Four Seasons Resort Nevis

Pinney's Beach runs for three miles of grey-gold sand along the west coast of Nevis, with the island of St Kitts across the strait and the cloud-capped cone of Nevis Peak behind. The Four Seasons Resort Nevis, just north of Charlestown, took the middle of that beach in 1991, and for most of the time since it has been the only hotel of its size on an island of 12,000 people.

History

The resort opened in February 1991, built on former plantation land running from the beach up towards the mountain. It changed what Nevis was: before it, the island's hotels were plantation inns of a dozen rooms, and the airport took only small aircraft from St Kitts and Antigua. The resort has had to be rebuilt twice. Hurricane Georges closed it for several months in 1998. Hurricane Omar, in October 2008, took the beach and the ground floors with it, and the owners chose to close for a full reconstruction; the resort reopened in December 2010 with new rooms, a new spa and a rebuilt beachfront. Ownership has changed hands more than once, with Four Seasons managing throughout.

Architecture and design

The plan is a line of two-storey cottages along the beach and up the gentle slope behind it, with the great house, the restaurants and the pools at the centre and the golf course climbing the hill. The buildings are plantation style, with wide verandas, shutters and shingle roofs, and the 2010 rebuild kept that language while opening the public rooms to the sea. Lawns run from the cottages to the sand, and the mountain is in view from almost every veranda on the landward side.

Rooms and suites

There are 196 rooms and suites, in the cottages along the beach and on the hillside, each with a veranda or balcony. A collection of privately owned estate villas on the golf course, with two to five bedrooms and their own pools, is let through the resort and forms a separate tier. The 2010 reconstruction gave the rooms larger bathrooms and a lighter palette.

Dining

The restaurants have been reworked over the years. The beach restaurant and bar, on the sand under the palms, is the daytime heart of the resort; a steak and seafood restaurant in the great house takes dinner; a pool bar and a lounge in the main building cover the rest. Nevis's own tradition of rum shops and beach shacks is a few hundred metres along the sand in either direction, and the resort does not try to compete with it.

Wellness

The spa was rebuilt in 2010 with treatment rooms, outdoor pavilions and a garden. The resort has three outdoor pools, one of them adults only, and a tennis centre of ten courts that has hosted exhibition matches. The golf course was designed by Robert Trent Jones II and runs from the shore to about 300 metres up the mountain, with the hole on its highest point looking down to St Kitts; it is the only championship course on the island.

Weddings and events

The resort is the main wedding venue on Nevis, with ceremonies on the beach, on the lawns and on the golf course, and receptions in the great house and a ballroom. There are meeting rooms for small conferences and incentive groups, which make up a share of the winter business. Capacities are not given here.

Location

Charlestown, the island's small Georgian capital, is a few minutes south by car, and the Nevis ferry and water taxi to St Kitts leave from its pier. Vance W. Amory International Airport, at the north end of Nevis, is about 20 minutes away and takes small aircraft; most guests fly into Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport on St Kitts and cross by the resort's boat, a transfer of about 30 minutes to the resort's own dock. It is the resort on Nevis that the island is measured by.