The world's most incredible private islands
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Bawah Reserve, Indonesia
Singaporean-based financier Tim Hartnoll chanced upon this collection of six uninhabited islands, three lagoons and 13 white beaches while sailing in Indonesia’s Riau archipelago five years ago. And he’s a quick mover. Opened in July 2017, Bawah is one of the world’s most exciting new hideaways: remote, beautiful and with bar-raising environmental policies. Days can be spent hiking through butterfly-filled primary rainforest, gliding over pink, purple and electric-blue corals in see-through kayaks, snorkelling with clownfish, triggerfish, parrotfish and, if you’re lucky, green turtles. Later retreat to the spa, where daily Indonesian-inspired treatments are included in the rate.
The 36 villas, 11 of which are stilted above the water, are made from recycled teak and local bamboo and fit effortlessly into the scheme of things, with their rustic-smart interiors, balconies, crisp white canopied beds and hammered-copper bathrooms. The big design statements have been saved for the main building, where a swarm of jellyfish chandeliers are strung across the dining room and a wispy octopus made from discarded fishing line dangles above the bar. The food is sunny and seriously good: luminous yellow seafood laksa, lemony scallop risotto and zingy salads plucked from the 800 square metres of organic gardens. After dark, the stars will stop you in your barefooted tracks, the silvery bay lit not by moonlight but by the glow of the Milky Way.
By Lee Cobaj
Telephone: +33 6 52 93 07 85
Website:bawahisland.com
**Price:**Villas from about £1,450 per night, full board, including transfers
D3 Creative StudioGladden, Belize
This is probably the most reclusive island escape out there – and yet also the most indulgent, too. A place where it feels like you’re the only people on the planet but a Daiquiri is only a wave of the hand away. The geography of Gladden is what hooked in owner Chris Krolow: two mangrove-ringed islets, one in front of the other, a half-hour chopper ride from Belize City over the western hemisphere’s largest barrier reef. Krolow has placed a single villa on the first island and tucked the staff onto the second. Guests are left deliciously alone on their little Robinson Crusoe dot to mooch around the sleek, Mayan-inspired house, stretch out on a day bed by the pool or take a dip in the turquoise water. But the chef, manager and concierge are less than a two-minute boat ride away. There’s a privacy light that signals if the housekeeper has popped in to make up the room, the spa therapist is setting up for a massage in the palapa or a barbecue is being lit for a supper of chargrilled lobster and salad from the garden. From the roof terrace, the Maya Mountains shimmer in the distance and all around the island is calm blue. This is in a protected marine reserve, with whale sharks and pods of dolphins. The boat captain can organise mainland excursions (shopping in Placencia, a tour of the Mayan ruins), but the most sensible thing to do is just stay put. Until Leonardo di Caprio opens Blackadore Caye in Belize later this year, this is Central America’s shiniest island hideout.
By Susan Herring
Telephone: +1 416 728 4989
Website: gladdenprivateisland.com
Price: Villa from about £2,245 per night for two people (from £2,704 for four), full board
Jenny ZarinsVoavah, Maldives
Already known for running one of the loveliest hotels in the Maldives (Landaa Giraavaru), Four Seasons has taken things up a notch with the opening of Voavah. With seven bedrooms set across the five acres, it’s an extraordinary all-singing, all-dancing playground of a place. The vibe is surprisingly boho, but with that heel-clicking Four Seasons edge. Inside both the main house and the over-water villa, textures such as copper, leather and rattan are mixed with rosewood and mahogany. Woven fishing baskets from Malaysia and Vietnam have been repurposed as lamps and side tables, and there are Rajasthani mirrors and Java teak benches. A sleek bunk room for children sits up on the mezzanine. This is in the Baa Atoll, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, so the best-in-the-world snorkelling is taken as read.
But there are surprises too. A motor yacht will take guests out to the ocean proper, where local populations of turtle and manta rays can be spotted. And there’s Baathala, the private island’s own private island for picnic lunches, sandcastle-building and treasure hunts. Water toys include X-Jetblades, jet skis, Seabobs and Bubblemakers. Back on Voavah, staff appear to whip up basil and lime smoothies and plates of fresh sashimi, and pizzas for the younger members of the gang. And all ages are welcome at the spa, where there’s a kids’ ritual as well as a crystal-singing-bowl experience worth the 12-hour flight in itself.
By Dominique Afacan
Telephone: +960 66 00 888
Website:fourseasons.com/maldivesvoavah
**Price:**From about £29,000 per night, full board
Lauryn IshakCempedak, Indonesia
Hornbills crash into fruit trees, rare Irrawaddy dolphins swim through the water and sea otters squeak in the surf. Cempedak is where the wild things truly are. Its 20 villas, peppered across rugged beach and through a jungly interior packed with soaring fig and pandan trees, are the brainchild of hotelier Andrew Dixon, who opened eco-trailblazer Nikoi Island in the same archipelago a decade ago. Regulars clamoured for an adults-only escape, and here is his answer. Dixon’s commitment to environmentalism means solar panels and waste-water gardens, zero plastic waste and no air-con. Indonesian bamboo (fast-growing and with a tensile strength stronger than steel) has been used to build the villas, breathtaking raised walkways and a restaurant that stretches oceanwards in frond-like tendrils.
Curved thatched roofs shaped like melted boomerangs add a surreal touch. Reclaimed teak furniture sits alongside earthy-toned Pierre Frey fabrics, balconies have bamboo-offcut railings with skeletal patterns, and lava stone steps lead to teardrop plunge pools. Meals are set, but spoiling. Medanese chef Dika’s repertoire ranges from fish curries to pineapple and ginger pancake stacks. Bamboo Benders (cachaça with green tea and soda) are best sipped at sunset at Dodo Bar, its spiral shape inspired by a shell that washed up on shore. A replica dodo holds court and on obsidian-skied nights, a telescope affords glimpses of Saturn’s rings.
