From Cherating to Sabah, Malaysia’s Next Club Med Chapter is Finally Here
For many Malaysians, their first Club Med experience started in Cherating. And for most of them, it never really ended there either.
When you talk to them, there’s a type. The ones who did their first family holiday at Cherating and never really got over it. The ones who grew up learning to sail, to trapeze, to shoot archery — and who still talk about it decades later like it happened yesterday. The ones who started as guests, loved it so much they ended up working there, and somehow loved it even more from the inside. Club Med has a way of doing that to people.
Image Credit: Club Med Borneo
For Malaysia, that story has always started and ended in one place: Club Med Cherating. Sitting on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, Cherating has been the country’s Club Med home for longer than most of its regulars care to count. Generations of Malaysian families have passed through those gates. Friendships have been made, relationships have started, skills have been picked up and quietly carried into adulthood. Cherating isn’t just a resort. For a lot of people, it’s a memory they keep going back to.
Which is exactly why, for years, the question has resurfaced — whether from employees who worked there and came from overseas, or Malaysians who visited time and again: when and where is Club Med going to do this again in Malaysia?
The answer, it turns out, is Borneo.
Image Credit: Club Med Borneo
If Cherating Introduced Malaysia to Club Med, Borneo is the Chapter That Takes It Somewhere Entirely New
Borneo operates on a different level. Known for its ancient rainforests, wildlife that exists nowhere else on earth, and coastlines that still feel genuinely untouched — it’s cinematic in a way that’s hard to manufacture. Hornbills crossing the sky. The South China Sea stretching wide and open. Towering jungle pressing right up to the water’s edge.
Club Med Borneo sits along the shores of Kuala Penyu, about two hours from Kota Kinabalu International Airport — far enough from the city that the shift in pace hits you the moment you step out of the car. And unlike a lot of international resorts that arrive somewhere and impose something generic onto it, this one actually feels like it belongs. The design draws from traditional Rungus longhouses — timber structures, open pavilions, architecture rooted in the region. Waterfalls and dense greenery frame the buildings. By night, moonlight catches the timber and clay textures, and the whole place feels alive in a way that reminds you exactly where you are.
Image Credit: Club Med Borneo
What Club Med Actually Is
Here’s what gets lost when people talk about Club Med purely as a beach holiday destination: it was never just that. The whole thing was built around the idea that a holiday should leave you feeling like you’ve actually done something. Learned something. Picked up a skill you didn’t have when you arrived. And we truly believe in that. Every Club Med we’ve been to around the world, we’ve learned a new sport, from padel to archery and even the basics of sailing. From the very beginnin, from Cherating, from every Club Med property around the world, the sports and activities have been as central to the experience as the food, the accommodation, the entertainment, and the people that make it Club Med.
And at Club Med Borneo, the surroundings take that to a whole new level.
Water sports, land activities, guided excursions into ecosystems most people only read about. The resort sits beside a mangrove reserve, and the activities reflect that. This isn’t a place that points you at a sun lounger and calls it a day. It hands you a paddle, a surfboard, or a snorkel, and lets Borneo do the rest. Whether you’re picking up something completely new or going deeper into something you already love, that’s always been the Club Med way. You leave having actually done things. And that’s the part that’s hard to explain until you’ve lived it.
Image Credit: Club Med Borneo
INSIDE THE RESORT
400 rooms across the property, including 39 Exclusive Collection Suites for those after something more intimate and private. The Mutiara Exclusive Collection area works almost as a resort within the resort with a private lounge, dedicated pool, and the Bayu Bar, designed for a slower, more intimate pace away from the main social energy.
And the main energy? Very much intact. The infinity pool stretches toward the horizon. A splash park keeps families well occupied. Come evening, the theatre takes over with live shows, circus-style acts, the kind of entertainment that keeps adults just as engaged as the kids.
The main restaurant, The Alam, breaks the buffet into four distinct zones. International dishes alongside regional flavours rooted in Sabah’s culinary traditions. The Laut offers something more refined. And The Pasir is where the night actually begins — cocktails, good energy, the kind of spot where you look up and it’s somehow already midnight.
Image Credit: Club Med Borneo
BEYOND THE GATES
Beyond the resort, Borneo has so much to offer and Club Med Borneo makes exploring it easy. The Mari-Mari Cultural Village offers a genuine look into the traditions of Sabah’s indigenous communities. Kota Kinabalu has markets and temples worth getting lost in. Pulau Tiga has snorkelling and a mud volcano trek. River safaris through Sabah’s wetlands put you face to face with hornbills and proboscis monkeys in a way that stays with you long after you’ve left.
The resort is also on track to become Club Med’s first large-scale BREEAM-certified beach resort in the Asia Pacific region. For a destination as extraordinary as Borneo, that matters, and it says something about how seriously they’re approaching this one.
From the guests who grew up at Cherating to those who have visited numerous Club Meds around the world — this opening means something. It’s not just a new property. It’s the next chapter of a story that started on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia and has been asking for more ever since.
Borneo is the answer. And if it carries even half the magic that Cherating has given generations of Malaysians, we already know it’s going to be worth the wait.
Reservations open 24 March 2026. Club Med Borneo opens November 2026.
Find out more about Club Med Borneo
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