Small hotels: the island on the scale of a house

Mauritian hospitality is known for its large resorts, with their six restaurants, their three pools and their kilometres of beach. Less visibly, it also has properties of a few dozen rooms, sometimes fewer than twenty. The island has boutique hotels from three stars upwards, as well as approved bed and breakfasts and guesthouses, for those seeking a stay closer to local life.

Le Cardinal Exclusive Resort, on the beach at Trou aux Biches, consists of thirteen suites, all facing the lagoon. It has only one restaurant, gastronomic and entirely à la carte, set on a deck facing the bay, and a spa with a single treatment room. Its family duplex of 84 square metres has a sitting room and a children’s corner on the ground floor and the parents’ bedroom upstairs; the Deluxe penthouse has its own pool.

On the same beach, the Sakoa has just sixteen units, all a few steps from the sand, one restaurant and one bar. The Mauritian group Constance runs it under the name Constance Sakoa Boutik. Its largest suite, of a hundred square metres, has a mezzanine, a kitchen corner and a small garden, for two adults and three children. Also in Trou aux Biches, the Wonders Beach Boutique Hotel, recently built, has eighteen rooms and does not admit children under twelve; five of its units have a private pool.

The Seapoint Boutique Hotel, between Mont Choisy and Pointe aux Canonniers, has twenty-four rooms, all with an open view of the sea and of Coin de Mire, Flat Island and Round Island: it is the small size of the property that makes this possible. It is reserved for adults. In the same area, Maison du Nord also has twenty-four rooms, but it is a tourist residence, two kilometres from Mont Choisy beach, linked to the sand by a daily shuttle.

On the west coast, the Gold Beach Resort, at Wolmar, south of Flic en Flac, has only thirty-one units, twenty of them cottages, with the lagoon in front. In Grand Baie, the Maison 20 Degrés Sud gathers thirty-six rooms and suites, each laid out differently, in a former colonial house built on a coconut grove; it joined the Relais & Châteaux collection in 2013, and remains the only Mauritian property to feature in it. In the evening, eight guests dine aboard the Lady Lisbeth, a boat dating from 1927. Above the bay, Ocean V has thirty-eight rooms, with an infinity pool, restaurant and bar on the roof: a town hotel rather than a beach hotel, conceived as a base for exploring the north.

Several small hotels still bear the mark of those who founded them. Les Villas Mon Plaisir, at Pointe aux Piments, have welcomed guests since 1994 in forty-eight rooms facing the lagoon; the buffet changes cuisine every day (Chinese, Indian, Creole), and a Mauritian band plays during dinner. The Pereybere Hotel & Spa grew out of a small family guesthouse, and it has remained a family house turned hotel; all its units have a kitchenette or a fully equipped kitchen, and its heated pool is on the roof. Also in Pereybère, the Hibiscus Boutique Hotel has been home since 2007 to a diving club, ORCA, which offers a try-dive in the hotel pool at any time.

In Flic en Flac, the Manisa, long established, keeps to two room categories, sea side or garden side, and to à la carte dining from breakfast through to dinner. It is a simple establishment rather than a resort.

A small hotel offers, above all, a scale. Thirteen suites share the Trou aux Biches lagoon at Le Cardinal, whereas Ambre, at Palmar, has nearly three hundred rooms. What you gain is the measure of a house. What you give up is choice: a single restaurant at Le Cardinal, one restaurant and one bar at the Sakoa.

For those who want a home rather than a room, there are also serviced residences. Be Cosy, in Trou aux Biches, a hundred metres from the beach, lets furnished studios and apartments with a kitchen and balcony, and provides reception, cleaning every four days and security day and night. It is another way of travelling: that of the guest who shops at the market and cooks in the evening, with the sea at the end of the street.