Leisure IsleAccommodation
Leisure Isle seen from high ground across the Knysna lagoon: a low, flat island of houses among dark trees, fringed by a pale sand beach, with moored yachts on the water beyond and Knysna rising on the hillside behind.

Leisure Isle, Knysna

Leisure Isle Holiday Homes & Villas

Whole houses with their own kitchen and front door, on the island in the lagoon

33 properties listed

Photo by Kent Wang, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Scores are Booking.com's guest rating out of 10, read on 3 September 2026. Only someone who booked through Booking.com can leave one, and recent reviews count for more in the total. 23 of the 33 holiday homes on this page carry a score, with 320 reviews behind them; the other 10 have none yet. Treat the thin ones with care: 11 of those scores rest on fewer than five reviews, and 5 are a perfect ten drawn from three reviews or fewer.

Every holiday home we list on Leisure Isle

33 properties, with the street each one sits on. We do not publish prices — Booking.com shows current rates and availability when you open a property.

About holiday homes here

Holiday homes on Leisure Isle

A holiday home here means the whole property: your own front door, your own kitchen, and nobody else in the building. It is the largest category on the island by a clear margin, and it is what most of Leisure Isle is — a suburb of detached houses on quiet lanes, let out when the owners are not in them, rather than a strip of purpose-built resort accommodation.

This page also carries the listings Booking.com files as villas, cottages and lodges. That is our decision rather than theirs, and it is worth being straight about why: on an island of detached houses with gardens, those labels describe the same arrangement — a whole property, to one party, with a kitchen. Splitting them would have produced several pages asking the same question of the same houses, and stranded the rarer labels on pages too thin to compare anything against. If a label matters to you, it is shown on each property.

What genuinely differs is the houses themselves, far more than hotel rooms do. Bedroom counts, layout, parking, pools and room for a boat trailer are all property-by-property facts. Read the individual listing rather than the category. A water view in particular is the exception here rather than the rule, so do not assume one comes with the house.

Sleeping capacity is one of those facts. Booking publishes a maximum-guests figure for some of these properties and not for others, so where we can show it we do and where we cannot we leave it out rather than guess. If a party size is the thing that decides your booking, check it on the listing itself before anything else.

Leisure Isle is a residential island in the Knysna lagoon, joined to the mainland by the Armstrong Road causeway. It is small, low and almost entirely houses: quiet lanes, big gardens and water at the end of most of them. Steenbok Nature Reserve runs along the northern shore — seventeen hectares of coastal thicket and lagoon edge, free to walk and open at all times, run jointly by the Leisure Isle Residents Association and Knysna Municipality within the greater Knysna Protected Environment. The Leisure Isle Boat Club keeps the Peter Gordon small boat harbour on the lagoon side, with around 250 moorings for boats under 6.1 m and a public slipway visitors can use.

These are one part of a bigger choice — see our overview of the island for the rest.

Common questions

Holiday homes on Leisure Isle — FAQ

What is the difference between a holiday home and a villa here?
Very little on the ground, which is why they share this page — both mean a whole property you have to yourselves, with a kitchen. The split is Booking.com's own classification of the listing rather than a judgement about the house, and on an island of detached homes with gardens the two overlap almost completely. Treat the label as a description, not a tier, and compare the individual properties.
Do the houses have pools?
Some do and some do not, and it is listed per property rather than being true of the category. If a pool is the reason you are booking, check it on the listing — and note that where a unit shares a plot with the main house, a pool may be shared too, which the listing will say.
Are these houses self-catering?
Almost all of them, yes. A holiday home on Leisure Isle normally comes with a kitchen and is let as a whole property, so you shop and cook for yourselves. What is actually provided — appliances, braai, laundry, whether linen and a cleaning visit are included — is set by each owner, so it is a listing-by-listing question rather than an island-wide rule.
How many people does a holiday home sleep?
It depends entirely on the house, and we will not put a number on the category. Booking publishes a maximum-guests figure for some Leisure Isle properties and not for others; where it exists we show it on the property page, and where it does not we say nothing rather than estimate. Check the listing before you book for a specific party size.
Do you need a car on Leisure Isle?
The island itself is small enough to walk end to end, and the nature reserve, the boat club and the country club are all on it. Knysna town, the Heads and everything on the wider Garden Route are across the Armstrong Road causeway, so most visitors find a car useful for anything beyond the island. Parking is a per-property matter — check what your house provides.
Is there anything to do on the island itself?
Steenbok Nature Reserve runs along the northern shore — coastal thicket and lagoon shoreline, free and open at all times, jointly run by the residents' association and the municipality inside the greater Knysna Protected Environment. The Leisure Isle Boat Club runs the small boat harbour and a public slipway, and the Leisure Isle Country Club on Links Drive has bowls and tennis. There is also a community charity festival on the island, with the proceeds going to local charities; dates go up on leisureislefestival.co.za.