Where to stay in Skiathos: the best areas and hotels

Skiathos Town is the island's beating heart. Fishing boats and yachts crowd the old harbour, the pine-covered Bourtzi peninsula pokes into the bay between them, and behind the waterfront a tangle of stepped lanes climbs past churches, boutiques and bougainvillea. Papadiamantis Street, named after the island's most famous writer, is the main drag, and by night it heaves.

Stay here if you want to walk to dinner and stagger home after cocktails. Choose a boutique hotel 350 metres from the ferry terminal, an art hotel just off Papadiamantis Street, a hotel with a rooftop garden looking over the marina, or a family-run set of stylish studios right on the main street. The nearest town beach is a short walk; the best ones are a bus ride away.

Just west of town, Megali Ammos is a long, sandy beach with shallow water, sunbeds and beach bars, and it's the closest proper beach to the harbour. Stay here and you can spend the day on the sand and still walk into town for dinner in ten or fifteen minutes.

The hotels range from an adults-only hotel of individually styled suites on the beach itself to a beach hotel with a pool a few hundred metres from the sand, a quiet hotel in the woods 250 metres from the beach, and a stone-and-wood hotel just 30 metres from the water. The airport is about 2 km away; you'll see the planes come in low, which some people love.

Between Skiathos Town and the big beaches of the south-west, the coast is a series of coves and pine-clad peninsulas: Achladies with its sandy bay, the Kanapitsa peninsula with its little beaches and water sports, and Kolios and Vromolimnos further along. It's calmer than town, greener, and the bus is never far away.

Hotels here suit couples and families looking for space and a pool. There's a resort on the south coast about 7 km from town, a hotel on Kanapitsa, studios overlooking Kolios beach, and apartments a short walk from Vromolimnos. Hire a scooter or hop on the bus to explore a different beach each day.

The south-west corner of Skiathos is where the island keeps its biggest beaches. Agia Paraskevi, also called Platanias, is a long stretch of golden sand with water sports and tavernas, and just round the headland lies Koukounaries, the island's celebrated beach: a sweeping curve of fine sand, fringed by a forest of umbrella pines with a lagoon behind. Banana beach is a short walk over the hill.

This is the classic choice for families. Stay in a deluxe hotel directly on the sand at Agia Paraskevi, a stone-and-wood hotel on a pine-covered hill above Platanias beach, a five-star on the hillside overlooking Koukounaries Bay and Maratha beach, or a hotel set in woodland 200 metres from Koukounaries. Skiathos Town is about 12 km away, roughly half an hour by bus.