Lusso - Responsible tourism in action: what Suzanne noticed at LUX* Belle Mare

By Suzi Lednor

A fam trip can send you home with notes on rooms, restaurants and beaches. I came back from Mauritius talking about refill stations, solar panels, vanilla, stray animals and the fruit and vegetable stalls of Port Louis too.

I’d kept my responsible tourism eyes open throughout the trip, looking at the decisions being made alongside the more visible parts of a hotel stay. At LUX* Belle Mare, which reopened in 2023 following a major rebuild, I found myself noticing how often these decisions appeared in its day-to-day operations.

Guests receive a reusable water bottle when they arrive, with Nordaq refill stations available around the resort throughout their stay. The refill stations were an important detail for me because they made the reusable bottle part of the day-to-day hotel experience, rather than something guests only received at check-in.

In the bathrooms, amenities are refillable, while plastic straws and stirrers had been removed from the areas I visited. I could also see solar panels around the resort, which the LUX* Belle Mare team explained contribute to its electricity supply alongside LED lighting and smart room energy-management systems.

Mauritius on the menu

I was especially interested in how much of the food connected back to Mauritius.

At the resort’s pesticide-free herb and vegetable farm, I saw some of the ingredients being grown for its kitchens. The team told me that other produce comes from local growers and artisan markets, including Mauritian vanilla and honey, while seafood is sourced from the Indian Ocean region and surrounding coastal waters.

Guests can get involved by making chocolate and roasting and grinding coffee beans themselves, seeing more of the work involved before tasting the results.

My visit to the market in Port Louis made me think more about the opportunities for hotels to source from the island. There was such a wide range of fruit and vegetables available locally, yet imported produce still forms part of hotel supply chains. It left me wondering how much more tourism could draw on what Mauritius already grows.

People, communities and nature

The LUX* Belle Mare team spoke to me about employing people from Mauritius and providing opportunities for career development, along with its work with the Thalassemia Society of Mauritius on blood drives and healthcare awareness.

I also heard about initiatives involving stray cats and dogs and the resort’s relationship with the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation. The foundation works to conserve plants and wildlife native to Mauritius, including endangered species.

A fam trip is only a snapshot, not a full assessment of a resort’s environmental or social impact, and these examples reflect what I saw and what the LUX* Belle Mare team shared with me during my visit.

What I came away thinking was that responsible tourism isn't always something you encounter as one huge initiative. The trip also made me pay more attention to the everyday decisions behind a hotel stay: where ingredients come from, how things are used and reused, and which local organisations a hotel chooses to work with.

As I said at the time:

“It was the simple things I found myself noticing most.”

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