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Petit St Vincent is an extremely low key and elegant resort in the southern Grenadines. Set on its own private island in perfect blue sea, it already has a natural seclusion and exclusivity, but the small hotel assures absolute privacy and comfort for its guests by the leisurely spacing of its cottages, of which there are just 22, each one barely visible from the next, ranged along the island’s dramatic ocean shore and clifftops. There are some simple activities at PSV, as it is usually known, the beach, tennis, yoga and sailing trips, but life on the island is kept intentionally uncluttered (there are no televisions nor even phones in the bedrooms). What PSV does best - better than anywhere else probably - is offer the chance to do very little in extreme and unfussy comfort, occasionally in the company of other well-heeled travellers. PSV is trusty and tranquil and has timeless tropical simplicity. It is the ultimate in refined Caribbean seclusion.
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KEY FEATURES
| Luxury resort, Caribbean private island, all-inclusive plan, 22 cottages, some oceanfront, each with living room, drinks trolley, bedroom with two queen size beds, deck (not TVs or phones), bathrooms with sunken stone showers, fan-ventilated (no need for air-conditioning). Central area with dining room and reception, bar, restaurant, beach restaurant (for lunch), beach ‘huts’ with shaded hammocks, loungers and service from the restaurant, windsurfers, small sailing dinghies, kayaks and snorkelling gear, exercise trail, tennis court, yoga deck with instructor, day sails to other Grenadine islands. |
STYLE
| A natural, typically Grenadine feel, artfully simple. The cottages and main areas are built of tropical hardwoods, terracotta floors and walls of stone quarried on the island. Extremely low key but refined atmosphere |
CLIENT PROFILE
| Many extremely wealthy, well-travelled guests, in search of complete privacy, in a good mix of nationalities |
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The difficulty of getting to PSV – which involves at least two flights and a boat ride – is of course one of the island’s strongest features. Where so many hotels talk of seclusion and tranquillity, PSV can go further. It uses its space to maximum advantage to offer ultimate privacy – there are just a handful of cottages in more than 100 acres of land. You don’t even have to see any of the other guests if you do not want to. You can spend a week in your room in perfect seclusion and comfort. PSV is the most complete hideaway in the Caribbean.
On the last part of their journey, guests are ferried across from Union Island by boat. You approach PSV from the north, passing the western shoreline, where the beach huts hide among the palms and white cedar trees, and then you draw up at the main dock on a startlingly blue sea. Your first impression is an expanse of lawn dotted with trees, above which sits the pavilion. It is all extremely tranquil.
The bedrooms are barely to be seen. They are over on another side of the island. But this is where you are taken straight away (check in forms can be dealt with later), in one of the island’s Mini Mokes. You pass the watersports area and the ‘gas station’ - complete with its classic Fifties petrol pump - and then follow the double concrete tracks laid in the earth, meandering under trees that reach right across the road above you. The rooms all look onto the Atlantic Ocean. Some are set right behind the sand, others stand on the rising ground, others still stand high on the slopes of Telescope Hill.
As you will see on entering your room, PSV has set out its stall firmly as classic Caribbean. While the rest of the area has seen waves of contemporary styles over the decades, PSV has kept a constant heading of stylish tropical simplicity, standing by the original cottages that were built by hand in the 60s, with their ‘blue bitch’ stone from the island and purple heart beams imported from Guyana. The feel is intentionally and elegantly simple, and like the hotel guests it is underwritten by a low key sophistication. There are no televisions or even phones in the rooms, but a drinks trolley stands by.
The rooms are each laid out slightly differently according to their position, but they are all large and open, and they all follow the same elegant theme. Floors are laid with rush matting over terracotta tiles and fittings are made with tropical greenheart and purple heart woods. Arches lead into dressing rooms and then the bathrooms, which again follow the theme of stone, used in the sunken stone showers. In the bathrooms the decorative wood is blue mahoe. The decoration in the bedrooms is elegant if unfussy. Furniture is covered with a light-coloured, classic palm print. The backdrop of stone and polished hewn wood gives the rooms a sense of cultivated rusticity (and it certainly strikes a different note from the rooms in other comparable Caribbean hotels, with their highly styled minimalism and contemporary design), but it is very comfortable and satisfyingly understated.
