Villa or hotel in Mauritius: which one for your group?

A five-star hotel on the north coast charges per room per night, with breakfast or half board. Four rooms for a week in high season adds up quickly, and extras such as dinners, drinks and the minibar come on top. A villa is priced per night for the whole house, whatever the number of guests up to eight. Divide by eight and the rate per person is usually well below a comparable hotel room, with the kitchen reducing the food bill further. The gap narrows for two people, where a hotel room is the cheaper option.

This is where a villa wins without discussion. Four en-suite bedrooms on separate floors instead of four rooms along a corridor; a 95 square metre living room instead of a lobby; a pool you share with nobody; a terrace where breakfast can take two hours. Nobody reserves sun loungers at seven in the morning. Children can be loud, adults can be quiet, and grandparents can retreat. The villa also has what hotels rarely do: a cinema, a games room with a bar and billiards, a gym and a wine cellar in the basement.

A hotel gives you three restaurants, a bar and room service. A villa gives you a kitchen, housekeeping five days a week and the restaurants of Grand Baie and Trou aux Biches ten minutes away. Most of our guests cook breakfast, eat lunch out or on the terrace, and go out for dinner three or four nights a week. For the other nights, a private chef can come to the villa; we put you in touch and you agree the menu and the price directly. Groceries can be delivered. What a villa does not have is somebody at a desk 24 hours a day; we are reachable by WhatsApp and the housekeeper is there most mornings.

Hotels on the lagoon have the beach at the bottom of the garden, with loungers, towels and a boat house. From the villa, Mont Choisy beach is three minutes by car or twenty on foot, public, long and shaded, with no loungers and no bar; you bring a towel and a cool box. Water sports are hired on the beach or in Grand Baie. If you want to walk from your bed into the sea, a hotel does that better. If you want a pool at the door and a beach when you choose, the villa does.

In a hotel the evening is dinner, a show and bed. In a villa it is a swim at dusk with the garden lights on, drinks on the terrace, dinner at home or in Grand Baie, then a film in the cinema or a game of billiards while the children sleep upstairs. Guests tell us the evenings are the reason they book a villa again.

Two people for four or five nights. A honeymoon where you want to do nothing at all and be served. A stay where the beach must be a step away. A group that does not want to drive or organise anything. All good reasons, and the north has excellent hotels at Trou aux Biches, Mont Choisy and Grand Baie for exactly that. For a family of six or eight staying a week, or two couples who like each other's company, the villa is the better holiday and the better value.