Rancho La Puerta, the sprawling wellness resort in Tecate, Baja California, has been named the world’s best wellness retreat in Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Awards. The ranking, compiled from thousands of reader votes, places the 85-year-old property at the top of a global field. It is the latest in a string of top honors for a resort that has operated continuously since 1940, making it one of the oldest destination spas in North America.
Rancho La Puerta Has Drawn Wellness Travelers to Tecate Since 1940
Edmond and Deborah Szekely founded Rancho La Puerta in 1940 as a modest health camp at the base of Mount Kuchumaa, a 3,885-foot peak sacred to the Kumeyaay people. Guests in those early years paid $17.50 per week and slept in tents. The Szekelys built the program around outdoor exercise, organic food, and what they called “the wholeness of life,” a philosophy drawn from European naturopathy and the natural landscape of the Tecate Valley.
Over the decades, the property grew into a 4,000-acre resort with more than 80 casitas, a six-acre organic farm called Tres Estrellas, multiple gyms and studios, a cooking school, and a network of mountain hiking trails. Weekly rates now start above $5,000. The resort operates on a Saturday-to-Saturday schedule, accepting a limited number of guests each week. It has won top rankings from Condé Nast Traveler, SpaFinder, and Travel + Leisure multiple times since the 1990s.
Deborah Szekely, now 103 years old, remains connected to the property as its founder emeritus. Her son, Alex Szekely, has overseen operations in recent years. The resort employs hundreds of local workers from Tecate, a city of roughly 115,000 people that sits directly on the U.S. border about 35 miles east of Tijuana.
Zadun Los Cabos Ranked Third in Mexico, 31st Globally
Rancho La Puerta was not the only Baja property to earn recognition. Zadun, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in San José del Cabo, placed as Mexico’s third-best resort and 31st in the world. Zadun opened in 2019 along the East Cape corridor between San José del Cabo and the town of East Cape. The Reserve designation is Ritz-Carlton’s highest tier, and Zadun was the brand’s first Reserve property in Mexico.
The property features 115 suites with architecture designed to blend indoor and outdoor spaces. Room rates during peak season regularly exceed $2,000 per night. Zadun’s recognition in the Travel + Leisure rankings arrives as the East Cape corridor continues to attract luxury development. Several new residential and hotel projects are under construction or in planning stages along the Transpeninsular Highway east of San José del Cabo.
Two Baja properties landing in the same year’s rankings is unusual. The peninsula’s tourism identity has long centered on Los Cabos beach resorts and Baja wine country in the Valle de Guadalupe. Tecate, by contrast, draws a quieter stream of visitors, many of them wellness-focused travelers crossing the border from San Diego County. The Tecate port of entry typically has shorter wait times than the crossings at Tijuana and Otay Mesa, often under 30 minutes for passenger vehicles.
Tecate’s Economy Relies Heavily on Cross-Border Tourism
Tecate’s local economy has historically depended on manufacturing and the Tecate brewery, which has operated in the city center since 1944. Tourism has played a smaller but growing role. Rancho La Puerta is the single largest tourism employer in the municipality, and its guests spend money at local restaurants, shops, and the craft beer taprooms that have opened along Tecate’s main commercial streets in recent years.
The city’s tourism office has promoted Tecate as a “Pueblo Mágico” destination since Mexico’s federal tourism ministry granted the designation in 2018. That program provides marketing support and small infrastructure grants to participating towns. But the designation has not yet transformed Tecate into a major tourist draw on the scale of Valle de Guadalupe, which sits about 20 miles to the west and attracts an estimated 500,000 visitors per year.
A world No. 1 ranking from Travel + Leisure reaches millions of readers. The magazine’s print and digital audience exceeds 10 million, according to the publisher’s media kit. For Tecate, that exposure arrives ahead of the fall and winter travel season, when Rancho La Puerta’s bookings typically peak.
The Four Seasons Resort Tamarindo in Jalisco’s Costalegre region took the No. 1 overall resort ranking in Mexico, while San Miguel de Allende again claimed the title of best city in the world. Travel + Leisure published the full 2026 World’s Best Awards rankings in August, as first reported by Mexico News Daily.