The people of Hermitage
Generations of Nevisian Welcome
The welcome here is made by people who know this place, not by a service script.
Local knowledge
A Welcome Shaped on Nevis
Hermitage is small — fifteen rooms, cottages and villas spread across a hillside — and that changes what hospitality feels like. Guests meet a team of people who know the property, know the island, and talk to visitors much as they would to anyone who had come up to the house.
Many members of the team are from Nevis, and several live in the villages closest to Hermitage. That local grounding is practical as well as atmospheric. The people looking after you can tell you which beach is sheltered when the wind gets up, when the mangoes along the lane are worth picking, and which road to take up the mountain.
The same people who bring dinner to the table will help you plan the next day — suggesting walks, beaches and places to eat beyond Hermitage, and making the arrangements if you would like them to.
Part of the Life of Hermitage
The Lupinacci family made Nevis their home in the 1970s and established Hermitage soon afterwards. Continuity is not only the owners’ story, though. Some members of the team have spent much of their working lives here.
That matters more than it might sound. Which shutter sticks after rain, how the dining room is laid before a Wednesday evening, when the gardens need cutting back — this is knowledge held by people rather than written down in a manual, and it is a large part of why a stay here feels much the same from one year to the next.
The People You Meet
Over a few days you get to know several of the people who work here — at reception when you arrive, on the dining veranda in the evening, in the gardens early in the morning. It is a small team, so names are learned quickly.
Richie Lupinacci, photographed here at the honesty bar in the Great House, also writes the Postcards from Hermitage stories published on this site — pieces about the house, the island and the seasons that say a good deal about how Hermitage sees itself.
Behind the welcome
The Work Behind the Welcome
Most of what makes a stay feel effortless happens before guests see it: the buffet laid out on a Wednesday, tables set on the veranda before the light goes, rooms and gardens kept in order through a season of heat and rain.
The Wednesday Buffet
The West Indian buffet on Wednesday evening is the busiest service of the week — roast pork, curried sweet potato, fried plantain and salads, prepared in the kitchen and set out by hand along one long table.
Friday night is pizza, and quieter. Between them they set the rhythm of the week in the restaurant.
Come and see
Come and meet the people who make Hermitage feel like home
The best introduction to the team is a few days at Hermitage — dinner on the veranda, a rum punch at the honesty bar, and the slow business of getting to know a place.