To get the best of the ocean view, the rooms are entirely glass-fronted. The glass slides back onto a private wooden deck that is surrounded by a low stone wall set with cultivated plants. Around the cottages there is a natural beauty in the low greenery, mainly bushes of cedar, which are etched with the patterns of the ocean winds and roll over in the breeze. The cottages are all practically invisible from one to the next, so your seclusion is assured. But PSV ensures it in other ways, too. In fact, if you do not want to leave your room you simply communicate by flag. Raising a yellow flag will bring room service. If you raise the red flag and you will not be disturbed, under any circumstances. (Well, almost any circumstances – the former owner did feel that he ought to inform a US Army general when the first Gulf War began.)
A track circles the island through the dry coastal greenery. Beyond the cottages, you re-emerge on the coast, arriving at the yoga deck, which has a lovely view north to Palm Island and Union. Yoga sessions are held here several mornings a week. From here the path meanders through the dry vegetation of the coastline to the main beach area on the leeward side of the island, West End Beach. As you walk or drive past you notice, secluded among the trees and low bushes, thatched shelters with a hammock, or two loungers side by side. Other Grenadine islands stand on the sea horizon around you, looking very attractive on the sea horizon - but satisfactorily far away. The beach track is regularly covered on ‘flag patrol’ by staff in Mini Mokes. It is the same flag system that operates as in the rooms, so you can order room service to your hammock if you like. Of course they will give you a lift if you want, but such is the pace of life at PSV that most guests are happy to walk.
Continuing around to the south side of the island you eventually come to the barbecue area (there is a grill there for lunch sometimes, and when there are gatherings, they are usually here) and an exercise trail. Beyond, you reach the main lawn again. If you head inland to the Pavilion, up on your left, then you pass the tennis court. The Pavilion contains the bar and dining room and the office. This is where, if you decide you need to, you communicate with the outside world (thought you can get mobile phones for your room if you wish). From the office it is a short walk past the small shop (which is stocked with beach essentials and a few books), and the Labrador sand pit (the owner has a handful of golden labs) to the bar and dining room.
Like the bedrooms, the bar is built with stone and natural wood. The bar itself is 40 feet long and curved, hand made of purple heart especially brought in from Guayana. The view looks out over copper boilers and cannon, bougainvillea and palms and then beyond through the trees dotting the lawn. It carries out onto the shallow sea and the Grenadian island of Petite Martinique a few hundred yards away across the water. Many of the staff of the hotel live on Petite Martinique.
With so little to complicate life, most couples have a simple rhythm to their day. It generally begins with breakfast in their room, followed by a walk down to the beach, the morning and lunch down there and then a return for afternoon tea at their cottage. After dark they head up to the main house for drinks before dinner. There are just a few communal activities, for instance the weekly evening barbecue with a steel band and occasional entertainment (piano and saxophone) in the evenings in the Pavilion, but as you can see even this is extremely low key. It is perhaps important to know that the guests who get the most out of staying at PSV tend to be fairly self-contained and are happy with their own company. Basically you are on a small private island with a maximum of 45 other guests. You may get to know them of course, as lazy daily rhythms coincide, but it is so quiet at times that you may not even notice them.
