Seychelles

Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas

Price per night from$1,504.84

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR1,384.62), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Wholly holistic hideaway

Setting

Thatched villas with bay views

Offering all the peace and privacy of a monastic cell, but thankfully none of its spartan nature, Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas, overlooking Anse Louis beach on the southwest coast of Mahé in the Seychelles, is where thatched roofs sit like dots of corn-yellow in a palette of greens and blues. It’s the ideal place to drag your knotted back and furrowed brow for a spot of proper relaxation. All the Indian Ocean clichés – palms rippling in the warm breeze, white sand abutting turquoise waters – are made reality at this serene stay, and all you have to do is roll out your rattan sun mat in the midst of them.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A romantic bath with a bottle of champagne for two

Facilities

Photos Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Thirty villas.

Check–Out

11am, complimentary late check-out until 6pm for those staying in the Premier Villa (minimum three-night stay, subject to availability). Check-in, 2pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £1616.23 (€1,890), including tax at 36.5 per cent.

More details

Rates include welcome champagne, non-motorised watersports and exercise classes.

Also

While staying at the hotel you'll have a personal villa host on hand day and night to handle your wildest whims.

At the hotel

Spa, fitness centre, free non-motorised watersports, excursions to neighbouring islands. In rooms: flatscreen TV, DVD player, iPod docking station, Hermès bath products. Villas all have private infinity pools and sunken outdoor double baths.

Our favourite rooms

The Premier Ocean View Pool Villa is sat on the edge of the peninsula with wonderful 180-degree vistas of waves and wiggling palm fronds.

Poolside

Made from black lava stone, the main communal infinity pool offers an ideal vantage point over the hotel’s long, white-sand beach.

Spa

A range of traditional treatments are offered in the thatched-roof, open-air pavilions that make up Anantara's spa. Choose from a menu of scrubs, wraps, massages, facials, Vichy treatments and bathing rituals. While the adults are relaxing with a couples massage, little Smiths can go for their own treatments.

Packing tips

Bring a snorkel. There’s a reef, teeming with the sort of primary-coloured sealife that you would normally only see in an aquarium, right in front of the hotel. Maia can also arrange scuba-diving excursions for an extra cost.

Also

Stays in Peninsula Ocean View Pool Villas also include one bespoke dining experience (excluding drinks), one 60-minute Maia Signature Massage for up to two guests per stay, and early check-in or late check-out (until 6pm, subject to availability).

Children

Little ones are welcome in the Premier Beach Pool Villa, where babysitting is available from €30 an hour. Under-fours stay for free; it’s €110 for ages five to 11; over-12s are €475. The Very Important Kids programme curates personalised experiences.

Best for

Kids of all ages.

Recommended rooms

Little ones are welcome in the Premier Beach Pool Villa; all-inclusive rates are free for under-fours; it’s €110 for ages five to 11; over-12s are €475.

Activities

Maia’s free kids' programme includes cooking classes, sand castle building, painting, and crafting with the resort’s recreation team and local artists. Parents can join in creatives classes, or leave littles to exercise their artistic liberty in peace. 

Swimming pool

Waterbabies rejoice: every villa has a private pool. Kids can take part in parent-supervised swimming and snorkelling lessons in the main infinity pool too.

Meals

There’s a dining menu specifically designed for fussy-eaters; meals can be adapted on request too. 

Babysitting

Babysitting is available from €30 an hour.

No need to pack

Baby cots, highchairs, pint-sized cutlery, puzzles, colouring-in kit, or outdoor toys.

Also

Family-friendly film nights, snorkeling adventures, pirate treasure hunts, canoes and paddleboard excursions, helicopter tours and boat rides can all be arranged on request.

Food and Drink

Photos Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas food and drink

Top Table

Ask your villa host to set up a candlelit table for you on the beach, where you can feed each other foie gras by the light of the silvery moon. Or, book the private table in the wine cellar.

Dress Code

Linen trousers for the men; floaty, Jade Jagger-esque dresses for the ladies.

Hotel restaurant

Anytime, anywhere is the motto at Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas, so whether you find yourself feeling snackish at midnight, or you want to mark a special occasion with a private meal on the beach at sunset, you'll never go hungry here. Chefs knock up exquisite Indian, Asian and Creole cuisine in the open-sided Tec-Tec. Candle-lit private dinners can be arranged (for a fee or complimentary for Premier Villa guests) on the beach, in your villa, and up on the hilltop; after dark the hotel's helipad is transformed into a romantic dining area with views across to Anse Boileau and Anse Louis from one of the highest points on the peninsula. Dining at 20, the hotel's wine cellar, is an intimate affair: its one table make it a rather romantic setting for sipping on craft cocktails or sampling the extensive wine collection, before tucking into fusion fare.

