Skip to Content

Cap Maison St Lucia hotel review: A boutique Caribbean island escape

A luxurious Caribbean stay at Cap Maison St Lucia, a clifftop boutique hotel and spa hidden away in the north of the island that’s perfect for foodies and anyone looking for a relaxing island escape.

* This site contains affiliate links, where I get a small commission from purchases at no extra cost to you.

Cap Maison St Lucia hotel review: A boutique Caribbean island escape

AD: I was hosted by Cap Maison, but all views are my own

Picture yourself lying on a sunbed, the sun is beating down and you can hear the waves crashing. You’ve got an tropical cocktail and a book and there’s nowhere else you have to be. It’s my idea of bliss – and the type of holiday the Caribbean is famous for.

But with 26 countries, 7000 islands and thousands of resorts, where do you start? Do you go for beaches or mountains, diving or hiking, Creole culture or colonial history? Or why not have a little bit of everything in St Lucia, one of the Lesser Antilles islands.

St Lucia is like a Caribbean highlights package. And it’s also the home of the Cap Maison Resort & Spa, a boutique hideaway by the beach that’s known for its fantastic food, attentive service and laid-back luxury. But what’s it like staying there? This Cap Maison St Lucia review takes you though the hotel’s location, rooms, facilities, food and drink.

Sunglasses and a Kindle by the pool at Cap Maison hotel, St Lucia
Relaxing by the pool

Cap Maison St Lucia review

The location

Cap Maison is located on the north coast of St Lucia – on a clear day you can see right over to the neighbouring island of Martinique. The resort town of Rodney Bay is 10 minutes’ drive away or it’s only 40 minutes to the island’s capital Castries.

There’s a small airport in Castries, but most international flights come into Hewanorra airport in the south of the island. Which is where we emerged into the heat after our flight from London, met with cool towels and bottled water and shown to our transfer.

Scenery in Saint Lucia – the Pitons
St Lucia’s stunning scenery

It’s just 40 miles on the map from the airport to Cap Maison. But although St Lucia is small it has some seriously dramatic scenery, so as the roads twist up and down mountains it takes a while to get anywhere (pack travel sickness pills if you’re susceptible).

Our transfer took us around two hours as we wound our way up the Atlantic coast then across the centre of the island to Castries, with some jaw-dropping scenery along the way – golden sand beaches, pretty fishing harbours, jagged peaks and banana plantations.

Tropical flowers at Cap Maison St Lucia
Tropical flowers

Cap Maison is on the edge of the village of Gros Islet, where you’ll find several upscale resorts. But they’re far enough away from each other that it’s kept a secluded, peaceful feel – like you’re in your own private enclave. If you want to get out and explore the surrounding area, there’s a great market in Castries and hiking on Pigeon Island.

Or head a bit further afield with day trips to the Pitons, chocolate-making classes and visits to volcanoes and waterfalls. But you can also easily do nothing more energetic than alternating between the pool and a sun lounger while someone brings you cocktails.

Views along the coast from Cap Maison Hotel & Spa
Along the coast from Cap Maison

The rooms

Many Caribbean resorts go for a plantation-style design, but Cap Maison has more of a Mediterranean feel. As we pulled into the drive it felt like a group of whitewashed Spanish villas had been transported to a St Lucian clifftop and surrounded with gardens.

One of the first things that strikes you about St Lucia is how green and lush it is – everywhere you look there are colourful tropical flowers and there’s the constant sound of birdsong. Cap Maison’s gardens were created by local garden design legend Veronica Shingleton-Smith, who has her own botanic gardens on the east coast.

Villas at at Cap Maison, Saint Lucia
Cap Maison villas

Accommodation at Cap Maison is a mix of rooms, suites and villas. Simplest are the garden view rooms, which have a balcony or terrace. Then there are suites overlooking the ocean (some of which have their own pool and roof terrace) or the courtyard pool.

There are also villas with two or three bedrooms if you want more space or flexibility. We had a ground-floor villa with two en-suite bedrooms which also had a lounge, guest bathroom, laundry room, dining area and kitchen. So you could easily self-cater or mix up eating at the restaurants and cooking (or even hire a chef to cook for you).

Villa bedroom at Cap Maison Hotel
Bedroom in our villa

Inside the villa everything was light and airy – the whole front wall opened up onto a private terrace with loungers to relax on. Villas are decorated in neutral shades with a few flashes of colour from cushions, bathroom tiles and artworks by local artists.

There are nods to sustainability, with solar panels on roofs, refillable toiletry bottles, glass drinking water bottles and grey water recycling for the gardens. There’s air conditioning in the bedrooms but there are ceiling fans throughout the villa too, and screens on the windows to let the breeze – and the nighttime frog chorus – flow through.

