Raffles Seychelles

The coco de mer palm is found in only two places, Praslin and its neighbour Curieuse. In the Vallée de Mai, twenty minutes' drive from Raffles Seychelles, the trails run under palms 400 years old. The resort opened in 2011, and is younger by some margin. Ross Macbeth set its 87 villas on stilts down a steep hillside of tropical garden to Anse Takamaka, a 500-metre sand beach, and left the slope to hybrid buggies, which run day and night. Every villa has a pool of its own and an outdoor pavilion with a rain shower, and Wilson & Associates kept the rooms neutral and spare behind floor-to-ceiling glass. The choice between them is mostly height: the Hillside Garden View villas sit deep in the planting, and the Panoramic ones at the top get the widest sweep of sea and sky, which on Praslin is the thing worth paying for.

Recommended for families above all, and for couples happy to take a Panoramic villa and leave the tortoises to the children. The Sugar Palm Kids Club is named after Isle des Palms, Praslin's old name, and is free from nine to five, with a day that can run from crab hunting to feeding the resort's giant Aldabra tortoises. The two-bedroom villas and the four-bedroom residence come with a butler, and the beachfront two-bedroom is the one to want. Makase cuts sushi and sashimi from that day's snapper and tuna, and Danzil pours rum on a colonial-style terrace facing the ocean. Curieuse is fifteen minutes away by boat, with a reserve of giant tortoises, which by then the children will be qualified to inspect.