By Ianthe Butt
Telephone: +62 811 7008 040
Website: cempedak.com
**Price:**Villas from £310 per night, full board
Kama Catch Me PhotographyTurtle Island, Fiji
Forty years ago, American cable-TV exec Richard Evanson was sitting in a bar in the Fijian city of Nadi when a stranger asked him ‘Do you want to buy an island?’ Burnt out and looking for change, Evanson did. He hired workers from the nearby villages to build the 14 bures and carve pathways through the jungly interior, and planted trees in their thousands. The first guests visited in the early 1980s, but this year has seen a sharp fix-up of the interiors. Bedrooms have been redecorated with traditional carvings, and tribal-print fabrics by French-Fijian designer Alexandra Poenaru-Philp. A commitment to sustainability runs throughout. Hardwood bed frames, coffee tables and nightstands are hand-hewn from tree limbs gathered in the island’s forests; woven cushions and floor mats use palm and coconut husk, lights are fashioned from driftwood and curtains have been recycled to cover the day beds. But it will still look familiar – The Blue Lagoon was shot on one of the seven seashell-strewn beaches. The island is big enough for on-land adventure – mountain biking, horse riding – and out on the water there’s stand-up paddle boarding, scuba diving and deep-sea fishing. Supper is served at a communal table and chef Beni Nasaumalumu cooks seasonally from his organic gardens and whatever guests catch that day. Afterwards you can take part in a kava ceremony: the mildly narcotic drink makes a cracking nightcap. It’s a clever refresher for a classic hotel.
By David Latt
Website:turtlefiji.com
**Price:**Villas from about £1,970 per night, full board (minimum five-night stay)
Kokomo, Fiji
Few places in Fiji combine culture with a barefoot vibe like Kokomo. It sits on the edge of the Kadavu archipelago, encircled by the Great Astrolabe Reef, one of the largest and most immaculate reefs in the world, far away from the mainland crowds. The 21 beachside bures and five hilltop villas are filled with authentic Fijian touches – shell mobiles, rush matting and traditional sculptures – and have walled gardens heady with the scent of frangipani. The brainchild of Australian property kingpin Lang Walker, Kokomo opened only eight months ago but is already making waves. The kitchen is headed by Aussie chef Anthony Healy (fresh from three years ‘next door’ at Laucala Island) and is playing a major role in Fiji’s food renaissance, driven by his support of local producers. Healy manages six farmers and fishermen, 180 chickens and 10 beehives as well as an organic two-hectare garden with a vanilla plantation and every type of vegetable and fruit imaginable. His signature dish is a modern take on kokoda (raw fish salad), using coral-reef trout and fresh passion fruit. Pearl meat from Savusavu is new to the menu and you can finish with a soursop dessert, a prickly fruit with a hint of citrus. Kokomo is a feast of a place, putting this speck in the South Pacific on the epicurean map.
By Sarah Thornton
Telephone: +679 776 4441
Website: kokomoislandfiji.com
Price: Villas from about £1,550 per night
Thanda Island, Tanzania
Thirty kilometres off mainland Tanzania, Thanda was an uninhabited blip in the ocean when the Olofsson family took it over on a long lease a decade ago. They had scoured the Indian Ocean looking for an island playground for their children and grandchildren, and also somewhere to complement their South African safari lodge, Thanda Safari. The sprawling, solar-powered villa the family built has been designed in plantation-house style, with deep, wraparound verandas and five beautiful air-conditioned bedrooms, each with a four-poster bed. The two open-sided beach bandas make great hangouts for teenagers and the boat house is crammed with SUP boards, kayaks, banana boats, wake boards, snorkelling gear and even a pair of shiny new jet skis. Diving trips off nearby Mafia Island are easy to arrange, kite-surfing or yoga instructors can be flown in on request, and there's also a floodlit tennis court. The seafood is spectacular, too, with fresh lobster, grilled tiger prawns as big as langoustines, red-snapper ceviche and seared tuna on the menu. The chefs are happy to prepare a Swahili feast of samosas, prawn and coconut curry, and mini doughnuts drenched in a spicy syrup served with milky chai tea. Getting to Thanda involves a 30-minute flight from Dar es Salaam to Mafia Island, then a 45-minute boat trip. You could charter a helicopter, but that would mean forfeiting that classic beach landing of everyone's dreams.
By Jane Broughton
Telephone: +27 71 611 5348
Website: thandaisland.com
Price: From about US$25,000 per night for up to 10 adults plus nine additional children sharing. Includes a team of staff, all meals and drinks, diving, spa treatments, sandbank picnics, sunset cruises and a roundtrip helicopter flight.
Azura Quilalea, Mozambique
When British bankers Christopher and Stella Bettany decided to trade in their City clothes for flip-flops and open a hotel, they knew it had to be on an island. After a year's search, they settled on Mozambique. 'We knew it could stand its ground against the world's top island destinations,' says Stella. 'All we had to do was bring in a new level of luxury.' And they did just that, opening Azura Benguerra to great acclaim in 2007. Three years later, they were asked to take on Quilalea, a 35-hectare island in the remote Quirimbas archipelago. This had been the first private island retreat to open in the region, and with its nine villas, four sandy beaches, baobab trees and coral-rich reef, they knew it was a real find. They invested £2.4 million in updates but kept the castaway feel with sandy pathways and rough-hewn furniture. This year Quilalea emerged fresh from a refurb and is looking better than ever with an improved dinky spa overlooking the ocean and a new dining space with mangrove crabs and crayfish tails on the menu. So, knock back a baobab smoothie at breakfast, then snorkel back to your room - what better way to start a day in Africa?
