One&Only Le Saint Géran

In August 1744 the East India Company ship Saint-Géran broke up on the reef off the north-east coast of Mauritius, and the wreck gave Bernardin de Saint-Pierre the ending of his novel Paul et Virginie. The hotel that took the ship's name opened in 1975 a few miles down the same coast, on a peninsula at Belle Mare in the district of Flacq, with the sheltered water of a lagoon on one side and the open ocean on the other. One&Only Le Saint Géran has been the best-known hotel address in Mauritius for most of the fifty years since.

History

The hotel was built under Sol Kerzner's Southern Sun group and became the flagship of Sun International's island resorts before passing to Kerzner's later company and its One&Only brand in 2002. It made its name in the 1980s and 1990s as the Mauritius hotel of choice for European and South African visitors, with a guest list that included heads of state and film actors. In January 2017 it closed for the most complete rebuild in its history and reopened in December that year with new rooms, restaurants and public spaces.

Architecture and design

The peninsula is the whole point. The hotel runs along a narrow spit of land about a kilometre and a half long, so that most rooms have the lagoon or the ocean within a few steps, and the beach wraps around the end. Buildings are two storeys and white, with thatched roofs over the public areas and gardens of coconut palms and casuarinas between the room wings. The 2017 rebuild lightened the interiors, replaced the old colonial dark timber with pale wood and linen, and opened the ground-floor rooms directly onto the sand.

Rooms and suites

The rooms and suites, a little over 160 of them, are arranged in low wings along both shores, each with a terrace or balcony facing the water. Ocean rooms take the trade winds and the surf on the reef; lagoon rooms have calmer water for swimming. The Villa One at the tip of the peninsula has its own pool and staff. A second pool and a children's club serve the family end of the resort.

Dining

La Terrasse is the main restaurant, open-sided and facing the lagoon for breakfast and dinner. Tapasake, the Japanese restaurant, stands on stilts over the water with a counter and a terrace that fills at sunset. PRIME is the steakhouse. A beach restaurant serves lunch on the sand, and the bars include one by the main pool and one on the lagoon jetty. The hotel's rum collection is one of the larger ones on the island.

Wellness

The One&Only Spa stands in its own garden with treatment pavilions, a hair salon and a fitness centre, and the resort's nine-hole golf course, designed by Gary Player, runs along the lagoon side of the peninsula. Water sports include sailing, waterskiing, kitesurfing on the lagoon and diving on the reef, and the hotel keeps a boat for deep-sea fishing. Tennis courts sit among the gardens.

Weddings and events

Weddings are a long-standing part of the hotel's business. Ceremonies take place on the beach at the tip of the peninsula or in the gardens, with receptions at La Terrasse or in private dining spaces. Mauritius permits foreign civil marriages with advance paperwork, which the hotel coordinates. Meeting rooms serve corporate groups and incentives, and the resort can be bought out.

Location

Belle Mare and Poste de Flacq are on the east coast, about an hour by road from Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport in the south-east and an hour and a quarter from Port Louis. The east coast takes the trade winds, which keeps it cooler than the west in summer and gives the ocean side of the peninsula its surf. As a luxury hotel in Mauritius it has age on its side: no other address on the island has held its rank for as long.