Montage Palmetto Bluff Resort, Bluffton SC

• Rating: Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star
• Rooms: about 200 rooms, suites and cottages
• Spa: Spa Montage, 13,000 square feet
• Pools: three, one of them adults-only
• Formerly: The Inn at Palmetto Bluff (until 2016)

Montage Palmetto Bluff is the resort inside Palmetto Bluff, the 20,000-acre community on the May River at the south end of Bluffton, South Carolina. It sits in Wilson Village, and its guests get the run of the place: the river and the marina, miles of trails, the racquet club, and golf at May River. It is the Palmetto Bluff hotel, and the only one; when people talk about the Palmetto Bluff resort, this is what they mean.

Montage Palmetto Bluff is often searched as a Hilton Head resort, but it is on the mainland in Bluffton: from the island, cross the bridges on US 278 and head south through town. Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport is about 35 minutes away.

Montage Palmetto Bluff Reviews

Forbes Travel Guide rates Montage Palmetto Bluff Five-Star; when it earned the rating in 2021 it was only the second Five-Star hotel in South Carolina. Its Google rating and our summary of the reviews are at the top of this page.

Reading the recent reviews, guests praise the staff above all: warm, attentive service from the front door to the spa, with small touches in the rooms. The grounds and the river views come up in nearly every review, and families say there is plenty for children to do. River House and the spa get singled out. The complaints are about the details a Five-Star price makes people notice: one returning guest found a room that needed maintenance and construction noise at the pool, others found bars and restaurants closed for private events, and one diner found the Octagon not worth the price.

Montage Palmetto Bluff Rooms, Cottages and Rates

There are about 200 rooms, suites and cottages. The rooms and suites are in the inn and its guest houses, closest to the pools, spa and restaurants. The cottages stand on their own along the river and the lagoons, with screened porches and gas fireplaces, and the River View cottages have the best of the water. For a family or a group, Montage also rents whole homes of up to five bedrooms in Wilson and Moreland villages.

Montage Palmetto Bluff prices move with the season and the room type. The listings we checked on booking sites put quiet-season nights for a standard room from about $430 to $550 before taxes and fees, and suites and cottages cost more. Book on the resort’s own site for its current rates and packages.

Spa Montage Palmetto Bluff

Spa Montage, the brand’s spa at each of its resorts, fills 13,000 square feet here, with treatment rooms, a salon, saunas and hot tubs. It is also the Palmetto Bluff spa, since the community has no other. Forbes names organic facials and warm-stone massages among its treatments.

Montage Palmetto Bluff Restaurants

River House is the signature restaurant, on the river, with steaks, seafood and game and a wine cellar of more than 2,500 labels. Octagon does modern Carolina cooking and cocktails such as its barrel-aged Artillery Punch. Fore & Aft is the casual spot by the inn’s pool, with tacos and salads, and Buzz is the coffee and pastry bar. Hush is a speakeasy below River House.

The rest of Palmetto Bluff’s dining belongs to the community: Buffalos in Wilson Village and the Canteen in Moreland Village are open to the public, and the Canoe Club and Cole’s are for club members.

Montage Palmetto Bluff Golf

Hotel guests can play May River, the Jack Nicklaus course, and Montage lists limited guest play at Crossroads, the nine-hole King-Collins course. The third course, Anson Point, is for members. Our Palmetto Bluff golf page compares the three.

Planning a Montage Palmetto Bluff Wedding

Ceremonies are held in Somerset Chapel, which seats up to 185, or in the small community chapel in Wilson Village, and receptions go on the Village Green by the ruins of the Wilson mansion or in the ballroom. Justin and Hailey Bieber married here in September 2019: the ceremony in Somerset Chapel, the reception in the Wilson Ballroom. The resort’s weddings team books the venues.

From the Inn at Palmetto Bluff to Montage

The resort opened as the Inn at Palmetto Bluff, a small inn of about 50 cottages and rooms run by Auberge Resorts, and many people still call it the Palmetto Bluff Inn. Montage Hotels & Resorts took it over in December 2013 and renamed it Montage Palmetto Bluff in January 2016, and by the fall of 2016 an expansion had added about 150 rooms, a new main building for the spa, restaurants, library and pools, and Somerset Chapel. Some older guides and reviews still list it as The Inn at Palmetto Bluff.

Things to Do at the Resort

Guests borrow bicycles for the trails, and the Wilson Lawn & Racquet Club has eight tennis courts, six pickleball courts and two croquet lawns. From the marina there are dolphin tours, fishing and sunset cruises on the May River, and the community’s stables, shooting grounds and nature programmes are close by. Our Palmetto Bluff guide covers the rest, including the trips visitors can book without staying.