Where to stay in Fort Lauderdale: the best areas and hotels

This is the Fort Lauderdale you have seen in photographs. Highway A1A runs right along the shore, with the beach and its famous white wave wall on one side and a line of hotels, bars and restaurants on the other. Joggers and cyclists own the promenade in the morning; by evening it belongs to the cocktail crowd.

The hotels here are among the city's best: sleek towers with spas, ocean-facing pools and rooms that look straight out over the Atlantic. You can walk to dinner, to the shops of Beach Place and to a sunlounger, and Las Olas Boulevard is a short drive or water-taxi ride inland. It is the liveliest stretch of sand, so do not come expecting to have it to yourself.

North of Sunrise Boulevard the beach carries on but the crowds do not. The hotels thin out, the sand widens and the mood shifts from party to paperback. A few resorts here sit directly on the ocean with their own stretch of beach, a rarity in a city where a road usually separates the two.

Just inland, across the Intracoastal Waterway, the Galleria mall gathers the upmarket department stores and a good crop of restaurants. Historic Bonnet House, a 1920s estate in gardens beside the beach, is close by. This is a fine choice for couples and families who want the central beach within reach but not under the window.

Harbor Beach is one of Fort Lauderdale's most exclusive neighbourhoods, a pocket of waterfront mansions at the southern end of the beach. The resorts here are the kind you need never leave: private sand, pools, spas, and several restaurants to choose from.

It is quieter than the central beach and suits families and anyone who wants resort life without a public promenade running past the sunloungers. It is also remarkably convenient. Las Olas is just over a mile away, the cruise port and convention centre are closer still, and the airport is only a few miles off.

Las Olas Boulevard is Fort Lauderdale's high street and its most enjoyable one: a leafy run of restaurants, galleries, bars and boutiques leading from the downtown towers towards the beach. Stay at the downtown end and you are in the middle of the city's dining and entertainment district, about nine minutes from the sand by car.

South of here, around the 17th Street Causeway, hotels line the Intracoastal Waterway with marinas at their feet and yachts the size of office blocks gliding past. This is the place to stay before or after a cruise, with Port Everglades and the convention centre on the doorstep and the airport a short drive away. The water taxi links it all up, which is by far the most civilised way to get around.

Just north of the city, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is what Florida beach towns used to look like. The buildings are low, the pace is slow and the centre is a couple of blocks of restaurants and bars a short walk from wherever you are staying. It bills itself as the state's beach-diving capital, because the coral reef lies close enough to swim out to from the sand.

Hotels are small and personal: boutique places done up with real care, oceanfront suites, courtyard inns with a pool and a barbecue. If Fort Lauderdale proper sounds a bit much, this is the antidote, and the city is still only a short drive south.

Hollywood, between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, has one of Florida's great seafronts. The Broadwalk is a wide, brick-paved promenade running for about four kilometres along the sand, lined with cafés, bars and ice-cream shops and closed to cars. Families cycle it, couples stroll it, and nobody is in a hurry.

The resorts here are big and beachy, with multiple pools, kids' clubs and ocean views, some right on the Broadwalk and others in high-rises further south towards Hallandale. A few miles inland is something else entirely: the Seminole Hard Rock, a vast casino resort whose guitar-shaped hotel tower is visible for miles. The airport is around 10 km away, and Miami is close enough for a day trip.

Pompano Beach is a laid-back town north of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea with a broad beach and a newly smartened seafront. Its centrepiece is the Pompano Beach Pier, surrounded by restaurants, and a couple of the newer hotels beside it have rooftop bars and pools looking over the ocean.

Rates tend to be gentler than on Fort Lauderdale Beach, which is about 15 minutes away, and you can stay right on the sand in an oceanfront resort or suite hotel. Further north still, Deerfield Beach is another relaxed option on the way to Boca Raton.

Dania Beach sits immediately south of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, which makes it the obvious pick for a late arrival, an early flight or a night before a cruise from Port Everglades. Several hotels run airport shuttles, and most have a pool for squeezing in a last swim.

It is not all logistics. Dania has its own quiet beach and pier, a casino, and the shops and restaurants of Dania Pointe, and both Hollywood Beach and Fort Lauderdale Beach are a short drive away. You would not base a fortnight here, but for a night or two it does the job very well.