North Island, a Luxury Collection Resort
North Island is where the concept of the private island resort reaches its absolute conclusion. Eleven villas. Twenty-two guests maximum. No locks on any villa door. No clocks visible anywhere on the island. A staff-to-guest ratio of approximately ten to one. This is where Prince William and Catherine Middleton spent their honeymoon in 2011, and it is not difficult to understand why. the combination of complete privacy, extraordinary natural beauty and a conservation programme that has transformed a degraded island into one of the Indian Ocean's finest examples of ecological restoration creates an experience unlike any other in global luxury travel. The villa design. open-air, thatched, with furniture crafted from reclaimed timber and granite boulders incorporated into the architecture. is deliberately impermanent in feeling, as if the buildings exist at the sufferance of the island rather than imposed upon it. The beaches, restored from near-total degradation through a 20-year conservation programme that has reintroduced the Aldabra tortoise, the Seychelles magpie-robin and dozens of endemic plant species, are now among the most pristine in the Indian Ocean. The chef cooks for you, not for a restaurant. whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever on the island you want it.
