A barrier island on the South Carolina coast, Hilton Head Island acts as a natural breakwater, buffering the mainland from Atlantic Ocean storms. For many people who flock here each year, the island also serves as a temporary respite from the long, dark winters to the north. The Westin Hilton Head, in this context, is a cocoon, a village complete with four restaurants, three pools, an event space for live concerts and other cultural acts, children’s play areas and direct access to the Atlantic swell for dipping your toes or going full-out with a swim.

Being a vacation spot that draws more than two million visitors a year, Hilton Head can seem congested with human interference, both in terms of the influx of people and the built environment. Despite that, the great outdoors may well be the island’s most alluring feature, and the Westin makes it easy to commune with nature. Saw palmettos shade the premises while doubling at certain times of the day as the perfect hide-out for birds and at other times as their performance stages. Just beyond the hotel’s gates, the wide sand beach creates a kilometres-long promenade ideal for sunrise runs or walks, the occasional (if you’re lucky) dolphin sighting, and afternoon pick-up Frisbee games (as long as the wind collaborates). Plus, in winter when beach crowds are sparse, physical distancing is a snap. For an eco-friendly way to explore the island, the hotel has bikes for rent. At roughly seven kilometres wide by 18 kilometres long, Hilton Head is small enough to pedal around in a day; some 100 kilometres of bike paths wend beneath southern live oaks draped with Spanish moss and past saltmarshes studded with oyster beds. For a deeper immersion in the natural world, book a room on the ocean side and leave the balcony door open a notch at night, to let the sound of the waves and the sway of the palmettos lull you to sleep.

The Westin Hilton Head also gives guests a reality check by presenting a glimpse into the region’s violent past via a permanent exhibit about the enslavement of people stolen from West Africa. Hilton Head Island and the other Sea Islands along South Carolina and Georgia were before the Civil War a sort of epicentre of the slave trade, slavery and forced labour on plantations growing cotton, rice and indigo. The hotel’s second-floor showcase offers an overview of the events that led to the first Sea Islands slaves being freed in 1862 and the establishment in the same year of Mitchelville, the first self-governing Freedmen’s village in the U.S. The site of Mitchelville is located less than a kilometre north of the hotel premises — history is a short walk away from your hotel room.