By Pippa de Bruyn
Telephone: +27 11 467 0907
Website: azura-retreats.com
Price: Doubles from about £1,300
Isola Santa Cristina, Venice
One of the most historic and beautiful islands in the Venetian lagoon, Isola Santa Cristina was once part of an archipelago known as Ammiana and, according to legend, named after Saint Christina whose body was secretly transported from Constantinople in 1325. The island, a 30-minute boat ride from the city, has been owned by the Swarovski family for many years and one of its younger members, René Deutsch, an Austrian businessman, and his wife Sandra recently opened it as an eco-friendly private hideaway and yoga retreat. The 30-hectare island is home to organic apricot, plum and fig orchards, fish farms and vineyards. In the nine-bedroom villa, filled with the couple's private art collection, larch-wood floors with white walls and chalky colours give it a smart, almost beach-house vibe and the bedrooms, with lofty larch ceilings, are peaceful spaces. There's an outdoor fireplace and pool terrace, shady gazebos and a rooftop altana with views of the island's private lake and the lagoon beyond. From here it's a 10-minute boat ride to Burano and its famous lace-making museum, or to Torcello with its Byzantine cathedral. For a night out, go to Venissa, the restaurant on Mazzorbo, for mazzancolle, or Da Celeste on Pellestrina for its fried catch of the day.
By Elise Frueh
Website: ultravilla.com
Price: From £1,700 per night, minimum of three nights
Joe PlimmerOwner's Villa, Cheval Blanc Randheli
The ineffably smart and stylish Cheval Blanc Randheli opened in the Maldives three years ago as a sister property to those in Courchevel 1850 and St Barth's. This year it was joined by the magnificent three-bedroom Owner's Villa, set on its own immaculate little island. Designed by the architect Jean Michel Gathy, whose sleek portfolio includes Aman and COMO hotels as well as nearby One & Only Reethi Rah, the heart of the house is an enormous, light-filled living room with high, Balinese-thatched ceilings and sail-shaped room dividers; corridors are lined with slick contemporary art and saffron-feather ju-ju hats from Cameroon. There is also a one-bedroom beachfront villa with its own cinema and dining terrace. The 25-metre, black-stone swimming pool stands in delicious contrast to the brilliant-white sand beach. The island comes with a staff of 30, including brilliant chefs who are happy to produce anything you like, a yoga master for sunrise salutations on the over-water terrace, and therapists for the private Guerlain spa. The hotel, which has what is possibly the most remote Pucci boutique in the world, is just a five-minute dhoni sail away. Book a table at its Japanese restaurant, Diptyque, for red-tuna crispy rice rolls and a glass of Chateau Cheval Blanc, or feast on Maldivian reef-fish curry in your private dining room before hijinks around the grand piano and midnight movies screened under the stars.
By Laura Burkitt
Telephone: +960 656 1515
Website: chevalblanc.com
Price: Price on application
Vatuvara Private Islands, Fiji
If Vatuvara looks like a tycoon's private retreat that's because it is. The verdant, hilly 324-hectare island of Kaibu and its three neighbouring islands were all bought by Oakley founder James Jannard back in 2009, and the main villa, Delana, was built very much to his specifications. Although it only has one bedroom, the villa - made with thatch, local timber and stone - is on a mega scale and has a stone-edged infinity pool with views of the other islands and a dark-stone spa-treatment room with a hot tub and twin massage beds (one of the members of staff gives an excellent massage). The interiors are South Seas tropical with lemon-coloured contemporary sofas and stone sculptures of local gods. There are a further two one-bedroom villas, smaller in scale but similarly done out, and both have private pools. All three can be rented individually or together to create your own island hideaway. Days are spent diving or snorkelling, fishing for wahoo, tuna and marlin, or skimming across to one of the other similarly green and mountainous islands in the owner's inflatable Naiad (used as the chase boat in the America's Cup).
There's also a slightly hilly four-hole golf course. Meals are a highlight, with Pacific Rim dishes such as pakapaka, a deep-water snapper steamed with a ginger tamarind emulsion, kokoda (Fijian ceviche), or sashimi. All are served with organic fruit and vegetables grown in manager Lynda Miller's kitchen garden and orchard.
By Laurie Werner
Website: ultravilla.com
Price: £73,560 per week for all three villas
Ariara, Philippines
About 160 miles south-west of Manila in the Calamian archipelago, Ariara has a curving, palm-fringed beach, a sea so clear that in the pale turquoise waters you can see right through to the sandy bottom, a slightly mysterious, jungly centre for the adventurous to hike through and, shimmering away in the distance, yet more sand-rimmed and forested islands to explore. Take the island in its entirety: with its large thatched central sitting and dining areas, four beach cottages and two villas (all of which have been designed by Jorge Yulo, a hot Filipino architect), it can house up to 18 people. There are 35 staff who give their pampered guests the time of their lives. Lunch under the palm trees? Dinner beneath the stars? But of course. Want to practise yoga or have a massage? All can be arranged. Feeling active? Manager Florian Müller will take you to the best diving sites to eyeball some of the most colourful marine life on the planet. There are paddleboards and kayaks, speedboats and jet-skis as well as two proper boats for real island-hopping: the Maya Maya (a beautifully equipped three-cabined motor yacht) and the Karen Joy (a traditional 100ft wooden fishing boat with five air-conditioned cabins). Florian and his staff will do the navigating. Everything except fuel, wine and diving is included in the price, which, if you were to fill it for seven days with 18 of your nearest and dearest, would work out at a not-too-horrifying £310 per person per night.
Website: ariaraisland.com
Price: From £2,155 per person for seven nights (party of 18) or £3,245 per person for seven nights (party of six); includes all meals and yacht transfers
Amanpulo, The Philippines
One of the smaller of the Cuyo islands in the Sulu Sea, just 500 metres across at its widest point, Pamalican is the tropical island of cliché, so white are its palm-fringed beaches, so many shades of blue and emerald the sea that laps them. It practically goes without saying that it's surrounded by a vast coral reef where the diving is sensational. The only hotel on the island is Aman resorts' superb Amanpulo, which is made up of 40 standalone casitas based on traditional Filipino rural houses, some on the beach, some in the treetops and each with its own buggy. And the only way to get here is by private plane; a Dornier 228-202K meets guests at Manila and flies them 288km south to the island's private airstrip. If one is going to pick nits, it's possibly worth pointing out that the hotel opened in 1993, and although a new spa opened last year, the casitas (and the bathrooms especially) are beginning to show their age, in design terms. But it's heaven all the same.
