North Island Seychelles

North Island features just eleven private guest villas 10 of which are Presidential Beachfront Villas, offering each guest an unparalleled sense of exclusivity and luxury. The villas have all been created from locally sourced materials harvested during the island rehabilitation process, balancing luxury and simplicity to form a signature architectural style that has been named ‘barefoot luxury’. Beachfront villas are set along East Beach and with direct access to the beach and ocean. Each villa is completely screened from view of others within the natural vegetation, ensuring total privacy as well as ocean views. The open-plan flow of the villas invites exploration; the mixture of textures encourages touch and the organic shapes of the artisan-made furniture and fittings entice the eye.

• 10 x Presidential Villa (450 sqm)

Named Villa 11, Villa North Island is perched on the granite boulders at the far end of East Beach and is the quintessence of privacy and seclusion. The sheer volume, scale and luxury of this villa are unimaginably decadent as it spreads out across multi-tiered levels, cascading down through a coconut grove, with direct beach access to the ocean below. Villa North Island offers ample room for your mind to float free and for all your island fantasies to become a stylish, spacious reality. From the surprise of the concealed entrance across a leadwood bridge, to the wooden waterfall of decks descending to the beach, Villa North Island offers the perfect setting for your honeymoon. With an over-sized marble bathtub – ideal for sharing – and perfect sunrise views, this is the ultimate North Island experience and the last word in honeymoon luxury and romance.

• 01 x Villa North (750 sqm)

The Piazza Bar & Lounge restaurant Laid Back by Chef Akira Back offers gracious candlelit dining with the gentle sounds of the ocean setting the scene for a romantic evening. This is the ideal venue for a sophisticated date night, and showcases the “smooth” aspect of the Island. Situated where the ocean meets the Island, the food offering in the Piazza Bar & Lounge draws on the freshest ingredients from both land and sea to give you a sumptuous dining experience.

Private Dining

The in-villa dining experience is all about comfort food and options. Enjoy the wide variety of snacks in your generously-stocked pantry or choose from the home-style menu, with a local Creole curry or classic dish of your choice, delivered to your door while you relax in the privacy of your own villa. We’ve taken the theme of comfort food and added a typically irreverent North Island twist – think childhood classics reworked to refresh your palette; dishes you know and love made just that little bit more fun.

“The North Island Spa, La Vie by Goldhands is located in inspiring surroundings, overlooking turquoise waters and dramatic cliffs. It offers an unspoiled place of extreme beauty and timelessness where our treatments relax and rejuvenate body, mind and soul. In keeping with North Island’s concept of tailor-made service, you can also receive certain treatments in the privacy of your villa. Located just below the Spa is the Gym, with floor-to-ceiling glass walls that frame some of the most spectacular views on the island. The 10 x 6-metre air-conditioned indoor area is well equipped with Technogym machines and weights to suit both male and female fitness enthusiasts. An additional stretching area on the outside deck is also suitable for yoga fanatics.”

North Island’s Dive Centre offers full PADI tuition and certification. Expert Seychellois divemasters with intimate knowledge of the local reefs and the very best dive spots, plus state of the art SCUBA equipment, make for a memorable dive experience. The dive centre features indoor and outdoor changing areas and showers, displays about the natural history of the waters off the island, and a typically warm North Island welcome from dive master Daniel and his team. Sea-kayaks and long-boards are also available for you to explore the calm waters around the Island. On land choose from Mountain biking, guided walks to remote look outs and endemic tree planting activities.

We all love a movie night but the ‘Cinema Experience’ on North Island with the backdrop of the Indian Ocean is on another level. Kick back and watch some classic flicks under candle, some bubbles and great company.

“North Island is a wonderful place to explore and enjoy as a family, but we also wanted to extend the generosity of our offering to our younger guests. Let North Island become the ultimate playground for your children, with a wide range of activities on land and in the water designed to keep young minds and bodies active, to satisfy the most inquisitive and thrill the most adventure-seeking. North Island has a children’s play area with an arts and crafts area, jungle gym, swings, trampoline and toys galore. All activities are supervised to ensure your children will be well looked after and entirely safe – and of course adults are welcome to join in too! With your kids enrolled in the Beach Buddy programme with activities tailor made to the preferences of each child, you can take time out to reconnect with each other in complete peace and quiet – unless of course you cannot resist a game of giant dominoes, a pizza-making lesson or a pirate treasure hunt!”

