Txai Itacaré

History

Txai was born in 2000, when RFMi — a São Paulo-based builder and developer founded in 1979 — opened in Itacarezinho a product the Brazilian market didn’t yet have: a low-density resort that was, at the same time, a residential development. The formula, inspired by international models, combined hospitality with privately owned houses on the same site, and earned the company the Prêmio Master Imobiliário — in 2004, specifically for Txai Residences.

The hotel operation changed hands and came back. In 2009, the merger of Invest Tur with LA Hotels created Brazil Hospitality Group, which acquired Txai Resorts; in 2011 Txai began operating independently; and in 2015, with GTIS Partners entering BHG, RFMi reacquired Txai Resorts, which today remains the group’s hospitality arm. The brand is the same since its founding and turned 25 in 2025.

The third chapter is that of recognition. In 2013 Txai earned the international Relais & Châteaux seal, the association founded in 1954 that brings together just under six hundred independently owned hotels and restaurants worldwide. Before that, it had already received the “Best Waterside Hotel” from Condé Nast Johansens and the Environment Trophy from Relais & Châteaux itself.

• Concept: the luxury of simplicity — lightweight architecture in native materials, very low density and hotel-level service extended to the private residences.
• Curiosities: the Instituto Companheiros do Txai, created in 2001, arose from a concrete problem: the creation of the Environmental Protection Area stopped neighbouring families from continuing to log timber, at a time when the cacao crisis had already brought down the Costa do Cacau’s main activity. The institute began providing structure and training for sustainable farming and paying a monthly Environmental Service Compensation to producers; the organic produce supplies the hotel and is sold at the Itacaré market. There is also Txaitaruga, a project monitoring turtle nests on the beach, in partnership with UESC, which has already tracked the hatching of more than 120,000 hatchlings.

Architecture and aesthetics

Txai’s language is a choice of material before it is a choice of form. The structures are light, inspired by Indonesian architecture, and use native materials — piaçava palm fibre and dendê palm thatch — on the roofs and cladding, so that the building ages in the colour of the forest rather than contrasting with it. The architecture and interiors project of the original development is credited by RFMi to the firm Seragini Farnéi, and the landscaping to Marcelo Novaesi. The layout is the second gesture: instead of concentrating volume along the shoreline, the development spreads across the hillside and the coconut groves, with the spa at the top of the hill — from where there is the resort’s most open view — and the accommodations and residences distributed between forest and sand. The private residences and villas follow the same vocabulary, with individual authorship not publicly documented and, for that reason, not attributed here.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: not a tower. There are three residential condominiums connected to the hotel’s leisure area — Txai Residences, Txai Vilas do Sul and Txai Vilas do Norte — alongside the 38 accommodations of the hotel operation (bungalows and apartments).
• Floor areas: the original development delivered by RFMi had units of 100 and 200 m², with one and two bedrooms; the residences and villas built afterwards are larger and have no unit type declared in an official source.
• Parking spaces: not declared by the development.
• Structural differentiators: 92 hectares of native forest preserved by the resort, within an Atlantic Forest Environmental Protection Area; three kilometres of beach set back from the road by extensive coconut plantations; a licensed helipad; hotel and beach service extended to the condominiums; Spa Shamash, at the top of the hill.
• Registration and parameters: development on the southern coast of Bahia, outside the scope of urban planning parameters of the São Paulo survey. Registry jurisdiction not confirmed by source — the field is left blank.

Leisure and facilities

• Spa Shamash, at the top of the hill, with rituals from local tradition
• Pools and children’s pool
• Beach service
• Resort restaurants
• Tennis court
• Massage room
• Games room
• Trails and tours through the Atlantic Forest and cacao farms
• Licensed helipad

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Access

• By land: Rodovia Ilhéus–Itacaré (BA-001), km 48.
• By air: the nearest airport is Ilhéus, according to Txai itself; there is a licensed helipad at the resort.

Itacaré: the address

Itacaréi is a small town in southern Bahia, on the Costa do Cacau, which the literature of Jorge Amado put on the map before tourism did. Contemporary fame began in the 1980s, when surfers “discovered” the beaches and spread the name across the country; today the cobblestone streets and colonial houses coexist with art studios, capoeira circles and a cuisine ranging from traditional seafood to international fare. What preserved the landscape was the creation of the Environmental Protection Area covering the region: it is what keeps the shoreline from becoming a wall of buildings and keeps the Atlantic Forest running down to the sand. Itacarezinho, where Txai is located, is the most secluded beach on this stretch — separated from the BA-001 by kilometres of coconut grove, with white sand and no neighbour in sight. The honest trade-off for this seclusion is distance: Ilhéus airport is not next door, and the road, though good, is long. Whoever buys here buys the isolation — including its price.