Website: amanresorts.com
Price: Doubles from US$880 (about £590)
Zaya Nurai Island, Abu Dhabi
Dubai may be frantically building them but Abu Dhabi has more than 200 of its own naturally occurring offshore islands already. Some are just extended sandbanks; others are surrounded by belts of dense mangrove. Emirati entrepreneur Nadia Zaal, a real estate whizz, spotted an opportunity and turned her attention to Nurai. She has thrown pots of cash at Zaya Nurai Island, drafting in the Parisian architects responsible for the Nam Hai in Vietnam, shipping over more than 800 fully grown date palms and calling on her mother, Lesley Zaal, to help with the interior design. The result is a slick, Asian-style lair in the Persian Gulf, reminiscent of the shiniest villas in Phuket. The property on the two-mile-long island opened its doors in February 2015 but is still evolving and developing. By the new year there will be a full-throttle spa and five restaurants serving locally grown organic fruit and vegetables from the Ripe Market, line-caught fish and biodynamic wines. The 32 vast beach villas are highly modern, dominated by clean lines, cotton-wool-white linen and bleached wooden furniture. The outdoor terraces have private infinity pools, deep day beds and views out over the caramel-coloured sand to a sea full of dugongs and dolphins. If the collective speedboat ride from Saadiyat is too public, come by chopper, which is how a certain Hollywood couple with six children are rumoured to arrive (he is now shooting on location in the desert).
Website: zayanuraiisland.com
Price: Doubles from about £885
The Brando, French Polynesia
Contained inside a living coral reef in the remotest South Pacific, the atoll of Tetiaroa is made up of a dozen white-sanded islets surrounding a five-mile lagoon so pure that its silvery blue can be seen from outer space. Arriving by six-seater private plane from Tahiti, as all guests do, is heart-stopping: the atoll glimmers as you approach. Coral gardens stretch hundreds of feet into abyssal depths and rare orchids surround freshwater pools. Marlon Brando first clapped his covetous eyes on it when scouting for locations for Mutiny on the Bounty in 1963, and owned it for the rest of his life. It opened in 2014 as an ultra-polished hideaway, with two quiet restaurants, an immaculate spa and 35 glass and ironwood villas set back from a blinding beach amid thick trees. There are no sea-cluttering overwater bungalows characteristic of most Polynesian hotels here - everything feels entirely folded away, a place to dream and read, to the sound of the Pacific bashing against the distant reef. With just 80 guests (maximum) at any given time, the rest of the atoll is left untouched. Of course, every detail from the thread-count to the on-call butlers is as excellent as you'd expect, but the Brando has such head-lolling natural beauty it's in a league of its own, with a blazing light that, in the early morning, hits the shallow waters as though they were an ocean of milk.
Website: thebrando.com
Price: Doubles from £1,410
Pulau Joyo, Indonesia
The southern reaches of the South China Sea are peppered with islands - sprawling archipelagos, clusters of teardrops and uninhabited wildernesses. And there's an astonishing number that you can take over. Pulau Joyo, though, remains by far the most charming. It's smaller than nearby Nikoi, less flashy than Batu Batu, prettier than Pangkil and more authentic than the Maldivian-style over-water villas of Telunas. City-weary expats from Singapore flock to this shipwrecked barefoot idyll. Hong Kong-based shipping magnate Antony Marden initially conceived the place as a holiday home for his family (they own Pangkil too) but its doors have been open to everyone since 2011. The development has been gracefully restrained, with stilted pavilions, some reconstructed Indonesian joglos and others made entirely from driftwood. The six houses are filled with local antiques, ornately carved artefacts, French flea-market finds, rustic hessian-coloured fabrics, big Balinese daybeds and soaring beamed ceilings. There are also two smaller balé houses for overflow guests or teenagers. The chef knocks up deliciously authentic Indonesian fish curries, highly spiced chilli crab and sweet peanut satay, washed down with just-squeezed guava juice - and you never eat in the same spot twice. It's small but there's plenty to do: paddleboard around the shoreline, swim, snorkel (avoiding the odd jellyfish), kayak out to the reef, gather shells and chase hermit crabs on the footprint-free sand, or just hole up on your shaded deck listening to the dried alang-alang grass roofs rustle in the breeze. Anyone with really itchy feet can charter the 140ft Hang Tuah for fishing expeditions or to sail to the nearby islands of Binyoso, Lina and Murbai.
Website: pulau-joyo.com
Price: Sleeps up to 28. Doubles from £165 per night, full board.
PATavanipupu Private Island Resort, Solomon Islands
In the South Pacific Ocean, Tavanipupu is a dot of an island, and one of the 1,000 that make up the Solomon Islands. Formerly a coconut plantation, it was transformed into a dreamy island paradise back in the 1970s by a British interior decorator (who still lives on the island) and his late partner.
Now run by new owners, Tavanipupu is a five-star resort that retains its natural charm, and ticks all the boxes: pristine white beaches running into limpid turquoise waters, and backed with palm trees. A handful of simple, beach-rustic thatched bungalows are set in tropical gardens. Inside, bedrooms have wooden furniture and white linen and canopied nets over four-poster beds.
Guests can dine, if they want, at the water's edge. The restaurant gets its produce and ingredients mainly from the local area and the organic garden; the Tavanipupu chickens provide eggs and meat; but the best dishes come, not surprisingly, from the sea.
There's also a spa overlooking the coral sea; and the concierge will arrange fishing trips, cycling tours on the Guadalcanal mainland, expeditions to explore uninhabited islands in the area, and dives in the most wonderfully clear waters, on the reef that shelters the island and forms a natural blue lagoon. There are also paddleboards, kayaks and snorkels that anyone is welcome to use.
