Unpacking for good: a kitchen for long stays

A ten-day stay is not lived like a three-week one. After a certain point the room shrinks, the evening buffet repeats itself, and one catches oneself wanting to buy fruit at the market, make breakfast at one’s own hour, set a laptop on a proper table.

Mauritius has a few houses designed for exactly that: an apartment residence, apart-hotels, rooms fitted with a kitchenette and, at the top of the range, villas with a full kitchen. They keep what makes a hotel worthwhile, the welcome, the housekeeping, the pool, and add what makes a home.

At Trou aux Biches, on the north-west coast, Be Cosy is not a hotel in the usual sense: it lets furnished studios and apartments, each with its own kitchen and balcony. LOV Mauritius, which runs it, manages some ten residences in the north of the island. There is no restaurant, no bar and no spa, and that is the point.

What remains is what matters over time: a reception, an outdoor pool, private parking on site, housekeeping every four days, security day and night and an emergency number outside office hours. The beach is a hundred metres away. The residence suits couples, families and those working remotely; outside visitors are not admitted, and parties are forbidden.

AI-generated image

Pereybere Hotel & Spa

★★★PereybèreSee the hotelBook on Booking.com →

In Pereybère, in the north, every category of accommodation has a kitchenette or a fitted kitchen. The twelve Premiere suites, of sixty-five square metres, combine a sitting room, dining area, built-in kitchen and bedroom; the Executive suite, on the top floor, runs to ninety-five square metres. The Grand Baie market and the shops of Pereybère are within easy reach, and the beach is a few steps away.

The hotel takes care of what one comes to value after a few weeks: a heated rooftop pool, a hammam, sauna and hot tub open from 7.30am to 8.30pm, an ice bath, a gym and a yoga studio, with morning classes and guided meditation. Check-in can be done from a phone, room key included, without going through reception.

At Balaclava, where the Tombeau river meets the ocean, Ocean’s Creek sets aside twenty-six of its one hundred and thirty-six units for self-sufficient stays: each has a fully equipped kitchenette with a worktop. The range runs from the forty-three-square-metre Superior room, with an open living area, to the sixty-seven-square-metre suite, by way of twelve Family rooms and two Family suites.

Every category has a furnished balcony with a table and chairs, a desk and free, unlimited high-speed wireless internet. Views are divided between the sea, the river and the forest. For the days when nobody cooks, the hotel has its temperature-controlled pool, its spa and its water slides.

AI-generated image

Casuarina Resort & Spa

★★★★Trou-aux-BichesSee the hotelBook on Booking.com →

Facing the beach at Trou aux Biches, the Casuarina has been welcoming guests since 1973. Its ten family cottages have two rooms: a bedroom for the parents, with a queen-size bed, and a room for up to four children, with a kitchenette, sitting room and dining area. It is a small apartment set in a hotel garden.

Around it, the hotel provides the rest: two pools, a fitness centre, a free kids’ club for three- to eleven-year-olds, from 9am to 4pm, and included non-motorised water sports, kayaking, windsurfing, snorkelling. The glass-bottom boat goes out twice a day, at 10.30am and 2.30pm.

Also on the beach at Trou aux Biches, Le Sakoa, run by the Constance group under the name Constance Sakoa Boutik, has just sixteen units. Two connecting garden rooms have a kitchenette. The Beach Senior Suite, of a hundred square metres, adds a mezzanine with two single beds, a small garden, a kitchen corner and direct access to the beach, for two adults and three children.

Room service carries no surcharge, which eases the evenings when one wants neither to cook nor to go out. The hotel is an hour’s drive from the airport, the price of a position far to the north.

At Beau Champ, on the east coast, the Four Seasons offers only villas and residences, each with its garden and private pool. The Two-Bedroom Garden Pool Villa, of two hundred and sixty-six square metres, has a full kitchen and takes four adults; the Five-Bedroom Oceanfront Residence, of eight hundred and thirty square metres with a private garden of three thousand two hundred and thirty square metres, has a fitted kitchen and takes ten adults and two children.

Children aged twelve and under stay free in a villa shared with their parents, breakfast and dinner being charged. Two computers and a printer are available at the teens’ club, useful to anyone keeping a foot in work. Check-in is at 3pm.

On Le Chaland beach, in the south-east, ten minutes’ drive from the airport, this resort taken over by the Constance group in February 2026 keeps two villas apart. The two-bedroom villa, of two hundred and eight square metres, and the four-bedroom villa, of three hundred and thirty, each have a private pool, a fully equipped kitchen with a wine cellar and a butler service, and check-in takes place in the villa.

The larger villa sleeps up to eight adults and four children, enough to gather several generations under one roof. The Blue Bay marine park begins at the edge of the estate, and snorkelling is within swimming distance. After three weeks, the difference lies in such details: coffee taken at one’s own hour, a meal made from whatever the market had to offer.