Fiji Found

Hoteliers of the world: The bar has been raised. I’m typing from Sekola Villa on Laucala Island in Fiji and am telling you right now, readers go. Within the past 18 months I’ve been to Courchevel, France; Verbier, Switzerland; St. Bart’s, the Bahamas (twice); Palm Beach, Florida; and Chile’s Atacama Desert, to name a few. I was speechless on my tour today.

Laucala is 25 villas on a private island about an hour’s flight from Fiji’s Nadi International Airport. Five restaurants are always staffed and open, and every table has a complete table setting and fresh flowers whether or not someone is expected to dine there. During the tour we passed an orchid farm, where two people work full time to care for orchids that guests will later find in their rooms. Sekola, one of the island’s smallest accommodations, has a living room and a bar, a full-size pool, an outdoor private dining area and couch, a bedroom with another living room, a residential-size closet and dressing area, two bathrooms (one outdoors, one indoors), three showers, a private beach, and a yoga pavilion.

Laucala also grows most of its own food and makes all of its own spa products from ingredients grown on the island (formerly a coconut plantation owned by Malcolm Forbes). It is so nice to escape branding. Besides the labels on bottles of alcohol at the bars, a tiny Villeroy & Boch logo on the toilets, and cans of Red Bull (from Laucala’s owner), I haven’t seen an advertisement all week.

Tomorrow’s schedule: Playing the first nine holes of David McClay Kidd’s newest golf course. (The second nine will open in July.) (http://laucala.com)