Website: tavanipupu.com
Price: Doubles from A$308 (about £200) per night; alternatively, the whole island is available for hire
Darren SetlowInn at Cuckolds Lighthouse, Maine
There is nothing ancient or creaking in this old lighthouse. Instead, you'll find modern suites with original art, marble bathrooms, massive beds made up with crisp linen, and afternoon high tea with port and cheese, served in a panelled parlour, all half a mile offshore. After a short ride in a launch from Maine's Southport Island, you cross a gangplank and enter a dreamscape that feels like stepping into an Andrew Wyeth painting. This restored 1892 lighthouse at the mouth of Boothbay Harbour has been open for two seasons (late May to September), and the two-bedroomed bed-and-breakfast has become a coveted little getaway that is now booked up months in advance. Throughout the house, soothing grey tones and thick, heavy curtains echo the circling sea all around. Breakfasts of homemade blueberry muffins and cranberry scones are served around the farmhouse table in the light-filled kitchen - linger with a third cup of coffee on the deck and breathe in the salt air. Days can be spent flying kites, kayaking, exploring the craggy coves or simply settled in an Adirondack chair on the lawn watching the Atlantic roll. The boundless views of lapping waves and drifting schooners are hypnotic.
Website: innatcuckoldslighthouse.com
Price: Doubles from £325, or £ 910 per night for the whole island (sleeps four)
Isleta El Espino, Nicaragua
This is an off-grid beauty. The 10-minute jaunt by private boat from the charming colonial town of Granada across Lake Nicaragua (the largest in Central America) takes you past uninhabited islets squawking with wildlife, lush, thick jungle and local fisherman bringing home their catch. Brother-and-sister team Andrew and Kristin Werner's aim was to create a sustainable but also gorgeous eco-lodge out in the middle of the freshwater expanse. Bohemian with an industrial edge, this is not a typical tropical hotel. Instead it is considered and relevant, and environmentally sound with electricity from solar panels and filtered water straight from the lake. The chef helps himself to vegetables from the organic gardens and plucks mangoes straight from the trees, local farmers and fishermen drop off their hauls and everything from the tortillas to the ginger beer is homemade. The three bedrooms, one of which is in a treehouse, are a study in rustic-luxe with polished concrete floors, hand-painted earthenware tiles and furniture carved from indigenous woods. Woven bamboo lamps are lit by super-efficient LED light bulbs and outdoor bathrooms are tucked under curving sheets of corrugated steel. Mornings start with yoga on the deck to a soundtrack of monkey chatter and evenings are rounded off with a local craft beer or a dragon-fruit cocktail in the pool, looking out to the dormant Mombacho volcano, whose foothills turn terracotta as the sun goes down.
Website: isletaelespino.com
Price: Doubles from £75, or £250 per night for the whole island
Dolphin Island, Fiji
Frangipanis and hibiscus curl around the four classic thatch-roofed huts that New Zealand designer Virginia Fisher has raised to the pinnacle of beach chic, with sweeping curtains, bleached timber and outdoor showers. After a deep sleep, you wake to the call of birds among the coconut palms. Everyone gravitates towards the breezy, open-sided main sitting room or just outside it on the deck overlooking the infinity pool. Block out time in the diary to spend on one of the huge white sofas with a good book from the intriguing library, or just flip over on to your back to admire the ceilings, lined with tapa - traditional printed bark cloth. You can snorkel, coax a little sailing boat out into Bligh Strait or hit the sunbeds for a spot of horizontal dolphin-spotting. The villagers will even drop in for a song, some fire-dancing and a lovo, where dinner is cooked in an underground oven. The island is part of Alex van Heeren's super-exclusive Huka Retreats portfolio (his other lodges are in South Africa and New Zealand), so you can expect intuitive service from housekeeper Dawn Simpson and her team, with a kitchen dishing up excellent Fijian food and a lavish drinks trolley that is never far from hand. For absolute seclusion, five minutes' walk around the five-hectare island is a hopelessly romantic hilltop bure for sleep-outs.
Website: dolphinislandfiji.com
Price: Sleeps eight, from £490 per person per night
Laucala Island, Fiji
For 10 years, the Wakaya Club has had a rival in Laucala Island, a 3,000-acre island that was once the property of Malcolm Forbes but now belongs to Dietrich Mateschitz, the creator of Red Bull. Perhaps not surprisingly for the owner of two Formula 1 teams, his priorities have more to do with sport than with environmental concerns, to which end there's a championship-level golf course, designed by David McLay Kidd (who designed the Castle course at St Andrews) and maintained by 10 greenkeepers, a 5,000 square-metre swimming pool (the largest in the South Pacific), and a flotilla of nine craft ranging from three jet-skis to a game-fishing pleasure cruiser. All this shared by the residents of just 25 villas, each with its own pool, dotted around its two and half miles of coast; yet the staff of
the resort runs to 329.Website: laucala.com
Price: Doubles from US$4,560 (about £3,050)
Rex FeaturesThe Wakaya Club & Spa, Fiji
Until last year, Fiji's pre-eminent private-island resort was The Wakaya Club & Spa (pictured), David and Jill Gilmour's self-proclaimed 'bastion of ecological sanctity where sound environmental practices and the preservation of Fijian culture are highly valued as well as implemented'. It's an exceptionally lovely development of 10 handsome vernacular cottages, or bures (rhymes with hooray), made from woven bamboo and indigenous yakawood. Bill and Melinda Gates chose to spend their honeymoon here, perhaps because few resorts prize privacy so highly. Indeed, the grandest bure of all, Vale O, is set amid 16 acres of private land and Wakaya Island is inaccessible even to passing yachts; the only way to get there is by private plane, to which end the resort has its own 2013 Cessna Grand Caravan.
