3 things to know about Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas

Got a few thousand bucks to spend?

Want to walk the same beaches as Angelina Jolie?

Then go to Vietnam — Con Dao, in particular — where a night’s stay at the Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas property can run you four figures.

Jolie reportedly rented half the resort a few years ago, according to the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail. The resort has a private, two-mile-long beach and stand-alone villas. It takes advantage of the natural beauty around it.

Six Senses might soon be taking advantage of Beaufort County’s natural beauty — if the town of Hilton Head Island can annex Bay Point Island, situated northeast of Hilton Head across the Broad River.

As the town takes its first steps toward possible annexation, here are three things to know about Six Senses resorts.

1. Stays are pricey (like some spots in Bluffton and Hilton Head)

The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette checked into rates at three Six Senses resorts for two adults during the first full week of June 2017 and found prices ranged from a few hundred dollars a night to almost $5,000.

▪  Six Senses Samui — Thailand: $340 to $2,175

▪  Six Senses Con Dao — Vietnam: $428 to $2,705

▪  Six Senses Laamu — Maldives: $703 to $4,776

By comparison, here are a couple of rates for the same time frame in Beaufort County, according to the resorts’ websites:

▪  Montage Palmetto Bluff — Bluffton: $473 to $2,249

▪  The Westin Hilton Head Island Resort and Spa: $331 to $1,419

The average daily rate for Hilton Head Island hotels from June 1 to Aug. 31 was $210.96, according to Charlie Clark of the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.

Charleston’s average rate for the same period was $138.54, according to Clark, who cited statistics from Smith Travel Research.

The average daily rate takes into account all hotels on the island, Clark said, explaining prices from a variety of hotel and resort types factored into that number.

2. Six Senses doesn’t have any U.S. properties ... yet

According to the information provided by the company, there are no Six Senses resorts or spas in the United States.

The company is headquartered in Thailand and operates 11 resorts — including its two Evason-brand properties — around the world. Most of them are in Asia.

Six Senses Douro Valley, Portugal, appears to be the its first European resort. Another is under development in France — Mont Blanc — and, according to the company, a resort in St. Lucia — Freedom Bay — in the Caribbean, is slated to open this year.

The Island Packet reached out to Six Senses to ask about its interest in Hilton Head, but the company could not be reached before press time — because of the time zone change, it was about 10:15 p.m. in Thailand when the newspapers emailed the company.

3. An emphasis on sustainability ... balanced with luxury

Six Senses, founded in 1995, prides itself as a leader in sustainability.

“Naturalmat beds made of sustainable latex and organic lambs’ wool couldn’t offer a better night’s sleep,” said an article about the Douro Valley resort in Conde Nast Traveler, which named it to its 2016 “Hot List.”

The look of the resort “reflects the region’s deep ties to the United Kingdom and Portugal’s once-vast empire,” the article said, but balances that with “starkly modern and eco-friendly building materials and perspective.”

Travel+Leisure Magazine noted similar accoutrements but said the resort highlights Six Senses’ evolving ambitions.

“Six Senses may have started as an eco-leaning, rustic-luxe hotel brand,” the magazine said, “but one of its latest openings — a 19th-century manor house turned 57-room hotel in Portugal’s stunning, vineyard-packed Douro Valley — puts the company’s more-luxe-than-rustic ambitions on full display.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2016 at 4:38 PM with the headline "3 things to know about Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas."