach to Seacrest Beach, the conversation should start with what is actually recorded, not what is rendered. The Tanika O'Brien Group works with buyers through exactly this kind of new-development paperwork every week, matching what a community promises against what its documents actually guarantee. Search All Homes on our site to see current inventory across Kaiya and the surrounding 30A communities, and reach out when you are ready to look at the disclosure package together.
