Where to stay in Tenerife: the best areas and hotels

If Tenerife had a showroom, this would be it. Costa Adeje is the island at its most groomed: a seafront promenade threading past Playa de Fañabé and Playa del Duque, golden beaches raked smooth every morning, and the yachts of Puerto Colón bobbing at the southern end.

This is where the island keeps its best resorts. Five-star hotels line the front, many of them adults-only, so honeymooners and families get along by simply never meeting. Expect vast pool decks, manicured tropical gardens and rooms that open almost straight onto the promenade.

Practicalities are a doddle: the shops are on your doorstep and Tenerife South airport is about 18 km away, close enough to be on a sunbed before lunch.

Playa de las Americas doesn't do subtle. Its spine is the Golden Mile, a seafront strip of bars, clubs, restaurants and shops that hits its stride after midnight and keeps going until the beach cleaners arrive.

Groups of friends love it, but don't write it off if bed by eleven is your idea of a big night. Step back from the front and you'll find pedestrian streets, family resorts with big pool complexes and a championship golf course tucked between Las Americas and Los Cristianos.

Prices are the most varied on the island, from good-value apartments a few streets back to swish five-stars facing the waves.

Before the package holidays came, Los Cristianos was a fishing village, and you can still tell. The harbour is busy with working boats and ferries to La Gomera, whose silhouette fills the horizon, and the old town wraps around a sheltered bay of sand that's ideal for nervous swimmers.

It feels like a town first and a resort second. Everything is walkable, from the promenade cafés to the beach to the boats, and the best hotels sit right on the bay with front-row views of La Gomera. For a first trip to Tenerife, it's hard to beat.

North of Costa Adeje the crowds thin out and the coast gets wilder. Around the old fishing hamlet of La Caleta and the little bay of Playa Enramada you'll find Tenerife's most exclusive addresses: sea-view suites, spas the size of small villages and restaurants with Michelin stars to their name.

Keep going and you reach Playa Paraíso and Callao Salvaje, newer, smaller resorts where the big evening entertainment is watching the sun drop into the Atlantic. The buzz of Costa Adeje is a short drive away, which is exactly as close as most people here want it.

Long before the south was built up, visitors were wintering in Puerto de la Cruz. The old town still has its plazas, balconied mansions and fishing harbour, with the Orotava Valley rising steeply behind it and, on clear days, Mount Teide above that.

The beaches are black volcanic sand (Playa Jardín is the pick), and when the Atlantic gets lively everyone heads for the Lago Martiánez seawater pools on the seafront. Inland, leafy villa quarters hide botanical gardens and grand old hotels.

Come for character rather than a tan guarantee: the north is cloudier and greener than the south, and all the better for it. Tenerife North airport is about 20 minutes away.

Santa Cruz is the island's capital and gets on with being a city: offices, ferries and tapas bars full of locals. Stay near the leafy García Sanabria Park and you're a short walk from the old town, the shops and the seafront.

When you want sand, Las Teresitas, a long golden beach backed by mountains, is about ten minutes up the coast.