Warning, this is a long review! I hope that guests and staff find it helpful.

Summary: the hotel is quiet and intimate, all areas well maintained, outdoor areas are pretty, the staff are ALL so friendly and helpful, the location is beautiful, and it was hot and sunny almost the whole time.

LOCATION

From what we heard during our stay, the north side of the island is the best for weather, so we picked well! We had great weather almost all day every day. The hotel itself has Jurassic Park style extremely tall gates! What an entrance lol! I didn’t get out much (for reasons I’ll mention later) but we did spot a restaurant, pharmacy, shop and garage within walking distance of the hotel. Grand Baie is a short taxi ride away (about 600 MUR each way), or you can borrow a hotel bike and cycle.

The hotel is located right on the beach. The beach is sandy, but the sandy part isn’t massively wide, and it’s a little steep. Not saying it’s bad, that’s just how it is. There are rocks and coral from the shallows and out. Had hoped to snorkel from the hotel, but an injury blocked some of our plans, so we can’t comment on snorkelling in the end.

We did a food tour in Grand Baie with Grand Bay Home-Made Food Tour which we highly recommend (almost 4 hours, and if I remember rightly we had street-food starters, octopus and pasta/noodle main from a local café, seafood salad and drinks from a funky courtyard restaurant, and dessert from a backstreet café). The beach at Grand Baie is long, sandy and looked lovely.

Another day we ventured a little bit further up the coast to Pereybere which has a smaller beach and seemed to be more popular with locals. We did a glass bottom boat from there. Sadly, didn’t see much sea life below us as most of the coral doesn’t look healthy 

Mosquitos? We were there in May and didn’t see a single one!

STAFF

The staff are exceptional. We read such good reviews before we went, and we weren’t disappointed. All the staff are excellent. They understand that customer satisfaction is a priority (without that, the hotel would not have any guests, right!) Obviously there are some members of staff who mix more with guests than others. EG Avi (restaurant), Ishmael (bar), Kevin (manager) and Sam (driver) but ALL of the staff seemed to really care about guests and would go out of their way to ask if everything was ok, and do anything they could to help. I wish I could name them all but I’m terrible with names so cannot remember them all. Of course there are the members of staff who work behind the scenes too – they all deserve praise. Thank you to all of them for making our stay so exceptional.

ROOM

There are 20 rooms off the garden (10 on each side, 5 at ground level, 5 at 1st floor level), plus a villa, and I think a couple of rooms at the back by the spa. We had room 108. We actually thought we had the best room as it was perfectly positioned between the pool/beach, and the restaurant. It was on the ground floor which meant we could walk straight out to the garden, pool, beach, restaurant etc. 1st floor rooms obviously get a better view, but access to those is round the back, so less practical. Our room included a large bed (queen size?), TV, minibar (very expensive), coffee machine (3 free pods), seats, bathroom, WC, cupboard space, safe etc. Plus a sunny terrace with seating, and a small garden which gave us a bit of distance and privacy from people using the path that ran down the side of the garden past the rooms. All rooms seem to be pretty much the same. The hotel is small so even if people go past it’s not intrusive – eventually you’ll get to know most people anyway! There are a couple of rooms at the front of the hotel near the spa, but I’m not sure that they are used much.

OUTDOOR

All rooms (except for the 2 near the spa) and the main restaurant and bar look directly out onto the lawn, with the pool, pool-bar, and outdoor restaurant beyond that. The beach is a few steps down beyond the pool (!!warning about the steps at the end of this review!!). There are 8 sun-loungers by the pool, and a few on the beach. Most guests seem to be sensible and don’t throw their towels out at 7am! Generally guests will not dump their towels on sun-loungers then disappear for hours. Though for the first time ever I had to really try to make sure I got a sun-lounger every day because of “the injury”, but only once did I fail to get one.

DINING

Well what can I say. The reviews about the food aren’t wrong. This was one of the reasons we chose this hotel, along with it being small, adult-only, and great staff. The food is just excellent.

You may have to ask what hot food is on offer at breakfast as we didn’t find the info forthcoming on the first day. But they seem to offer cooked breakfasts (cooked to order) as well as the buffet fruit, cheese, ham, bread, cereals, yoghurt, pastries, and I think pancakes too! I asked for only bacon a couple of times (for a bacon sarnie) and they brought a mountain of it out for me each time. Nice and crispy, as requested  And there’s always tomato juice, fruit juices, and sparkling wine available too.

We only had lunch a couple of times. We were half board, so lunch cost extra. A bit expensive to be honest, but good sized portions and very tasty.