Hotel bar

Enjoy cocktails and light bites on the bleached decking of the informal Sunset Pool Bar, while looking out over both the hotel's main pool and the Indian Ocean. Their cocktail list includes tipples for all times of day and occasions; the resident mixologists are always happy to guide you through their favourites. A refreshing poolside mojito is our cocktail of choice during the day, then at sundown swap to a Starlight Collin which is made with aged rum, lightly sweetened lemon juice and ginger soda. Maia also has an impressive wine collection, and the resident sommelier will be happy to introduce you to new favourites. Private tastings in the hotel’s wine cellar can be arranged.

Last orders

Tec-Tec and the Sunset Pool Bar are open from 7am to 10.30pm; 20 is open from 7pm to 11pm.

Room service

Room and all over the resort service is available throughout the day.

Location

Photos Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas location
Address
Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas
Anse Louis
Mahé
Seychelles

Planes

Located at Anse Louis on the island's south-west coast, the resort is a 25-minute drive from Seychelles International Airport. The hotel offers a chauffeur service to and from the airport.

Automobiles

The resort is 30 minutes by car from the capital city of Victoria.

Worth getting out of bed for

Home to a kaleidoscope of corals and tropical fish, peaceful Anse Louis bay is ideal for snorkelling. Feeling like a fish supper? Ask your villa host to organise a deep-sea fishing trip for tuna, marlin, swordsfish or other oceangoing game, and bring back your catch for your personal chef to prepare for you in your villa or on the beach. In the north of Mahé, Beau Vallon bay is your first port of call for windsurfing, waterskiing, parasailing and other sea-bound thrills. On land, explore the local landscape by horse or on foot, trekking through forests to waterfalls, up mountains and across beaches. Or, for an insight into Seychellois life, visit one of Mahé’s vibrant markets in the centre of town. Back at the hotel, Anantara's spa has an huge range of luxurious treatments; try the ‘four hands’ massage or purifying mud wrap to the soporific sound of waterfalls and birdsong. The spa also runs free alfresco group classes in Hatha yoga and Qi Gong (private sessions can be arranged). Your villa host can also organise tours of the other islands by boat or helicopter.

Local restaurants

For a taste of authentic Creole cuisine, Chez Plume is a few minutes’ drive away in Anse Boileau. Specialities include bat paté, fish fillet in passion fruit sauce, ginger infused crab and slipper lobster. It’s closed on Sundays and is only open for dinner. Set in an old plantation house, Marie Antoinette on Serret Road is another great option for authentic Creole fare in a rustic setting. Its walls are adorned with memorabilia and there is a playpen for the resident giant tortoises outside.

Local cafés

For an entertaining and very hands-on meal, check out Maria’s Rock Café in Baie Lazare. This cavernous and decidedly quirky joint may have a potentially off-putting pirate theme but there’s no denying the quality of the food – you can barbecue fresh fish, giant shrimps or local meats on a hot stone. Anchor Café, in Anse a la Mouche, is run by a friendly Seychellois woman and her American husband. Their specialities include blackened fish, tuna in tequila and eggplant fritters. Closed on Sundays. Kaz Zanana is a good bet for a quiet lunch or coffee. It’s a restored Creole townhouse in Victoria where you can sit back and relish a feast of savoury and sweet treats.

Reviews

Photos Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas reviews
Sophie Dean

Anonymous review

By Sophie Dean, Fashion queen

Mr Smith and I are definitely in need of a romantic holiday. The day after our wedding, we leave our two small children behind with the grandparents, along with a stressful wedding-planning few months. I can feel myself relax as the irritation of my mother’s oft-repeated sentence, ‘You should have got married before you had kids’ starts to become a distant memory.

As the plane descends from a 12-hour flight to the Seychelles, we gawp at the beautiful series of white sandy bays that fringe the isle of Mahe. Our driver glides along a winding coastal road weaving through tiny villages backdropped by lush green mountains. The island is Creole- and French-speaking but since 19th-century British colonisation there’s been left-hand drive and English road signs. After 25 minutes we approach Anse Louis on the southwest; we spy the delicate thatched roofed hideaways of Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas, perched high on a hill, peeping through the trees.

