Little Paradises

Twenty-five keys or fewer, on an island the property holds alone. The number is not a boast about exclusivity; it is a description of what a day feels like. At this size the staff learn your name on the first evening because there is no alternative, the kitchen cooks to the table rather than to a service, and the beach in front of your villa is empty for reasons of arithmetic rather than policy.

53 records sit here, and the shelf spans further than the key count suggests. North Island holds eleven villas on two hundred hectares of rewilded granite. Kandolhu holds thirty on an island you can walk round in ten minutes, and puts four restaurants on it. Cousine takes ten guests on a nature reserve with a resident conservation team. What they share is that the island is the unit and nothing else is competing for it.

The trade is real and worth stating plainly. Small islands cannot carry choice: one kitchen, one bar, one dive boat, and if the chef is having an off week there is nowhere else to eat. Facilities that a hundred-villa resort funds easily — a spa complex, a children's club, a gym worth the name — are usually absent or token here. What is bought instead is the absence of other guests.

Wrong for travellers who measure a stay by the number of restaurants, and wrong for families who need a programme to keep children occupied. Island Resorts and Island Worlds are built for both, on islands just as private.