Create a wedding to remember on the idyllic North Island. The intimate beach wedding provides an escapism ceremony for just the two of you or with a select number of close friends and family. Pristine powder-white beaches form an idyllic setting for an elegantly simple, barefoot wedding ceremony as you celebrate this momentous occasion. The celebrations can then continue after the ceremony based on your unique wishes for your special day, whether a cocktail evening at West Beach Sunset Bar with a few close friends, a romantic dinner for two in the Piazza or the Library – or for the ultimate after-party, you can make a sole-use booking of the entire Island.

In becoming a completely plastic-free island, North Island banned single-use plastic straws and only uses eco-friendly compostable food containers for activities around the island. This is in addition to stringent waste management processes including extensive recycling, grey water systems, and our own sustainable water bottling plant.

In keeping North Island’s private beaches perfectly pristine, our resident Environmentalists and eco-tourist volunteers set off on beach patrol each and every morning, collecting any debris carried by the trade winds while searching for nesting sea turtles. We are committed to removing these items and ensuring they enter the proper recycling routes, making sure they do not enter the oceans once more. North Island’s beach protection over the last two decades has safeguarded the nesting sites of critically-endangered Hawksbills and endangered Green Turtles which has seen a remarkable increase in the number of turtles utilising the island.

“North Island’s Environment Centre offers a unique opportunity to further environmental awareness as well as a chance for you to connect with nature while leaving behind a positive impact. It is the hub of environmental activities on the island and serves as a base for resident conservationists and environmental volunteers. Join them for an environmental presentation or get your hands dirty and plant an indigenous tree on the island. Filled with informative posters and artefacts on display, the Environment Centre is a treasure trove for learning about the island’s indigenous fauna and flora. More than that, it is an interactive experience where you can meet conservationists to head out and about on the island, allowing you to marvel at the full scope of what has been done in order to create a true ‘Noah’s Ark’ in the Indian Ocean.”

“North Island has been alternatively neglected and exploited throughout its history. Many alien species of plants and animals remained behind after the copra plantation on North Island became uneconomical in the 1970s. These alien species thrived and greatly impacted the indigenous Seychellois flora and fauna. In tandem with creating a world-class eco-tourism destination, we have been working hard to restore North Island to its former glory.

The first phase of the rehabilitation was to successfully eradicate alien rodents and to this day North Island remains one of the largest islands in the Seychelles ever to have been entirely de-ratted. Stringent control measures are in place to ensure they never return as they posed a major threat to ground-nesting birds. Feral animals such as goats, cats and cattle were also removed. Invasive plant species are being progressively cleared, and replaced by thousands of indigenous plant and tree seedlings grown in our on-island nursery and then transplanted throughout the island.

In this way, the native habitat has been restored to the extent that North Island is once again a place where endemic Seychellois fauna and flora can flourish. Evidence of the success of this programme has been the fact that bird species such as Seychelles Blue Pigeons and Seychelles White Eye birds, including breeding populations of Wedge-tailed Shearwaters and White-tailed Tropic birds have returned of their own accord. Hawksbill and Green Turtles nest on our beaches once more, in ever increasing numbers.”

“The Aldabra Giant Tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), one of the largest tortoise species on Earth, is endemic to the Aldabra atoll, Seychelles. Formerly giant tortoises were found on many Indian Ocean islands but became extinct historically due to exploitation by sailors from passing ships. Live tortoises would be taken on board ships to supplement meagre rations. In 1997, only a handful Giant Aldabra Tortoises were left on the island, including the well-known big males Brutus and Patrick. Currently between 80 and 100 tortoises roam North Island free from harm, most of which were donations from other islands, with some as old as 150 years of age. Baby tortoises under the age of two can also be seen in our baby-tortoise pen, where they are protected until big enough to be seen on the roads.”

“North Island’s vision is a declared Ecological Marine Reserve, further protecting the area from fishing and potentially harmful marine activities. The island’s Marine Protected Area proposal is supported by data collection by means of biannual scientific marine surveys conducted by trained marine biologists since 2011. The surveys quantify the diversity and abundance of the reef fish, hard and soft corals, marine invertebrates and predatory species. This is supported by continuous reef monitoring carried out by our resident Environmentalists and ecotourism volunteers on a daily basis, as well as by the Dive Centre and guests who wish to get involved. North Island site-specific fish identification slates are used on dives and snorkels, enabling key species to be identified and additional data to be compiled and monitored. North Island has also recently purchased our own BRUVs (baited remote underwater videos) which help in closely monitoring predatory species – which come in all shapes and sizes, from sharks to groupers and octopus. A healthy and diverse predatory guild is an indication of a healthy reef ecosystem.”