Is this the real life? Or is it just fantasy? Right now it's hard to say. It may have been the flute of bubbly at check-in. Perhaps the masseuse who spent an hour unpicking knots from my shoulders. Either way, I have entered a state of bohemian rhapsody. I'm easy come, easy go; a little high, a little low in a hammock strung between palm trees. But there's not a bombastic rock band for miles. Just sexy Brazilian beats from the bar, and the Mediterranean at the bottom of the garden.
A tourist board poster in La Savina, where my ferry docked after the two-mile crossing from Ibiza called the island "the last paradise", but Gecko Beach Club is actually a first in Formentera. The pipsqueak of the Balearic islands has always had a coastline of ravishing beauty, but its hotels were no lookers compared with those of its glitzy big sister, Ibiza. Only agrotourism hotel Cap de Barbaria (closed until 2011 for renovation) could fly the flag for Arcadian escapism. Of course, rustic simplicity was half the charm for many visitors. Back in 1969, when Formentera was a stop on the hippy trail to Morocco, Bob Dylan was happy to shack up in a windmill. Kate Moss and co most definitely are not.
So with the opening of Gecko on Playa Migjorn beach, on the island's south coast, Formentera has grown up. Three years and a few million euros after they discovered it at the end of a dusty red track in 2007, Dino and Karina Gillibrand have transformed what was a shabby hostal into a destination with seriously gorgeous interior design.
Understated rooms feature limed-wood furniture and marble wetrooms. Custom-designed loungers sit on rich teak sundecks on a garden terrace, and black-clad waiters shake cocktails in a minimal white bar and serve deliciously unfussy Mediterr-Asian cuisine in the restaurant. Where there was cracked concrete is now a lawn dotted with loungers. In place of head-high scrub is a dazzling turquoise seascape.
"We fell in love with the location and returned every week for six weeks until the family who'd owned the place for 50 years agreed to sell," Dino tells me. "Now they see what we have done they are really proud that they founded the place."
Location is everything here. Most of the design hotels in Ibiza are in town or deep in the countryside; this one is right on the beach. And the beach here hasn't changed in half a century: it's the same three-mile arc of gin-clear water, white sand and pinky-orange rock, with no other development nearby. Strangely, we have to thank – in part – the grey suits at Unesco for Formentera's unspoilt beauty. Its World Heritage listing of the island, coupled with a ban on beachside construction, forces developers to innovate with what's already there. And there's not much development at all on Playa Mitjorn.
The Gecko opened last year, the accommodation was completed in April with the addition of a rooftop penthouse, and the renovation is not yet finished – work begins on a pool and spa this winter.
Local spies say Leonardo DiCaprio, Sienna Miller, and various footballers from Italian Serie A clubs have already checked in. "We had someone last year – A-list, film star, I'm not saying who – who was front-page on all the tabloids," Dino says with a sigh. I discover later it was Swiss actress and model Michelle Hunziker. "One got shots of her topless. Another took photos of our masseur and wrote about 'The hands that massaged X's breasts'."
"But Gecko isn't about celebrity," Dino continues, as a circle of lithe Americans flex their limbs in the garden before a yoga lesson. "We're low-key, non-exclusive. Our clientele is everyone from A-listers to hippies from down the road. Barefoot luxury, that's us."
Formentera in a nutshell, in fact. Recent investment in bars and restaurants may have introduced a frisson of Ibiza, but it's the Ibiza of the late 60s that lured bohemians such as Dylan and Janis Joplin, not the 2010 version – all Eurotrash and Russian bling. Because it has none of the cut-throat commercialism, Formentera is genuinely more friendly, while its chiringuitos (beach bars) offer real feet-in-the-sand nightlife.
A tiny club such as the Italian-owned Xueño near the island's only resort, Es Pujols, may host superstar DJs such as David Morales, Louie Vega and Claudio Coccoluto, but it is hardly a place to go large.
Superclubs? So año pasado.
Spanish beer brand Estrella Damm tapped into the same hazy hippy vibe last year. In an advert-cum-love letter filmed on the island, beautiful bohemian girls shrug off floaty dresses to go skinny-dipping, and drive a Mini Moke down no-name tracks to hidden bars on a moon-washed bay – Playa Migjorn.
I can't help but feel that my Fiat Panda lacks the same cachet, but I could easily picture those girls at Flipper & Chiller (+34 971 187596), one of a new breed of chiringuitos just along from Gecko on that bay. It's a beauty, perfumed by wild rosemary that grows on the foreshore, with designer driftwood daybeds and vast open sea views, and a roof terrace that's a perfect place to watch the sunset over a caipirinha.
Once Formentera's action was focused on Illetes on the island's northern tip, a white powder beach that is a dead-ringer for the Caribbean. But now the paparazzi lenses are trained on Playa Migjorn.
As well as Gecko and Flipper, there are old favourites such as Blue Bar, (+34 971 187011), a nicely tatty outpost of Balearic chill-out and sunset-watching with an extra-terrestrial stageshow. But new places have opened up, like the languorous 10.7 (+34 971 328485) where tuna tataki is served beneath bleached-wood and canvas sculptures, and the beautiful people idle on a roof terrace looking like a Martini advert. Nearby Vogamarí (+34 971 329053) brings fine Spanish cuisine to the bay. Sybaritic hedonism rules supreme.
Even Es Pujols, the north coast resort aimed at the bucket-and-spade brigade, has caught on to the mood, with a new seafront chiringuito expensively finished in distressed rusticity, Chez Gerdi (+34) 648 020106).
At the weekly crafts market in the village of El Pilar (home to wonderful, genuine artistry rather than imported Asian tat) I watched a Willie Nelson lookalike playing guitar to adoring girls young enough to be his flower children and got chatting to a jewellery designer, Andreas.
He had his own theory as to why Formentera has escaped Ibiza-style development: "It has this aura, this spirituality, because it's smaller. For me it's very different to Ibiza; they sold its soul to the world and now it's a party island. Here is tranquillity, time to talk."
Things may become a little more loco when the Italians arrive in August, he admits, and the super-rich now anchor superyachts at Illetes beach. But places like that market, Playa Mitjorn and the villagey capital, Sant Francesc, retain that relaxed spirit of the Balearics in the 60s.
• Double rooms at Gecko Beach Club (+34 971 328024) cost from €270. Return flights from Stansted to Ibiza with easyJet cost from £58. Several companies operate regular ferries between Ibiza port and Formentera, with one-way tickets about €21. Isla Blanca Autos (+34 971 322559) at La Savina port in Formentera offers car hire from €36 a day.
