Imagine having a private wave pool session with only your friends on a tropical island. No crowds, no drop-ins, no one yelling from the beach. Just you and your crew trading perfect waves back to back.
Nowadays, most surf spots are either flat, packed, freezing — or somehow all three. You drive hours for a maybe, share the peak with fifty strangers, and count yourself lucky to get three good waves. In Hainan, China, it's completely different. You can book a private wave pool session, bring your friends, and choose the exact waves you want to surf — at the PerfectSwell® surf pool at Riyue Bay, the world's only wave pool on a tropical island.
Running a coached camp, a club trip or a junior squad? That has its own guide: surf camps at a private wave pool. This one is for crews who want the pool to themselves.
Your crew, your waves, nobody else
A private session flips the usual surf-trip math on its head. Instead of competing for waves, the pool is booked for your group only. Every wave that rolls through has someone's name on it, and it's someone you came with. No jostling for position, no drop-ins, no sitting shoulder to shoulder with a crowd — just wave after wave, on demand, shared between friends.
That changes how a session feels. People take turns, cheer each other into sets, film each other's waves, and try things they'd never attempt at a crowded break. The wave count you'd normally scrape together over a week of ocean surfing can happen in a single session — and every ride is watched by your own crew from the water's edge.
Ready to see what your own session would look like? Design your private pool buyout — pick your wave settings, session length and rooms, and get a live price for your group.
Around twenty wave settings — everyone gets something fun
The PerfectSwell pool runs around twenty wave settings: barrels, air sections, performance walls for turns, and soft, forgiving beginner waves. In a private session, your group decides what the machine serves — and you can change it as you go.
That's the detail that makes private sessions work for mixed groups. The shortboarder chasing clips gets a ramp on repeat. The friend who's never stood up gets a mellow roller with room to learn. Nobody compromises, because the pool doesn't have to pick one kind of surfer to serve. See The Surf Session package for how a pool session is structured.
Who books a private hour
Mostly, people who have talked about this trip for years. Couples who want an hour of waves with nobody else in the water. Crews of friends — four, eight, a dozen — trading waves and filming each other from the edge. Birthday and milestone trips, where the session is the present. And mixed-ability groups where the setting changes as the next person paddles out, so the surfer chasing barrels and the friend on their first green wave share the same hour without either compromising.
Two things are covered elsewhere on purpose: bringing children is in our family surf trips guide, and running a coached camp or club block is in the surf camps guide.
Between sessions, resorts sit steps from the pool, so the whole trip happens in one place: surf, eat, rest, repeat.
And when the session ends, you're still on a tropical island
Here's the best part. After the session, you're not driving three hours back home from some inland tank. You're still on a tropical island. World-class golf — including the best links course in China at The Dunes, and Blackstone at Mission Hills, a former world top-100 course played by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy — is a short hop away. When the swell turns on, Riyue Bay's ocean break is minutes from the pool. Add beaches, warm weather and Hainan's island cooking and Xinglong coffee, and the "rest" of the trip is a trip in itself.
That's what makes Hainan special: perfect waves on demand, and a real island around them.
Getting your crew here is the easy part
Most visitors travel visa-free: Hainan offers 30 days of visa-free entry for passport holders from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada and many other countries. There are direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Haikou (HAK), plus routes via Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul into Haikou or Sanya (SYX). Full details in our getting here guide.
A private session at a glance
Every trip we run is private and built around your group — abilities, trip length, who's coming. Browse our packages, read more in the Surf China Journal, or get in touch with your dates and group size and we'll take it from there.