Website: wakaya.com
Price: Doubles from US$2,185 (about £1,460)
Private Island Retreat, Greece
There are still places in the Mediterranean where you can hide out and relish the sense of remoteness. This summer house on a privately owned islet, at the beginning of the Cycladic islands, feels fantastically far-flung but is actually just 45 minutes from Athens by speedboat and a stone's throw from the bigger island of Evia. Its 300 hectares are covered with ancient, gnarled olive trees and heavily scented wild thyme, and small sheltered beaches ring the shore. The scenery is ancient and untouched, and there are no other buildings except for some historical houses and a chapel near the jetty. The century-old villa has belonged to the same Greek family for three generations. Built in a neo-classical style, it is airy with high ceilings and large windows looking out on to the Aegean or the quiet gardens. It's understated and elegant, with antique tiled floors and original fireplaces in each of the six bedrooms, far removed from the racy holiday madness of nearby Mykonos. Steps away from the shady terraces of the main house there is a calm bay, perfect for swimming or long pied dans l'eau lunches feasting on home-grown ingredients from the owner's organic garden where guests can forage for fresh eggs, sweet sun-ripened fruit, herbs, vegetables and the owner's prized tomatoes. A chef and full round of staff can be arranged, and the closest shops and restaurants are found in the pretty ports of Marmari and Karistos, just across the water.
Website: welcomebeyond.com
Price: Sleeps 12, from £6,700 per week
Max Kim-BeeNecker Island, British Virgin Islands
The most northerly of the Leeward Islands, this archipelago is home to several private islands, none lovelier than Sir Richard Branson's Necker Island, which lies 30 minutes by boat north-east of Tortola, itself a 35-minute flight from San Juan (which is, ironically, best reached on British Airways, which flies direct from Gatwick). Its 74 acres are home to 200 flamingos, 60 resident staff and a maximum of 28 guests. It's an idyllic place. Indeed it's hard to believe that a more beautiful stretch of sand exists than Turtle Beach, off which an aqua trampoline is anchored to the seabed.
Website: neckerisland.virgin.com http://www.neckerisland.virgin.com/
Price: Exclusive use from about US$58,300 (about £39,000), minimum stay five nights, sleeps 28
Peter Island Resort & Spa, British Virgin Islands
Directly south of Tortola is the largest private island in the British Virgin Islands. Owned by the Van Andel family (owners of the Amway Corporation), the 1,800-acre Peter Island is in many ways the tropical island of legend: a long, thin, jungle-cloaked mountainous landmass, lined with five beaches and 20 coves, some of which can be booked so that you have the place to yourself. No wonder this part of the archipelago is thought to be where Robert Louis Stevenson set Treasure Island. Its palm-fringed, crescent-shaped, hammock-strung main beach is even called Deadman's Bay.
For the moment the most desirable accommodation is the villas - Falcon's Nest, Hawk's Nest and Crow's Nest - on which US$1.2 million has recently been lavished, and which are popular with those in search of absolute privacy and seclusion. Actor-turned-hotelier Robert De Niro has rented the best of them, the six-suite Falcon's Nest, from US$8,000 (sleeps 12). Or for upwards of $300,000 a night you can hire out the whole island: 32 quite modest rooms, 20 junior suites and three villas - as footballer Rio Ferdinand did for his wedding in 2009.
Website: peterisland.com
Price: Doubles from about US$440 (about £295)
Guana Island, British Virgin Islands
For something more laid back there's Guana Island, the self-styled 'Virgin Island that still is'. Also north of Tortola, this private island has 850 acres of undulating tropical rainforest with all-inclusive accommodation in 15 simple beach cottages, furnished in an unfussy style inspired by the Quakers who first populated the island and ran the sugarcane plantation here. The cottage on North Beach, with its own saltwater pool, is the loveliest and most remote. There are no phones or TVs, but there is Wi-Fi.
Website: guana.com
Price: Doubles from about US$815 (about £550)
Michel FiguetFregate Island, Seychelles
The 16 palatial teak villas on neighbouring Frégate Island Private - each with a private pool, dining pavilion and butler - offer more conventional, less-laidback luxury, as well as a yacht club, PADI centre and kids club.
Website: fregate.com
Price: Doubles from €3,300 (about £2,335), minimum stay three nights
Denis Islands, Seychelles
More affordable, if not exactly inexpensive, are the four villas and 25 cottages on Denis Island, a crescent of palm-fringed beaches, half an hour by plane from Mahé. The wildlife is a major draw: there are superb birdwatching opportunities, and you can snorkel or swim in the lagoon among turtles, clownfish, parrot-fish, triggerfish and rays.
Website: denisisland.com
Price: Doubles from €970 (about £685), full board
Nikoi Island, Indonesia
Back in 2001, six ex-pats working in Singapore heard of an island, just off nearby tourist-destination Bintan Island, in the South China Sea, that was for sale. So they rented a boat and set out to explore, finding 15 hectares of shell-strewn beaches, extraordinary rock formations, virgin rainforest and colossal banyan trees, pristine reefs and mangroves. They bought it, intending to use it as a private retreat for their families. When the pleasures of camping began to pall, they built a kampong, or village, and half a dozen beach houses, then hired staff. By 2007 it made sense to open it as a hotel, to which end they added a sand-floored clubhouse with a restaurant and bar, a pool and nine further simple but comfortable beach houses, made from driftwood, local timber and alang-alang grass, each with direct access to the beach. The environmentally sensitive, boho, family-friendly vibe remains very much intact. Nikoi Island isn't a place for those in search of sycophantic service and high-end luxe (though with rates from £170, you'd hardly expect it to be). Breezes and fans rather than air-con cool its two-storey houses, the bedrooms linked by elevated walkways in place of closed corridors. Rather, it has been conceived by its owners as their ideal holiday retreat, a place of natural beauty for people who like the idea of going back to nature and spending all day barefoot on the beach, but who appreciate good food and fine wine, who care about details such as the threadcount of the bedlinen and may even travel with staff (the three-bedroom houses, says the website, have 'an additional small bedroom suitable for a maid or extra child').
