As tech pours fortunes into longevity and self-optimisation and talk of peptides and biometric tracking seeps into everyday conversation, wellness has become one of hospitality’s most powerful growth drivers — a shift that Club Med Seychelles captures with clarity.
The brand that invented the all-inclusive holiday has long carried a reputation for fun and a good party — and that spirit hasn’t disappeared. But the strategy has broadened, and the all-inclusive format still draws crowds (South Africans, famously enthusiastic drinkers, find this particularly appealing), yet the experience here has that extra focus on activities and wellness.
This property is within Club Med’s top-end Exclusive Collection, on Sainte Anne — a 220ha private island in a protected marine park — where wellbeing is woven into the design, rhythm and activities of the day.
A 15-minute boat ride from Eden Island delivers you somewhere that feels genuinely removed from the world. Unlike Mauritius, Bali or Thailand, where resorts often string together along developed coastlines, Sainte Anne is pared down and unhurried. The island is yours alone — the only hotel on the island, it sits within lush vegetation fringed by water that shifts between jade and turquoise depending on the light.
Days unfold at whatever pace you choose. Check the Club Med app on a Tuesday, and you’ll find yoga, hiking, sailing lessons, Pilates, snorkelling, archery, padel, jungle runs, meditation and more — classes such as “muscular awakening” or a yoga session “greeting to the sun” are all scheduled, all included. The weather is hot and sunny with an occasional downpour on some mornings, but not for long. You can decide between the main pool or the Zen pool, the adults-only pool where sipping cocktails and taking it easy seem to be the expectation. By evening, entertainment shows and dancing take over.
You get to be as active or as restful as you choose. It could involve sipping a cocktail by the pool, doing yoga or early morning swims. I take a slow yoga class that involves stretching. Later I try a lesson on how to sail a catamaran, but halfway through I find it too complicated and it dawns on me I’m never going to sail one and happily withdraw. Other days I go to the gym (briefly) or I do a posture class. Some classes are indoors, others outdoors, but always with views of nature and light flooding through large windows.
One guest in our group — a certified Type A with several ventures running simultaneously in the real world — arrived practically hyperventilating at the prospect of unstructured time. It didn’t take long before he was tapping into the various activities and thriving. Over the course of a few days, this involved a three-hour mountain hike, paddleboarding, more than one lengthy padel play-off and snorkelling.
Use it or don’t. Another couple from Durban, in their early 40s, spent 10 days content to do almost nothing at all.
A visit to the spa slows things further. Warm woods, jungle prints and rattan set the scene with treatment rooms open directly to the outdoors. The spa is run by Cinq Mondes, a French luxury brand known for blending traditional beauty rituals with cosmetic science. I had a traditional Oriental massage using heated argan oil, followed by time in the hammam and a quiet dip in the pool. It was the sort of afternoon that leaves you with loose muscles and relaxed shoulders.
The food is abundant and unfussy: bountiful breakfast buffets, long dinners with meat, fish and a great array of cheeses (the French heritage shows), and occasional barbecue lunches around the Zen pool with pina coladas on tap. One guest declared the paella — packed with seafood and clams — the best she’d ever had. There’s a particular freedom in never calculating the bill.
The thread of wellness and fitness is evident in the number of young mothers dressed in athleisure who are clearly earmarking an active day. With young children at the breakfast table, they’re often French and ready to have the children en route to the kids’ activities.
The kids’ club is impressively considered, designed with input from a psychologist and built around activities that encourage thoughtful behaviour and sharing rather than just keeping children occupied. Some of the activities involve a focus on conservation, a thread which runs through the property too — eight giant turtles now roam the island, appearing on walks with a magnificent indifference to their audience. Older children also have access to table tennis, foosball (table soccer) and a dedicated kids’ pool.
A day trip to La Digue, the third most populated island in the 115-island Seychelles archipelago, offers a different sort of pleasure. Cars are banned so you get around by bicycle or buggy. Arriving at the jetty, there are no taxis and no minibuses but lots of bikes available.
The island is only 5km long, 3km wide, and home to about 3,000 people, so it feels like untouched island life. It was busy and extremely hot. Our guide Andreas was warm and engaging, noting the handful of souvenir shops, seafood restaurants and mini supermarkets along the way, a few of us travelling in the buggy, others cycling.
We watched coconut milk being extracted for wine and tasted home-made papaya jam with pieces of kalou cake (a coconut loaf) at Etoile de l’est bakery, made by Mr Francis, the same man who had made a speedy ascent up the tree to access the coconuts for the coconut milk. We stopped at a private garden and tasted local drinks and fruit, saw guest houses and gandered at the coco de mer (the largest and heaviest nuts in the world renowned for its distinct, pelvis-like shape). At la Digue Reggae Bar, we stopped for a much-needed drink.
Then we’re off to the expansive Union Estate on the southwestern tip of the island, which encompasses an old coconut and vanilla plantation with enormous silver-grey granite boulders. Here we head to the Takamaka Tasting Bar for a rum tasting before getting grilled Creole fish from Mi Mums Takeaway for lunch. Takeaways are particularly popular on the island as a tasty and affordable option, and it’s a great way to experience the local cuisine.
We catch sight of some Aldabra giant tortoises which, in their own unhurried way, gather much interest. Our last stop is Anse Source d’Argent, one of the world’s most photographed beaches. Like the water at Sainte Anne, it’s fairly warm and shallow, a contrast to what one would find along the Western Cape’s shores.
Back at Club Med, it’s another long enjoyable dinner with much chatter, the demands of the outside world suspended for a moment. If all the island activity gets too much, the spacious suites become a refuge whenever one feels like it.
Despite all the island has to offer, much of the appeal of Sainte Anne is the permission it grants you to stop performing, to move your body or to not, to eat well, sleep deeply and to remember that rest is not the opposite of a good holiday. It’s the point of one.
Wanted
