Croatia is, no doubt, one of the most popular summer destinations in 2026. Along with many tourist hotspots such as Dubrovnik or Split, it is home to some of the best hidden gems- places not many discover, but those who do are in for a treat. One of those is the Island of Ugljan. Located 20 minutes from the Dalmatian city of Zadar, it’s home to ancient olive groves, rich history, some of the nicest beaches in the Adriatic, and the first Hilton on the Croatian islands–Hotel Preko, Curio Collection by Hilton.
Settle Into Wood and Stone
Courtesy of Hotel Preko, Curio Collection by Hilton
Hotel Preko opened in 2025, and the group behind it, Hilton's Curio Collection, exists for hotels with a character of their own. This one earns the label. It sits low and easy along the harbour, built in wood and stone and washed in the greys and greens of the island, so that walking in feels like a continuation of the quay outside.
The same design instinct follows inside, through the rooms, lobbies, and carefully curated details of the rooms. They are calm and full of light, most turned toward the water, the marina or the red rooftops of the town, and the sea is a short walk from the door. The best touches sit at either end of the range. On the ground floor, a handful of rooms open straight onto their own gardens, and at the top the largest suites give you a hot tub on the balcony with the whole bay in front of it. You could spend a morning without leaving the room and count it well spent.
When you do come down, dinner is worth planning around. Terra, the hotel's restaurant, cooks Dalmatian food that changes with what the boats and the gardens bring in. The fish and shellfish are locally sourced. The vegetables and olive oil are grown on Ugljan and the islands around it. You eat under olive trees on the terrace with the harbour below, and the tuna carries a story of its own. It’s as local as it gets, with the hotel sourcing it from Kali, one of the best tuna farms in Croatia, located just down the coast. Cooking this close to the source is part of what earned the hotel its EU Ecolabel, the certification the European Union grants for measurable environmental performance.
Take to the Water
The hotel develops its offering year on year and this summer, the newest reason it stands out is the Garden Pool. Situated among the olive trees a few steps back from the sea, it has changed the rhythm of the place. The day now starts with a swim before the heat, drifts through the afternoon in the shade, and carries on at the pool bar into the evening, where the kitchen turns out Neapolitan pizza and Adriatic fish and the bar pours cold wine and cocktails for as long as anyone wants to stay.
When the sun has done its work, there is the spa, open all year, its treatments built around herbs grown on the island, with a sauna and a warm indoor pool for the months when the terrace empties out. That the hotel stays open through winter at all says something on a coast where most places lock their doors in October.
What the hotel does best, though, is hand you the island, and it has shaped that into a set of signature experiences the front desk will arrange and tailor to you. One puts you on an e-bike for the coast road that runs the length of Ugljan, past olive groves and the fishing towns of Kali and Kukljica. Another sends you out by boat to Telašćica, the nature park at the southern tip of Dugi Otok, where the vertical cliffs the locals call stene rise over 150 metres from the open sea and the salt lake Mir, whose name means peace, lies warm and buoyant behind them, the Kornati spread out just past the headland. Closer to home, a few minutes on the water reaches Galevac, a wooded islet off Preko with a Franciscan monastery and centuries-old gardens, and the Fort of St Michael on the ridge above town opens up the whole length of Ugljan, with Zadar glittering across the channel.
Return to Your Oasis
The real show, though, happens across the water. Twenty minutes off by ferry, Zadar's old town runs out to the Sea Organ, where the swell pushes sound through pipes set into the marble steps, and along the promenade where crowds gather each evening for the sunset Hitchcock rated, in 1964, the finest in the world, finer even than Key West.
The pleasure of staying in Preko is that you can be there for it and back on the terrace at Terra for a late dinner while the day-trippers are still queuing for the ferry home. That is the thing Hotel Preko has worked out. It gives you a polished, year-round base on an island that keeps its olive groves, its coves and its working harbour, and sets the best of the Dalmatian coast a short crossing away for whenever you want it. However far you range, the evening carries you back to your own quiet corner of the island, which is the whole reason to come.