Website: nikoi.com
Price: Doubles from SG$330 (about £170)
Berdarra Island, Queensland
Bedarra is a mere speck of a place. Four kilometres off the coast of Queensland, it is cloaked in a luxuriant jungle of banyans, tree ferns, lianas and vines, and girded with white-sand beaches. With just 8 villas (the treetop pavilions, where the private plunge pools appear to be suspended from the decks, are the most alluring), there are never more than 16 guests here at once, so you have a pretty good chance of finding one to yourself. The ethos is more about luxury and indulgence than getting close to nature - perhaps because there's no neighbouring reef, and you're a 90-minute boat ride from a dive site.
Website: bedarraisland.com
Price: From about £1,145 per person per night, all-inclusive
Lizard Island
Australia's coast is rich in private-island hotels, notably Lizard Island. The northernmost and most isolated of Queensland's island resorts, 17 miles offshore, this is the only one with direct access to the Great Barrier Reef and from which you can snorkel right off its 24 beaches. There are all sorts of boat excursions on offer: diving (not least to the fabled Cod Hole), snorkelling, and big-game fishing. At first glance the hotel is slightly unprepossessing, with accommodation for 80 in white-painted wooden hut-like structures with white corrugated-iron pitched roofs (opt for a villa if you crave seclusion), and not-very-private verandahs, which you may find yourself sharing with one of the prehistoric monitor lizards after which the island is named. But the interiors are stylish and comfortable in a contemporary, understated way, the desert-island setting is sensational and the sunsets are spectacular, especially if you're allocated one of the rooms on Sunset Ridge. Be sure to do the four-hour return hike to the island's high point, Cook's Look, named after Captain Cook who discovered it. Lizard Island has an area of almost 10 sq km.
Website: lizardisland.com.au
Price: Doubles from A$1,160 (about £780), all-inclusive
Erwin SchoonderwaldtLake Mälaren, Sweden
Spend the summer like the Swedes and escape to a lake. Fifty miles from Stockholm, the tiny private islet on Lake Mälaren is available for exclusive hire. There are just four buildings on it: a house containing three bedrooms, a dwelling consisting of a single room, a state-of-the-art sauna and a one-bedroom 'round' house (currently being renovated). The main house is light, airy and beautifully furnished in a style that fuses Gustavian tradition with contemporary Scandinavian design. And the rent includes the use of a small boat with an outboard motor (rental of a bigger 225hp Anytec 750SPD is available to those licensed to drive one), in which guests can motor across to the attractive little town of Mariefred and Gripsholm Castle.
Website: grandtripsweden.com
Price: From SEK16,000 (about £1,560) for a weekend; sleeps eight
Dennis JarvisLighthouse Grebeni, Croatia
Built in 1872, Lighthouse Grebeni stands on a rugged rock populated only by yellow-legged gulls about a kilometre off the coast of southern Croatia, a four-kilometre boat ride from Dubrovnik's Old Harbour. It's not a place for the fainthearted, because beyond the (functioning) lighthouse itself - which has three simply-furnished double bedrooms, one single and two bathrooms, plus a kitchen and large living area - there is nothing at all here bar a couple of sun-trap terraces. Not even a beach, though one can swim from the quay, and intrepid divers can explore the wreck of an Italian ship, Taranto, which hit a mine in 1943 and sank about 20 metres from the lighthouse. Entertainment apart, guests should want for nothing, for the lighthouse is serviced daily by staff from the Hotel Dubrovnik Palace, whose facilities guests can use. One can also hire a chef and a butler for an additional €100 a day. A dedicated speedboat ferries guests between the lighthouse, hotel and city. For a real sense of isolation, there's little to touch it.
Website: alh.hr
Price: From €400 (about £285) a night; sleeps seven
Cayo Espanto, Belize
Five kilometres off Ambergris Caye, the largest island of the Belizean archipelago, Cayo Espanto, is a low-lying sandy island, its interior dense with coconut palms. There are eight standalone villas, seven of them arranged on its north and south coasts, and one, Ventanas, built out over the water at the end of a 45-metre wooden walkway on the east of the island. The villas vary in size and spec, but are all simple wooden structures, lined in local hardwoods of cericote and jobillo, and plainly but comfortably furnished with giant beds and rattan chairs. In the main building of the hotel there's a restaurant where three meals a day are served, and the cooking is held to be the best in Belize, making the most of local ingredients such as parrot-fish, mahi-mahi, black corn and Belizean staples such as plantain, black beans and mole sauces made from chilli and chocolate. There's no choice, though you'll be asked to complete a survey indicating your likes and dislikes in advance, and nothing is prepared without your prior approval. There is very little to do beyond the diving, snorkelling and fishing excursions the hotel offers, and exploring neighbouring atolls in a simple wooden skiff.
Website: aprivateisland.com
Price: Villas from US$1,600 (about £1,070), full board; minimum stay four nights
Jumby Bay, Antigua and Barbuda
Two miles off the north-east coast of Antigua lies Long Island, something of a misnomer given that it's neither elongated, nor long – not much more than a mile end to end, with a circumference of less than four. All of which may explain why the island, which is now managed by the Oetker Collection, is more usually referred to as Jumby Bay. Seven minutes by speedboat from Antigua, it's an island that's unusually easy to reach. This everything-taken-care-of attitude pervades all aspects of the resort, an all-inclusive of the classiest kind (even Champagne is complimentary as long as you order it by the glass), staffed by a team who could not be more helpful or caring.
After a recent refurb, the look is resolutely fresh, with a bright, airy feel and a nautical aesthetic. But every room is impressively kitted out, right down to the provision of Nespresso machines, Bose sound systems and bicycles (each villa has its own golf cart). There's a substantial spa and an excellent kids' club (the whole place is supremely child-friendly), and as a big, slick, luxurious, happy holiday resort, it's hard to fault.
