Where to stay on the Gold Coast: the best areas and hotels

Surfers Paradise is the Gold Coast everyone pictures: a broad, golden beach patrolled by lifeguards, with a forest of towers behind it, one of them 77 storeys tall. The streets between Surfers Paradise Boulevard and the sand are packed with places to eat, drink and buy flip-flops, and after dark it becomes the coast's nightlife district.

Don't assume that rules it out for families. The big resorts here are built around water: saltwater lagoons you can snorkel in, lazy rivers and waterslides, with supervised childcare at the biggest of them. Most accommodation is in apartments with kitchens, balconies and ocean or hinterland views. If you want quiet evenings, look further along the coast; if you want everything on your doorstep, this is it.

A few minutes south of Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach trades neon for napkins. Its heart is a tight grid of cafés, wine bars and restaurants around the pedestrian mall, with Kurrawa Beach, wide and usually less crowded, at the end of the street and a leafy park along the foreshore.

On its own little island just inland is The Star, the coast's casino resort, with its theatre, bars and big-name restaurants. Stay in one of the sleek apartment towers nearby and you get east-facing balconies and sunrise over the Pacific. Gold Coast Airport is around 25 minutes away by car.

Main Beach sits on a narrow strip just north of Surfers Paradise, with surf on one side and the sheltered Broadwater on the other. It is the Gold Coast's old-money pocket: Tedder Avenue, its main street, is all pavement cafés, boutiques and people who look like they own boats. The marina across the road suggests many of them do.

The headline address is a low-rise five-star resort set directly on the sand, a rarity on this coast. Otherwise it's large two- and three-bedroom apartments with pools, tennis courts and ocean views, which suit families nicely. Sea World, out on The Spit, is just up the road.

Burleigh Heads is where the Gold Coast stops trying so hard and gets better for it. A green headland, protected as a national park, juts into the sea at the southern end of the beach; surfers peel off the point below it, and half the town gathers on the grassy hill at sunset to watch them with a takeaway and a cold drink.

The streets behind are full of good cafés, bars and restaurants, and the hotels have caught up, with a design-led five-star now a few steps from the sand. Beachfront apartments along the Esplanade look north up the coast to the towers of Surfers Paradise. You're about 15 minutes from both the airport and Surfers, which is a very handy place to be.

Coolangatta is the last town in Queensland; walk a few blocks and you are in Tweed Heads, New South Wales. It has the feel of a beach town from a few decades back, with a modest main street and a run of north-facing beaches, Kirra, Coolangatta, Greenmount and Rainbow Bay, that surfers cross the world for and that are also calm enough, on the right day, for a family paddle.

Hotels are mostly apartment towers along Marine Parade, with full kitchens, balconies over the bay and saltwater pools. Gold Coast Airport is about five kilometres away and Surfers Paradise about 25, so this is the place for an easy arrival and a slow week.