€860.90 for 1 Night
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Yasawa Island Resort & Spa
€860.90/ Night
24/7 Support
Looking for help choosing or for a property we don't list? Message our Private Rates Concierge on WhatsApp for member rates and insider knowledge on the right stay
The only resort on a 22-kilometre Fijian island: 18 thatched beachfront bures, all meals included, 11 private beaches and no Wi-Fi in the rooms.
Collections:
Free extra on us
Complimentary room upgrade on arrival (subject to availability).
Need To Know
- Eighteen bures: six Bure Suites, ten Deluxe Beachfront Bures, one two-bedroom bure and the Lomalagi.
- Adults only for most of the year, with a few family weeks. Stays run to three nights or more.
- Our favourite rooms: the Deluxe Beachfront Bure, free-standing, with the double shower; the Lomalagi for its pool and its distance from everyone else. The Bure Suites come in pairs that share a wall.
- Meals, soft drinks and scheduled activities are included. Alcohol, diving, fishing, spa treatments and the entrance fee at the Blue Lagoon Caves are charged. Check whether your rate covers the charter from Nadi.
- No television or Wi-Fi in the bures and no phone reception; Wi-Fi in the common areas.
- The charter carries 23 kilos of luggage a person, checked and carry-on together, and a guest over 114 kilos needs a second seat.
- No excursions on Sundays, at the chief's wish.
Check in - Check out
Check in from 14:30; check out before 14:50.
We Love
- The twenty minutes after 2.30, when the whole staff sings the next guests in and the last lot out.
- Lunch on a beach of your choosing, set down by boat and left with a two-way radio, in case.
- Manasa's Bar, where the founder who gave it his name still works, with the sea on three sides.
- The chief's Sunday rule, which stops every excursion but church, where the village choir does the rest.
- A hammock between two palms outside every bure, and a thatched cabana of your own on the sand.
- The library, air-conditioned for the afternoon heat, with board games and the resort's own history book.
Key Features
Book Your Stay at Yasawa Island Resort & Spa
€860.90 for 1 Night
Location
Address
Yasawa Island, Yasawa Group, Fiji
Travel Info
Fly to Nadi, then take the daily charter at 2pm, 30 minutes to the island's own airstrip. Luggage is limited to 23kg a person. If weather rules out the plane, boat and helicopter transfers can be arranged, sometimes at a charge.
Expert Review
Origins
The Yasawa Group stayed shut to land-based tourism until 1987, by most accounts because its own king did not want visitors, and cruise passengers had to stay on board. The resort came after the ban, on land leased from the island's people, and for about 30 years it has been the only one on Yasawa. Its founders, Manasa Ragigia and Wati, still run the food and drink; Manasa, in his seventies, also speaks for the village of Bukama. Erin, general manager from the 1990s, and James McCann bought the resort in 2010 and keep it independent.
Top Secret
The picnic needs no booking before you arrive, and the choice of beach is yours. Ask for Yawini by name: a guest quoted on the hotel's own site calls it their own deserted island.
The Review
The plane from Nadi lands at 2.30 and leaves again at 2.50, and in those twenty minutes the staff sing one lot of guests in and another lot out. Yasawa Island Resort & Spa has 18 thatched bures on a 22-kilometre island with no other hotel on it, and it means the remoteness: no television or Wi-Fi in the rooms, no phone reception, and a limit of 23 kilos of luggage a person on the plane, beyond which your bags may follow on another day. The hotel will tell you that Fijian has fifteen words for heaven and that Yasawa is the first of them, which is the kind of thing hotels say. This one also tells you about the luggage.
Every bure looks at the sea and has a deck, an outdoor shower, a hammock strung between two palms and a thatched cabana of its own on the beach. The ten Deluxe Beachfront Bures are the ones to book, free-standing, with showers indoors and out. The six Bure Suites come in pairs that share a wall. At the far end of the beach the Lomalagi Bure, named with another of those words for heaven, stands alone with its own pool, and a two-bedroom bure on a rise takes six. Members book at rates we hold for the Club.
Meals, soft drinks and most of what there is to do come with the room; alcohol, diving, fishing and the spa do not. Village fishermen deliver to the kitchen each day and Kelevi, the executive chef, changes the menu daily in an open-air restaurant, with the lovo, a feast cooked in an earth oven, once a week. Manasa's Bar looks out on 270 degrees of sea, named for the founder, who still works there. The thing to do is the picnic. You choose one of 11 beaches, a boat sets you down with lunch and a two-way radio, and it goes away until the hour you agreed.
The island is somebody else's, and you are reminded of it pleasantly and often. Most of the staff come from its villages, and guests go to Bukama by the chief's weekly invitation, with kava for the elders, and on to the school, where the children sing. In 2017 a visiting writer found some of them walking ten kilometres a day to be there. Nothing runs on a Sunday but the trip to church, by the chief's rule. Tips go into one fund, shared out before Christmas, and the staff spend it on bringing family home and on January's school fees.
It suits couples who want to stop, and it is adults only for most of the year, with a few family weeks. It does not suit anyone who needs a signal, or anyone with a tight connection, since one charter flies a day and the weather can move it. On the last afternoon the staff sing you out as they sing the next lot in, and one guest on the hotel's own website admits to tears. The plane leaves at 2.50.