Website: oetkercollection.com
Price: Doubles from about US$1,895 (about £1,452)
Wikimedia CommonsPetit St Vincent, St Vincent and the Grenadines
Petit St Vincent is a private islet of just 135 acres in the Grenadines, the southernmost of the Lesser Antilles, an idyllic place of densely forested hills and coral-sand beaches, where the emptiness makes it feel like unclaimed wilderness. From its highest point, Marni Hill, you can see almost the entire Grenadines archipelago: the purple hills of St Vincent in the north; Grenada just about visible to the south. And in between: Mustique, Canouan and the sublimely beautiful Tobago Cays. Yet on the island itself, scarcely a sign of habitation is visible: no vehicles, no other people, barely a building; just jungle giving way to beaches (Caribbean and Atlantic) and the horizon beyond. And no sound but birdsong and the wind in the trees.
There are just 22 one and two-bedroom cottages and villas, so one can be virtually assured of a stretch of beach to oneself. Indeed, if you choose to dine on your veranda, you could spend a week here interacting with no one but the staff.
Former US airman Haze Richardson happened on the islet while sailing in the Grenadines in 1963, bought it, and by the end of that decade was beginning to establish the small hotel. Designed in collaboration with Arne Hasselqvist, the architect responsible for the first villas on Mustique, the cottages owe something to the era in which they were built: simple structures of blue bitch stone found on the island and purpleheart wood, with cane furniture, rush mats and practically no mod cons: no keys, no TVs, no phones, no air-con, no pool, no Wi-Fi, not even mosquito nets (and the insects can be vicious). In many ways, it's like travelling back in time. Not least because this is surely the only hotel in the world that provides a can of spray starch along with an iron, and where the soap is old-fashioned Palmolive.
In 2010, however, the island was sold to Phil Stephenson, a Washington lawyer turned oil magnate, and Robin Paterson, a British-born, Barbados-based property developer, who upgraded the accommodation: lightening the oppressive, brown decor with something paler and more Caribbean, replacing the twin double beds with a single kingsize, adding a new beachside restaurant and a spa - targeted as much at passing yachts as resident guests - and engaging a general manager with an Aman resorts background. Petit St Vincent in its new incarnation was unveiled in 2012.
The sense of the privacy is PSV's compelling selling point. Go from Easter to June, when the foliage is in bloom (and hotel rates tend to be less expensive than the popular winter season). The island exudes a powerful allure, a place where time really does seems to slow, you live by the sun and your cares melt away.
Website: petitstvincent.com
Price: Doubles from US$1,260 (about £845), full boardParrot Cay, Turks and Caicos
This 1,000-acre private-island hotel is by far the most alluring of the 49 cays that make up Turks & Caicos, a 75-minute flight from both Miami and Nassau followed by a half-hour boat transfer. Hence its reputation as a celebrity magnet - not that it's off-limits to lesser mortals.
Owned by Christina Ong's COMO Hotels & Resorts, Parrot Cay has the look of a New England beach house: lots of white tongue-and-groove panelling and pale upholstery, with tropical accents in the Balinese teak; cane and rattan furniture and wafting mosquito nets. But its real glories are its mostly empty mile-long beach of the palest, softest sand and intensely turquoise water, which deepens, past a line of white breakers, to an inky indigo at the reef. The atmosphere is chilled and understatedly glamorous (though not intimidatingly so), and the predominantly Asian staff have that extraordinary knack of figuring out what you want before you've thought of it. And its lagoon-facing spa, the COMO Shambhala Retreat - the brand that sets the standard to which all spas should aspire - is outstanding.
Website: comohotels.com/parrotcay
Price: Doubles from about US$840 (about £560)
L'ilot, Mauritius
How can Parisian Tatiana Schaub ever manage to leave her little utopia in the north-east of Mauritius? L'ilot's setting is remarkable, just off the mainland with access via a narrow bridge, giving the feeling of being adrift at sea. It's really quite unique among the mega-hotels for which this winter-sun hotspot is so well known. Then there's the house itself, an utterly private, wood-and-stone barefoot-smart number that sits on a bed of volcanic stone surrounded by natural rock pools and a fringe of palm and pine trees. It has a thrilling sequence of 360-degree Indian Ocean views through every window and door, and from every bedroom. Daily routines revolve around countless dips in the sea, reading, lunch on the veranda and afternoon siestas. Most people stay here for an entire week without crossing the bridge once. Local fishermen bring lobster and fresh fish daily, master baker Teeram regularly swings by on his bike selling the most delicious rotis and croissants, and a housekeeper and cook are on hand to prepare breakfast and lunch. The villa has been in Schaub's family for more than 60 years and in her reimagining of the house for rental, she has successfully mixed childhood memories (old family photographs) and her love of the natural world (stones, wood and shells picked up on her travels) with a sharp style (Philippe Starck chairs and Driade lights) that doesn't detract from the beauty that lies beyond the doorstep.
Website: lilot.biz
Price: From £390 a night for eight (from £140 for two)
Julien CapmeilNorth Island, Seychelles
North Island is both a nature conservancy and a very private resort of 11 spacious, luxurious thatched villas. Attracted to the island by its potential as a 'sanctuary where natural habitats could be rehabilitated', the management company Wilderness Safaris cleared it of cats, rats, pigs and half its vegetation, and restocked it with endangered Seychellois plants and wildlife - giant tortoises, fruit bats, numerous birds - which now number 200,000 species. The 11 villas on the three-kilometre-long island have been constructed, as far as possible, from reclaimed and local woods, such as ancient takamaka trees felled by disease rather than chainsaws. Co-architect Silvio Rech describes the style as 'haute couture Robinson Crusoe' (even the immaculately casual staff go barefoot); it fuses polished and pitted teak, pine, rosewood and ylang ylang, thatched roofs, rough-hewn granite and a lot of large pebbles - though the villas are not so eco as to eschew air-conditioning.
Website: north-island.com
Price: From €2,115 (about £1,495) per person per night, all inclusive