Tropical gardens give way to a refuge of pure tranquility. Greeted at the gates by our own butler she bypasses any mundane check-in and whisks us onto a posh golf buggy to climb the narrow lanes through fronds and flowers. A pair of large carved native wooden doors open to a stone-and-pebble pathway to our villa almost hidden in the jungle on this isolated peninsula.

Designed by American landscape artist and architect Bill Bensley, the villas echo each other in design, size and floorplan, all intended to have a Balinese air. 12 acres of coconut and mango groves and rare plant species ensconce the 30 villas and most of the luxury abodes have Indian Ocean view. The shorefront villas are beloved by families who want direct access to the beach; the rest nestle into the hillside with heart-fluttering ocean views and maximum privacy thanks to their higher location. Ahem, did you hear that Mr Smith?

When a resort requires that the people who bring you drinks do yoga each morning, and it chooses its butlers according to their ‘emotional intelligence’, you know you’re a long way from Butlins. Over just-squeezed juices and a divine tropical fruit platter, Sopa invites us to take full advantage of always having her at our beck and call. Coconuts left hanging on the outside of the wooden doors will mean ‘do not disturb’, and we have her direct line should we need her assistance at any time. Cooking our breakfast, helping plan our days, discreet housekeeping, luggage duty (I especially love the unpacking service as there’s no drearier task on arrival), all fall to an eager Sopa. Even dinner reservations, changing the iPod soundtrack (our music preferences were pre-requested) and running our bath (she needs an hour’s notice it is so deep) are our butler’s domain.

At first it seems hard to get used to. But it isn’t long before I have our trustworthy Sopa sewing a marabou feather back onto my white cocktail dress. Nothing is too much trouble. Previous guests even requested the outside bath be filled with seawater, which had to be carried up in containers from the beach.

A ballroom of a bedroom hosts a superking bed with the softest Egyptian cotton sheets; giant doors slide away to reveal the view over a vast infinity pool that seemingly merges with the Indian Ocean. Three showers (all stocked with queen of luxury cosmetics, La Prairie) include two palm-flanked alfresco numbers that have you bathing as though in the depths of the jungle.

Padding past fat daybeds, an outside bathtub, sunloungers semi-submerged in a shallow pool and a lower deck for nabbing the late-afternoon sun, we skip down wooden steps down the hill to our own private swathe of white sand. ‘It’s like having our own desert island,’ smiles Mr Smith with a familiar glint in his eye.

Fishing, snorkelling and cookery lessons can be arranged by your butler, sure. But are you surprised to hear some Maia guests aren’t seen for a week after arrival? As Maia prides itself on its gardens I prise myself from Mr Smith and our private paradise to trail the head gardener on a tour of the hundreds species of flora. Cinnamon and lemongrass is among the vegetation tenderly planted and lovingly cared for, amid an abundance of the double coconuts, or Coco de Mer. Native to the Seychelles, story has it when sailors spotted the shells floating in the sea they believed them to be mermaid derrières. (When I relate this to Mr Smith, he tells me with another twinkle, he thought it was a posh erotic boutique in Covent Garden.)

Somewhere that is certain to coax out of your villa: Maia’s spa. Following the dainty lanes through red hibiscus blooms, helinconia, bread fruit trees, elephant ears and poinciana plants that make Maia so enchanting, we reach the spa’s imposing hand-carved wooden doors. Behind these open-air massage beds on low, teak platforms are surrounded by rainforest: all we can hear is birdsong and water trickling among the rocks. Treatments are a mix of Californian and Indonesian inspirations carried out by technicians who have trained for six months in Bali. Tensions, however pent-up, melt away – as this recent bride and fashion-stylist mum can attest.

Sopa runs our fragrant bubble bath on our last night and sprinkles it with frangipani petals plucked from surrounding trees. She leaves us to watch the sun disappear behind the rocks from our tub. Tealights lure us from our ablutions down the steps to our lower deck where she has set out nibbles and a bottle of champagne on ice. Magical. Then, while we sip our aperitifs, the restaurant chef prepares a private barbecue of lobster, scallops and fresh fish with mango and spices. Beat that for a memory in the honeymoon archive.

On our departure, Sopa presents me with a basket of hand-tied bundles of fresh lemongrass. They are ready to steep in hot water when I get home, a reminder of what I sipped during our special stay at what can only be described as the closest thing on earth to heaven. Relaxation is the order of the day – and night – at Anantara Maia Seychelles Villas, everything is done to ensure guests are pampered into a long-lasting state of complete serenity. We feel not only thoroughly spoiled, but enriched and nurtured, having been treated to time in our very own private dreamworld.

Book now

Price per night from $1,504.84