Complimentary cake and tea/coffee are offered in the outdoor restaurant every day. The cakes are always tasty and moist.

Canapés are brought to your room every evening around 6pm. They were quite nice, usually a little something on a small slice of toasted baguette, or something like that.

We were half board and dinner every night is 3 courses (sometimes you get an amuse bouche too). Every dish is plated up well and looks impressive. The flavours are always spot on. If you like seafood you’ll love this place. The tuna in particular is mouth-watering. Desserts in foreign countries can be hit and miss but these guys don’t fail to impress. The dinner is a set menu, but it’s possible to swap things out from the main menu (some things have a supplementary charge).

Every Thursday is Mauritian buffet night. Cocktails on the beach, chat with the staff and the other guests, then up to the restaurant for the buffet and live music. It’s a nice thing to do and is a change of pace. But although I liked the buffet, it’s not something I’d want to have every night. I much preferred the menu options.

One disappointing thing (for me) was the BBQ night which was an extra 1000 MUR pp. Personally, I don’t think that ANY BBQ is worth paying £20 for, let alone £20 EXTRA. I opted to stick with the set menu that night and I didn’t feel that I missed out at all.

One night we paid an extra 2500 MUR (£50) pp for a seafood platter, served in the outdoor restaurant. OK it’s quite a big supplement to pay, but we would have paid MUCH more in the UK for something like that. I don’t remember the exact details but we had an amuse bouche, octopus salad starter, HUGE seafood platter (which we couldn’t finish), and the best chocolate fondant I’ve ever had. The seafood platter included about 8-10 LARGE mussels, 2 enormous mouth-watering tuna steaks, cuttlefish or squid (?), large prawns, 2 lobsters, white fish (?), plus vegetables and fries. Plus a very tasty veloute. Check out my photos to see how good it looked! There’s no way we could finish it all! We were doubtful about paying that much extra but it was totally worth it.

TRIPS

We did just one excursion through the hotel (Sanjeev booked the South island tour for us), but we also had Sam the driver take us to a privately booked excursion near La Morne (Lydia Boat private tour (excellent)), and he took us to the airport for our flight home. The hotel excursions are a little more expensive than you might be able to get elsewhere, but for the convenience and nice ride in a spacious jaguar with Sam looking after us, we felt it was worth the extra money. There was a little miscommunication between staff about pickup times, but it wasn’t the end of the world, and actually the trip was a couple of hours longer than planned but Sam never complained.

The South island tour was ok. Some of it was a bit underwhelming, but that wasn’t the hotel or Sam’s fault, that’s just how the tourist attractions are. Sam chatted as he drove, giving us information about our surroundings. And he was really considerate in his choice of drop off points, and seemed to be on high alert and ready to pick us up when we needed. The only thing we really didn’t like at all was the restaurant that we went to for lunch. Ruben restaurant, somewhere near le Morne. Honestly, I reckon they have a “tourist” menu and a locals menu. We had 2 starters (very basic Mauritian fritters), a simple chicken main, and 2 drinks, and it cost about 20000 MUR (£40). In the cafe close to the hotel that would have cost about 600 MUR (£12). The food was mediocre at best, the restaurant itself felt more like a tired and dingy café. No view. Staff weren’t particularly friendly. Definitely recommend that Sam doesn’t take guests there again. We felt completely ripped off. It was a lot of money to pay for something that was so incredibly disappointing. It was a massive cost in proportion to the cost of the whole day trip. Not worth it and unfortunately it’s a memory I can’t shake.

RECOMMENDATIONS

For a balanced review, it’s only fair to suggest recommendations if we have any. We do! :D

Wine – please add some budget wines to the menu. 2500 MUR (£50) is a lot to pay if you just want a basic bottle of “plonk”. I didn’t find a menu for wine by the glass and it was only after seeing other guests ordering that I realised it was an option. 400 MUR (£8) per glass is ok (and cheaper proportionally than by the bottle) and the wine is very nice. Also you may be lucky with free refills.

Tuille – they look beautiful but please make them tastier. The parmesan tuilles were great. The others didn’t really taste of anything, so we didn’t eat them.

Lighting – the restaurants look lovely at night with the soft lighting. But actually it’s really impossible to read the menus without getting phone torches out!