By its nature PSV is an expensive and fairly exclusive resort and sees some extremely wealthy and smart guests, but for all of this, the hotel makes a virtue of its elegant but uncomplicated simplicity. It has remained true to its vision since its conception in the 1960s, when it was born of coping with life in an extremely remote island. (In another decade the island would have ended up as part of a hotel chain, with over a hundred rooms, pressure on space and the intrusion of normal business practices), but PSV is something different. It is a place of sophisticated but extreme tranquillity. There are very few places like it in the Caribbean, or the world for that matter. |
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Beach & Swimming
Petit St Vincent is pretty much ringed with sand but there are several areas that class as ‘beaches’ more than elsewhere. The most popular place to spend the day is West End beach, on the protected western or leeward side of the island. Thatched shelters are set at intervals (like the cottages, completely private from one another), hidden among the palms and other trees. There are a couple of bathrooms, with a lavatory and a shower in this area and the staff leave water and ice during the day for you. Also some fruit is left hanging in boxes for you to eat. The beach huts operate the same flag system as the rooms, so you can make a request for room service to your hammock if you wish to eat lunch there. While nudity is not officially permitted in St Vincent and the Grenadines, practically speaking people do go topless in the secluded sections of this beach.
The Atlantic beach has lovely sand but the water is quite wild and it is often windy. It is good to walk but only good for sunbathing on certain days. You will no doubt come across ‘Breakfoot’ Beach (near the main jetty). It was called so because when owner Haze Richardson broke his leg, this is where he would do his rehabilitation exercises. So are places named in the Caribbean.
For a half day outing you can get the staff to drop you on the classic Caribbean desert island (a sandbar less than a hundred yards across). Mopion, or Petit St Richardson, is about ten minutes ride from PSV.
It may be worth noting that there is no swimming pool on PSV. They simply point out that there is superb swimming all around the island. |
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Sports & Recreation
Many guests walk around the island for their early morning exercise and at some time during their week, most head up the trail to the island’s highest point, Marni Hill. At just 275 ft, it is not that high, but the views are exceptional. Near the barbecue beach you will find an exercise trail with a series of 20 stations with different exercises. And not far away, slightly inland, is a tennis court, which can be lit for play after dark. Racquets and balls are available at reception.
Yoga sessions are held several mornings a week on the deck on the north side of the island. Private yoga is available by appointment. Massage is also available.
The small resort has watersports equipment for you to use. This is stored on the waterfront near the jetty, centred on a couple of open-sided thatched cabins. Sports include snorkelling (there is a nice reef offshore towards Petite Martinique), kayaking, windsurfing and small dinghy sailing in Hobie Cats. They can also take you out waterskiing or local fishing if you wish. All these sports are at no extra charge. Boat charters and deep sea fishing are at extra cost.
Scuba diving is available. It is booked through a company on Union Island, who will collect you and take you to their sites around the area. |
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Staff
Almost all of the staff has worked on the island for more that fifteen years and they become part of the family for the many returning guests. The first person you will meet is probably Maurice, the launch captain. He will bring you across from Union Island. Other members of staff you will come across include Deslyn at the front desk, Oxford, Roland and Hazron at the bar and Arthurlyn, who is the head of housekeeping. Day to day, the resort is managed by Guest Service Managers Charlie Carroll and Christie Knoff, who are from the States. They joined PSV in December 2007.
The other figure who you will meet is the island’s owner Lynn Richardson, who oversees the whole show from behind the scenes. She came here with her husband Haze. Although Haze himself died in early 2008, he still looms large around the island. When he arrived in the 1960s, there was literally nothing on Petit St Vincent (it was used to graze sheep by the Petite Martiniquans) and he literally built the hotel by hand. He and Lynn ran it for many years together. Their Golden Labradors also feature large in island life. |
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The Rooms
The bedrooms at PSV are all in free-standing cottages set at leisurely intervals, each invisible from the next, around the windward side of the island. They are quite separate from the central dining room and reception. If you wish, the staff will come to collect you from your room (you can order a lift through the flag system), but most guests are happy to walk.
