Not so long ago, the Seychelles was known as a drop-dead gorgeous destination let down by its lacklustre hotels. What a difference a decade makes. There are now at least half a dozen deluxe retreats vying for the attention of the five-star crowd.

Out in front is North Island, which opened three years ago and swiftly established itself as the world’s most expensive resort. Rooms start at about £2,000, and guests have been known to arrive in their own submarines.

It’s hard to blow that out of the water, but this year, Maia will seek to do so. A new bolt hole on the principal Seychellois island, Mahé, Maia hopes to challenge North Island’s supremacy — and at prices starting at a mere £1,000 a night.

So, which one should you blow your kids’ inheritance on? And can any hotel really be worth that kind of money? One way to find out ...

FIRST STOP, North Island. In three short years, this villa hideaway has won just about every “best of the best” gong going. Former guests fall into a smelling-salts swoon when recalling it, and even at these stratospheric prices, it’s often sold out. The resort is a tiny, coconut-clad squiggle of molten-black boulders and bone-white beaches, and most visitors arrive by helicopter, which adds another £1,000 to the bill, but guarantees you a fabulous James Bond-style entrance.

Our chopper landed just beyond a perfect palm-fringed cove, where a wind-whipped butler waited to whisk us off to our villa. And what a villa. North Island’s architects, Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens, camped here for 18 months to supervise construction, and the hotel’s architecture is both joltingly imaginative and seamlessly organic.

Forget raggedy old Robinson Crusoe, this is more chic Tom Ford. Reclaimed takamaka trees have been tipped upside down to make the wall supports, the sensuous curve of a gigantic granite rock doubles as a sitting-room wall, and glinting water splashes out of a bamboo cane in the spectacular outdoor shower.

Two-grand-a-night luxury demands space and privacy. Here, lush gardens ensure the latter — but space can be trickier to get right. A living room vast enough to land a plane in can feel unwelcoming. The resort’s designers have overcome this by dividing its (huge) villas into a series of cocoons where you just love to linger.

The public areas share this characteristic. The main piazza appears to be a sweep of beachfront decking, but it’s really a jigsaw of discreet, sexy units. You can choose a table set in a delicately dripping water garden; eat in a shady cliffside sala, propped up by plump cushions; or tuck yourself into the sunken seats of the central platform.

It would all have felt so, so perfect — save for one thing. Rats. And, bizarrely, I mean the lack of them. North Island, we were told, is the largest in the archipelago to be rat-free. Congratulations — but, please, can you shut up about it?

Before we’d even taken a sip of our welcome cocktail, staff were chirpily telling us about the Rat Room, where all goods are inspected on arrival to keep North rodent-free. The resort’s environmentalist reminisced about dropping poison from helicopters to kill the vermin. “You couldn’t see dead ones, but you could smell them for a while.” Mmm, nice. And the evening slide show also had a rat element: up flashed an image of a man clutching dozens of dead rats by their tails. All this talk of being rodentless had me imagining our bubonic buddies everywhere.

ON TO MAIA, a property that does not shout its rat-free status from the rooftops, and where, consequently, I never gave rodents another thought. However, this could also be because all I could think about here was money.

Maia may be the cheaper option at “only” £1,000 per night, but, since that’s for B&B (North’s £2,000 tag is all-inclusive), you constantly find yourself signing for extras. And they don’t come cheap. Two cups of coffee cost £20. And I think we can all agree that the person who’d pay £18 for their butler to run a bubble bath really does need special help.

Maia’s 30 villas are dramatically carved into a cliff on the lustrous southwest coast of Mahé. They offer a multiplicity of styles: African-influenced top-hat thatched roofs, Balinese-inspired teak furniture, Thai silks, American totem poles. The wow factor is supplied by an outdoor bathtub, set in the infinity pool.

The villas are suitably roomy and secluded, but the public areas are a disappointment — a gloomy pool and a charmless bar and restaurant, without so much as a sea view. Worse still, the resort is fronted by a small, fake beach. I suspect this is because the real one can almost disappear, depending on the tide. And because it’s popular with local villagers — and their dogs.

Maia beats North for dining. The chef trained under the Michelin-starred Pourcel twins, and his fusion cuisine is the best in the Seychelles — though, inevitably, it is not cheap. Three courses cost about £65pp, an in-villa barbecue costs up to £90 a head, and there are only a couple of wines less than £50, rising to more than £1,000 for a Pétrus. But, given that one guest has already managed to spend £20,000 in the Maia gift shop, that isn’t grandstanding.

Staff have been chosen for their EQ (that’s “emotional intelligence quotient”) as well as their IQ, and are required to meditate for 15 minutes at the start of each shift to ensure they are suitably “ommed” to serve. A silly notion, but we couldn’t fault their friendliness or efficiency.

Still, £1,000 per night? It’s a lovely resort, but no lovelier than dozens that charge half the price.

So, what about North? Its general manager insists it is good value. I would dispute this; however, all the guests I asked seemed to agree with him. Lord Forte used to caution that a hotel with fewer than 30 rooms couldn’t survive — so presumably, at North, you pay over the odds for the 19 villas they didn’t build.

It’s true that the dearth of fellow guests makes the service here exceptionally personal. It’s the best I’ve come across. And perhaps Lord Forte omitted kudos from his equation. I imagine those who can afford to stay at North Island experience a warm glow at the thought that the other 99% of us can’t.

One may not be able to put a price on happiness, but supreme smugness currently costs £2,000 per night.

Susan d’Arcy was a guest of Seychelles Travel (01202 877330, www.seychelles-travel.co.uk). It has a week at North Island from £7,784pp, all-inclusive; and at Maia from £4,043pp, B&B, flying with Emirates via Dubai. Or try Carrier (0161 491 7630, Maia www.carrier.co.uk) or ITC Classics (01244 355527, www.itcclassics.co.uk)

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