Lounge in a two-bedroom villa at Cap Maison hotel in Saint Lucia
Our villa lounge

The food and drink

What sets Cap Maison apart from other resorts across the Caribbean is the food, which uses the fresh ingredients found on the island to create high-end, gourmet dishes.

The kitchen is headed up by chef Craig Jones, a Welsh Rastafarian who trained in France and worked in big-name restaurants like Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons before relocating to the Caribbean. He’s been living in St Lucia for over 20 years so knows the local produce and how to get the best from it. The result is a delicious Caribbean/French fusion.

Mahi mahi and plantain dish at the Cliff at Cap restaurant St Lucia
Mahi mahi and plantain at the Cliff at Cap

The resort’s main restaurant is the Cliff at Cap, perched on the cliff edge with panoramic sea views. This is where we had breakfast every morning – with fresh fruit as well as a mix of cooked options that changed every day. It’s open daily for lunch and dinner, and has got such a good reputation that people come from all over the island to eat there.

It’s fine dining, with beautifully presented dishes which are like edible works of art. Freshly caught fish, piri piri chicken, seared scallops  – nothing too heavy to suit the tropical heat. And if you want extra romance, you can have a private dinner for two at Rock Maison, a terrace over the ocean beneath the Cliff with its own Champagne zipline.

Lunch at the Naked Fisherman restaurant in St Lucia
Beach bites at the Naked Fisherman

There’s also the more casual Naked Fisherman restaurant right on the beach (named after an exhibitionist fisherman who did his fishing au naturel!). It’s got more of a ‘barefoot in the sand’ feel – and is extra pretty lit up by lanterns in the evenings. The menu features grilled fish and seafood, Creole fish stew, saltfish beignets and jerk chicken satay.

We also joined in a food and wine pairing dinner at Cellar Maison. It was a really social evening with just 12 guests eating together in the wine cellar. We tried out different foods, wines and a few rums to see how they go together. Wine’s a big thing at Cap Maison – they have the best-stocked cellar on the island with around 2000 different wines.

Cocktail making at the Cliff Bar, Cap Maison, Saint Lucia
Showing us how it’s done…

But as it’s the Caribbean there’s plenty of rum too – from the welcome bottle of rum punch left in our room to Cap Maison’s own 10-year-aged Solera Cask Rum.

I can’t resist a fruity cocktail on the beach, the more umbrellas and slices of fruit the better. So we got a lesson in how to make Cap Maison’s signature cocktails – the winner was the Cask Elixir, made with their aged rum, mango puree, bitters and fresh mint.

Pina coladas by the swimming pool at Cap Maison boutique hotel in St Lucia
Pina coladas by the pool

The facilities

The Caribbean is all about the beaches, and Cap Maison’s local bay – known as Smugglers’ Cove – is small but perfectly formed. To reach it you go through a door on the side of the resort then down a flight of 90 stairs. Like all beaches in St Lucia it’s open to everyone. But it’s fairly tucked away so it feels almost private and never gets too busy.

There are sunloungers and towels for hotel guests and you can order cold drinks from the Naked Fisherman. You can also go sailing, snorkelling or paddleboarding, with equipment available for guests to borrow. Or even hire the hotel yacht if you’re feeling flash.

Smugglers Cove beach
Smugglers’ Cove beach

The resort has two main pools. A split-level pool with waterfall, surrounded by flowers with views out to sea, and a smaller pool in a courtyard along the villas. This was one of my favourite spots – since many villas and suites have private pools it was often empty.

One of the things I liked about Cap Maison was that it never felt crowded. Most of the time we only saw other guests at meals or around the main pool. Inside reception there’s a gym, spa, bar and honesty shop – so if you’ve run out of sun cream or forgotten something you can just pick it up and tell reception. The laid-back Caribbean in action!

Courtyard pool – Cap Maison St Lucia review
My favourite spot

The details

Rooms at Cap Maison start from $570 (£467/€557) a night in a garden view room – and there are a special offers available if you’re staying for five nights or more. They also offer a ‘Cap it All Inclusive’ package with breakfasts, three-courses lunches and dinners at the Cliff at Cap or The Naked Fisherman, house wines, beers and cocktails included.

Save for later

A luxurious Caribbean stay at Cap Maison St Lucia, a clifftop boutique hotel and spa hidden away in the north of the island that’s perfect for foodies and anyone looking for a relaxing island escape | Cap Maison hotel review | Luxury hotels in St Lucia | Honeymoon hotel St Lucia | Cap Maison Saint Lucia | Where to stay in St LuciaA luxurious Caribbean stay at Cap Maison St Lucia, a clifftop boutique hotel and spa hidden away in the north of the island that’s perfect for foodies and anyone looking for a relaxing island escape | Cap Maison hotel review | Luxury hotels in St Lucia | Honeymoon hotel St Lucia | Cap Maison Saint Lucia | Where to stay in St Lucia

You might also like