Menus– it’s great that we could swap a la carte items in instead of a set menu dish. But the menu is physically too big to hold comfortably without worrying you’re going to smack your partner across the face with it :D

!!!! Steps down to the beach – this is my only big complaint. The steps are not horizontally level, and a couple of steps are tiled, with tiles at all all different wonky angles (ie not horizontal). So the surface is incredibly uneven. I was unfortunate and found that out the hard way on the first day of our holiday. I sprained my ankle very badly as my ankle went over as I stepped on one of the tiles. I WAS paying attention as I went down the steps, and NO alcohol was involved! Luckily one of the guests was a doctor and offered to have a quick look (thank you!), so I didn’t go to a medical centre while I was on holiday. Several members of staff rushed over to help me to a chair and make sure I was comfortable, then brought some ice over. From that point on I had to keep my leg elevated as much as possible (I can’t tell you how much it hurt those first few days!) Throughout our stay the staff asked after me, and gave me ice for the swelling every evening.

Sadly the injury did hinder our plans somewhat. We had planned to go for walks the beach or into town, go snorkelling, go cycling, wander round local attractions etc, but that became impossible with my injury. I managed a couple of day trips: One on a boat, so no walking but lots of sitting and holding my leg off the deck, trying not to bash or put weight on my ankle when we hit waves. Walking with a crutch from the boat through the surf up to the beach was an experience! The other trip was the South Island Tour and Sam (the driver) was very considerate and took me as close as possible to the attractions, and when we’d finished he’d spot us and be waiting with the car as close as he could to us so that I didn’t have to walk far. Thank you Sam :) But overall I couldn’t even walk to the local shop or pharmacy, and so my poor husband had to do regular trips on his own to stock up on supplies. I was forced to grab a sun-lounger every morning so that I could have somewhere comfortable to spend the day with my foot elevated (I have a very one-sided tan now lol). We’re really not the type to rush out in the morning and hog sun-loungers all day normally, but on this holiday we had no choice….

My ongoing story: I saw my GP when I got home, and he sent me for an Xray because he was concerned that I might have a fracture due to the type of pain I had. Luckily no fracture. But 7 weeks on and I still have to use a crutch if walking more than 20 metres, and I suffer for a 2-3 days after if I walk much further. I still have to go down steps one-sided as I can’t bend my injured foot enough to use that properly, and I’m only just feeling my ankle is strong enough to drive. Still missing out on doing “normal” activities and I think it will be some weeks or months until I’m back to normal. This is really the only reason I'm not giving 5 stars. The injury has had a big impact on my life. If I could give 4.5 stars I would.

So for all future guests, PLEASE TAKE EXTRA CARE ON THOSE STEPS. My injury hasn’t affected me just for a few days as I first thought it would, it's still an ongoing issue :'( And @Kevin, please PLEASE have those steps levelled. Putting a hand-rail there may help (assuming guests have a free hand to use), but it’s won’t address the real issue.

FINALLY

All that being said, although we were forced to spend most of our time at the hotel, it wasn’t a terrible experience, because the hotel is quiet and uncrowded, the pool and garden areas are well maintained and pretty, the staff are so friendly, generous and helpful, the location is beautiful, and it was hot and sunny the whole time. What better place to have to put your feet up and relax! I hope that one day we will have the chance to go back. :)

We stayed for 4 nights as the final destination on our honeymoon. When we arrived, Kevin (the hotel manager) greeted us personally which I thought was a lovely touch. During our conversation, we mentioned that they pride themselves on making every stay personable and they absolutely did!

It is a very small, boutique hotel on a lovely position overlooking the sea. The staff are all really lovely and would often stop and have a chat with you. It really felt like they wanted to get to know you and they would always offer to help out to go above and beyond. A special shout-out to Ismael who would do anything for you.

Whilst it was our honeymoon, it was also my wife's birthday. Due to this, they kindly upgraded us to a Suite (first floor) but also helped me setup a magical day which she will never forget. The highlight was a special romantic candlelight dinner by the beach, where the staff laid flowers around the table and delivered a 5-course meal with champagne. The food was excellent and the seafood platter for the main was to die for.

The location is great. On the edge of Grand Baie but also a stone's through to Mont Choisy beach which was one of the best beaches we experiences across Mauritius.

Overall, a wonderful stay.

We visited Seapoint for my fiancés 30th birthday and it was just perfect. I emailed beforehand to let them know we were celebrating and upon arrival Kevin (hotel manager) told us we’d been upgraded to the villa - it was beyond anything we could have imagined. Sunrise views from our bed, beautifully decorated and comfortable, and the hot tub on the terrace topped it off!

We are both vegan and the team were wonderfully accommodating - nothing was too much. They made us tasty dinners each evening, and even made my fiancé a vegan cake on his birthday!

The views from the pool and beach are beautiful, with a completely relaxing and chilled vibe.

It was a perfect stay, and I cannot recommend Seapoint enough - I would stay again in a heartbeat.