North Island, a Luxury Collection Resort
Two hundred hectares for eleven villas, built out of the timber cleared while the island was being repaired.
North Island holds two hundred and one hectares, about five hundred acres, of granite peak, palm forest and beach thirty kilometres north of Mahé. Eleven villas stand on it. That is forty-five acres to a villa and the loosest density in this register apart from Frégate, its neighbour along the same chain. Four beaches sit at the points of the compass, which is the practical reason the island works all year: whichever way the monsoon blows, one of them is sheltered. Access is by helicopter or boat and there is nothing else on the island at all.
The island was bought in 1997 after the coconut industry collapsed and left it overrun. The Noah's Ark Project set out, in its own words, to turn the environmental clock back two hundred years: rats and pigs eradicated, native forest replanted, Seychelles white-eye and magpie robin reintroduced, and now the highest density of nesting green turtles among the inner islands. The villas went up in 2003 and were built from timber and stone taken off the island during that clearance. Management passed from Wilderness Safaris to Marriott's Luxury Collection in 2019; the resort's revenue funds the restoration.
The island is the building material. What was cut down to repair the place became the houses standing on it. Few estates in this register are made so literally of their own ground.
Restoration paid for by occupancy. Eleven villas exist to fund five hundred acres of repair. The arithmetic runs the opposite way to a resort that clears land to add rooms, and it is the whole argument of the property.
Who it is not for
North Island is wrong for travellers who want a choice of places to be: eleven villas and four beaches are the whole of it, and there is no second property to walk to. It is wrong for anyone uneasy in a helicopter, which is the usual arrival. It is wrong for guests who expect a finished landscape, because much of the island is still mid-repair and looks it. For a Seychelles island where the ground is rationed by protocol rather than by scarcity, Frégate is along the same chain.
Sources
- Operator and trade material - island of 201 hectares, about 500 acres, some thirty kilometres north of Mahé, with eleven villas and four beaches at the compass points; access by helicopter or boat; villas built from materials harvested on the island during its reclamation
- Conservation record - the Noah's Ark Project began after the island's purchase in 1997 with the stated aim of turning the environmental clock back two hundred years; invasive rats and pigs eradicated; the island now carries the highest density of nesting green turtles in the inner Seychelles
- Management coverage - the resort opened in 2003 under Wilderness Safaris and passed to Marriott's Luxury Collection in 2019.
Verification
- Official source
- Not yet checked
- Sources disagree
- the island is given as 201 hectares, 500 acres and 520 acres. The first two agree; the third does not. Tenure and the current conservation partner are unverified.
- Property confirmation
- Pending
- Last verified
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Booking
Private Resorts arranges each stay on request, quoting the rates available for the resort and dates. No benefit should be assumed unless it is confirmed in writing for the individual reservation.
Request a proposalClassified by The Resort Collection House · The Register · Edition 2026 · LHL-E-284
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