The model has become so popular, in fact, that brands beyond hotels are also attaching their luxury images to residential developments. The Italian jeweler Bulgari now offers residences in London and Dubai. French crystal maker Baccarat operates 60 homes in its Manhattan hotel. Fashion house Fendi is developing 41 Fendi Private Residences in Scottsdale, Ariz. At the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., residents can park their cars next to their apartments — even on the 50th floor. And just a few blocks away, 260 luxury residences are nearing completion in the 60-story Armani Casa tower.

All that comes at a price.

“If you have two developments sitting side by side and one has a recognizable global brand, it sells a bit faster, and at a premium,” said Rod Taylor, director of international residential developments for Savills London. “People are buying a brand they recognize. If they don’t know a town or a city very well, but they see a Four Seasons or a Mandarin, it gives them that warm, comfy feeling that they can actually go ahead and buy.”

Simon Jacobs, an investor from Manhattan, long considered buying a vacation home in the Caribbean, but he didn’t know where. He was after something with a beachfront, and that was reachable via nonstop flight. “I didn’t want to have to deal with any of the issues,” he said.

After checking out possibilities in Anguilla, St. Barts, Barbados, and Turks and Caicos, Mr. Jacobs, 58, his wife Eliana and their two daughters found their dream island home during a Christmas 2015 stay at Sugar Beach, A Viceroy Resort, which is built on an old sugar plantation on St. Lucia and offers privately owned, one- to four-bedroom residences.

Image The 60-story Porsche Design Tower opened in 2017 in Sunny Isles, Fla., with 132 residential units. Credit... John Parra/Getty Images for Porsche Design

“These new residences they were building were right on the beach and there weren’t dozens of them,” Mr. Jacobs said. They were set between the Piton mountains and the Caribbean Sea, and he had “never seen anything that was that beautiful.” They could also be rented out through the Viceroy hotel system when the family wasn’t there.

That May, he paid about $8.25 million for one of the hotel’s five new contemporary beachfront residences, personalizing the 4,200-square-foot house with a double-height living and dining room, a media room and a closet to store snorkeling gear. Since the house was completed a year ago, the Jacobses, who also have a weekend home in Connecticut and summer in Europe, have only been there a few times.