Necker Island

The Hotel

Necker Island is a 30-hectare (74-acre) island in the eastern reach of the British Virgin Islands, three nautical miles north of Virgin Gorda. Richard Branson, then 28 and shortly to make his name as the founder of Virgin Records, bought the island in 1978 for £180,000 from the colonial-era owner Robert Hammerton, on the condition that he develop the property. He spent the next decade-plus building the Great House and the initial run of guest rooms, and Necker Island opened to private rental in 1984. The original Great House burned to the ground in August 2011 during a tropical storm (with Kate Winslet rescuing Branson's mother from the second floor); the rebuild was completed by 2013, and the island is now in its third functional iteration as the Virgin Limited Edition flagship private-island property.

The accommodation is distributed across three architectural settings. The Great House (rebuilt 2013) sits on the highest point of the island and contains eleven of the twenty-four bedrooms, including the Master Suite, plus the main dining room, living spaces, and the top-floor bunk room for up to six children. The eight Balinese-style houses, Leha Lo, Bali Hi, Bali Beach, Bali Cliff, Bali Lo, Bali Buah, Bali Kukila and Temple House, are scattered along the south-facing coast and the cliffs, each independently furnished with the Balinese-import timber and stone aesthetic Branson developed with designer Mike Pope after his early 1990s trips to Ubud. The two Temple House rooms complete the count: up to 48 adults plus six children, sharing 24 named bedrooms.

The dining is bespoke. The island maintains a brigade of chefs led by an executive chef recruited typically from the Caribbean fine-dining circuit; the menus are agreed with the lead guest in advance of the week, drawing on the kitchen garden, the day's catch from the surrounding reef, and a constantly-restocked larder flown in from Tortola. Wine list runs to several hundred bins. There is no daily room rate in the conventional sense, Necker is taken either on full-island buyout (up to 48 guests, from USD 140,000 per night) or, during the off-season Celebration Weeks between June and December, on a per-room basis (from USD 5,400 per couple per night, sharing the island with other guests).

The activities are the proposition's true extension. Two pools, two beaches, the largest catamaran in the BVI charter fleet, kite-surfing instruction from current world-tour pros (Branson is himself a former world record holder), tennis courts, Pilates studio, the kitchen garden, the lemur and tortoise enclosure (Branson's conservation contribution to the BVI), scuba programmes, dive boats, and the bar that ends most evenings on the Great House terrace. The clientele runs heavily to the entertainment industry, the technology entrepreneurs, and the various heads of state who have used the island over the decades for off-the-record working stays, most recently and famously former President Obama's post-presidency week, where he and Branson conducted the much-photographed kite-surfing competition that became Necker's signature 2017 image.

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Also Great in the British Virgin Islands