So we’ve made it to Mauritius. Now… where to stay? The goal of this honeymoon is to be as extravagant as possible, while also trying to get pretty much everything for “free” :-). That limits our lodging on Mauritius to places where we have points. There’s no Marriott or Hyatt on Mauritius so we were left to choose from Hilton and Starwood.
Trip Report Index:
- Introduction
- Flights from San Francisco to Mauritius
- Lodging in Mauritius
- Flights from Mauritius to Luxor
- Egypt Lodging
- Flights from Cairo to the Maldives
- Maldives Lodging
- Flights from the Maldives back to San Francisco
For Mauritius being a small island in the Indian Ocean, it’s actually surprising to me that Starwood has three properties there: The Grand Mauritian, Le Meridien Ile Maurice, and the St. Regis Mauritius (scheduled to open on September 15, 2012). Hilton has the Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa there.
Hilton Mauritius ~ photo from Hilton.com
On the Starwood side of things, it’s complicated… The Grand Mauritian seems to have been the preferred Starwood property on the island. However, the resort suffered a fire in 2011, and it’s currently closed. There doesn’t seem to be a scheduled opening date either. The fire must have been quite bad. So that left us with the Le Meridien Ile Maurice and the St. Regis.
When we first booked our honeymoon reservations, the St. Regis wasn’t bookable. It had suffered delay after delay, and the opening date was very much in jeopardy. While it looked like it would be open for our honeymoon, we didn’t want to take any chances of having the opening date slip again and not having a reservation so we booked somewhere else just in case. The only SPG option left was the Le Meridien Ile Maurice, and we weren’t wowed by the reviews on Tripadvisor / Flyertalk. Thus, it was time to look at the Hilton.
The Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa looked like a very nice place. The reviews on Tripadvisor / Flyertalk seemed a bit better than those of the Le Meridien, and so we decided to book the Hilton, hoping that the St. Regis would a) open up on time and b) not be too many SPG points per night! The Hilton Mauritius is a Hilton Hhonors Category 7 hotel, meaning 50,000 points per night. However, due to my fiancé’s Diamond status, we were eligible for a “Diamond rate” of 42,500 points per night. We booked it for four nights. There went 170,000 points.
However, just last month, The St. Regis Mauritius finally announced an opening date! The opening date is September 15, 2012 – just in time for our October honeymoon! Just like that, Starwood’s online reservation system was accepting reservations for the resort, and at 20,000 points per night, it was within our “prince range.” We booked the St. Regis for four nights, and we canceled the Hilton reservation. We’re really excited – this hotel will only have been open for a couple weeks when we arrive. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed at a resort only a couple weeks after the opening!
Type of Points Used: Starwood Preferred Guest
Number of Points Used: 80,000
Total Dollars Used: $0