In fact the rooms are suites (interestingly, this is how they were first conceived in the 1960s, when most Caribbean hotel bedrooms were very small and pokey). Each is laid out a little differently from the next, according to its position on the cliffside or the beach, but generally there is a sitting area and a bedroom with a dressing room and bathroom, linked to one another by open stone arches. There is a classic tropical feel to the decoration, with polished wood and wicker fittings and furniture and light upholstery with an elegant palm print. The living rooms look through a full glass wall which can be opened out onto a large deck at the front. From here you get the best of the ocean view, though it is usually also visible through the vertical wooden louvers from the bedrooms too, from the two queen size beds. There is no need for air-conditioning in the rooms (you can simply open or close off the ocean breeze). |
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Dining
The dining room is at the Pavilion, which is next to the bar and the office. There are several levels of the dining area, but they all look out onto the lawn and eventually Petite Martinique. They are built with the same stone and natural wood, as the rest of the resort, including some bamboo and thatch. All three meals are served in the Pavilion, but lunch is sometimes served as a grill down on the beach.
At dinner the menu has a choice of three starters and around six main courses. It is changed each day so that nothing is repeated. The cuisine is a fusion of styles from all over the world, starting with Caribbean and other tropical areas such as Asia, but also with a touch of French and regional America. The chef is Trevor Douglas, an Englishman who trained in the UK and then in the States, where he has worked and taught (at the Culinary Institute of America). Over the years he has worked in a number of hotels in London including the Four Seasons, the Meridien and the Westbury, and in the restaurants in the States such as Brennen’s in New Orleans and at the Viking Hotel and the Weekapaug Inn in Rhode Island.
They grow what they can on the island. There is an organic herb garden (which you will see when you pass the tennis court), where they can cultivate spices and vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce. Other ingredients are brought from St Vincent, an extremely fertile island, and of course fish and lobster are caught in local waters. For meats, PSV has an arrangement with a butcher in Boston, which sends down consignments of specially chosen steaks and other meat.
All three meals and afternoon tea are included in the daily rate at the hotel. Breakfast can be taken either in your room or in the dining room, as you prefer, though most people do stick to their room. Actually room service is available for all meals at pretty much any time of the day (though you need to order it before sundown, when the ‘flag patrols’ cease), but you can also opt to eat lunch or dinner in a specially prepared table in a location that you decide. This could be on West End beach, in the pavilion on Atlantic Beach or even on Mopion Island, the sand bar just north of PSV. |
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Weddings
PSV is very happy to arrange a wedding for you and of course the island is a wonderfully pretty place in which to arrange a ceremony. They will take care of all legal and other requirements such as providing a pastor for the marriage itself, but they will also help you to create something special using the grounds of the hotel itself. The finer details will be arranged in consultation with Deslyn, the Front Desk Manager or Guest Services Manager Christie. |
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Children
PSV sees quite a few families. Some of the cottages, particularly down on the Atlantic side, are well designed to accommodate children. Their sitting areas are quite separate and can be closed off to be used as a second bedroom. While there are no formal children’s activities, the staff are happy to find things for them to do and of course to set up trips, perhaps with other children staying on the island, to keep them busy. |
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Useful Hints
PSV is extremely tranquil and generally understated. There are a few activities (watersports, walking and jogging, off-island trips to the Tobago Cays) and very occasional get-togethers at the weekly barbecues. However, to get the best of the island it helps to be happy to be self-contained.
Also, although the staff will attend to you extremely well, PSV is not about excessive pampering or snap-finger service. Service is intentionally, though elegantly, simple. If you might ever regard yourself as high maintenance, then PSV is probably not for you. |
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Rates
| | 12 Apr- 31 Aug 2008 | 01 Nov- 19 Dec 2008 | 20 Dec- 05 Jan 2008-09 | 06 Jan- 24 Jan & 14 Mar- 11 Apr 2009 | 25 Jan- 13 Mar 2009 | 12 Apr- 31 Aug 2009 | | | FAP | FAP | FAP | FAP | FAP | FAP | | Single Occupancy | 495 | 525 | 800 | 670 | 800 | 525 | | Double Occupancy | 635 | 675 | 1,020 | 860 | 1,020 | 675 | | Additional Adult | 180 | 190 | 300 | 265 | 300 | 190 | | Child under 6 | 50 | 55 | 75 | 70 | 75 | 55 | | Child 6-16 | 120 | 125 | 190 | 160 | 190 | 125 | All rates are in US$ per room, per night, FAP (Full American Plan) = breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, and are subject to 10% Service Charge and 10% Government Tax. Rates are subject to change without notice. Minimum stay 3 nights. A 3 night deposit (for first and last 2 nights stay) is required to secure all reservations and is refundable for written cancellations received at least 30 days prior to arrival. Resort closed during September and October |
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How to Book
If you wish to make further enquiries or a reservation, please use the WEB LINK or DIRECT EMAIL ENQUIRIES facility at the top of this page to make contact with Petit St Vincent Resort, or if you wish to telephone them, please click on TELEPHONE CONTACT to reveal the number. |
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UK Tour Operators
If you wish to book through a tour operator or travel organiser, please follow the link below.
See List of UK Tour Operators
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Locality
A number of islands are visible from Petit St Vincent and trips can be arranged to them if the urge takes you. PSV has two boats on call, a 73ft sailing yacht Jambalaya, which makes regular trips to the Tobago Cays and Jahash, a 28ft speedboat, which offers deep sea fishing trips. You can also charter it privately for the day, taking a picnic to a nearby beach.
The closest island is Petite Martinique, which is close enough that you can see people walking about on the shoreline. It is a quick ride across and several boats make the crossing each day anyway because so many of the staff live there. It is a very simple West Indian island, so you may not want to spend more than a few hours there (though it is endlessly interesting if you scratch the surface, what with its long tradition of trading and smuggling). Despite its proximity, Petite Martinique is politically attached to Grenada rather than to St Vincent.
To the west of Petite Martinique, also within sight, is the larger island of Carriacou. This is also politically attached to Grenada, which means that you have to clear immigration if you wish to visit (strictly speaking you probably ought to if you go to Petit Martinique, but there is not always an available customs official there). Carriacou is a nice island however, and well worth the visit.
Looking north, the closest island is Palm Island, which has a hotel and a number of independent villas. The hotel is ‘all-inclusive’ so you cannot visit that, but there is a nice beach and a beach bar which is visited mainly by yachtsmen. Just across from here is Union Island, to which you will most likely fly on arrival. It is the busiest island in the area, with many shops, cafes and bars.
Not far beyond here are the Tobago Cays, which you are very likely to visit on a day trip. They are a fantastic collection of four islands with superb beaches, reefs and sea. Day trips are easily arranged by the office at PSV. |
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Getting to PSV - Meet & Greet
Getting to PSV can be a little complicated, and the hotel can help you with your transfers if you do not have a travel organiser. You need to fly to Union Island in the southern Grenadines, but because there are no direct flights to Union from outside the Caribbean, you will have to make a connection somewhere in the region. The easiest transfer is in Barbados, where you will be met by a representative from the resort, taken past Barbados Immigration straight to your small plane, for the crossing which takes about an hour. The representative will let the hotel know that you are on your way from Barbados to the Grenadines and then a member of the hotel staff will be waiting for you at the airstrip in Union, from where you will be taken across to the PSV. The transfer to PSV itself takes about 25 minutes. With luck you will make it the same day, but remember to take a change of tropical clothes, your swimmers and sunglasses in your hand luggage.
Other routes into the Grenadines include Grenada, Canouan via San Juan, St Vincent, St Lucia or Martinique, but you still need to make the transfer to Union Island, which will probably involve a private charter. Private charters are easily available, but if you are travelling from Barbados it is worth knowing there is a good functional system of ‘share charter’ to Union Island (this is the service that PSV generally uses). In this you share the crossing with other guests for the area. See our Review of SVG Air, which offers both private charters and ‘share charter’ services. |
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