THE FACTS ABOUT ONE&ONLY OCEAN CLUB

Bahamas

Paradise Island is home to the most famous five-star resort in the Bahamas, One&Only Ocean Club. If you happen to be a spa-loving gourmand who is unlikely to leave the hotel's manicured confines, this is the only address as yet that justifies a holiday in or around Nassau (the capital, connected to the island by bridge, is a five-minute car journey away). It offers hard-to-fault luxury with breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as room service, all designed by New York super-chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. There is also a neighbouring 18-hole championship golf course created by Tom Weiskopf, and a near-perfect, alabaster-white beach (the only drawback is the permanent buzz of jet skis). The 106-room resort is expensive, but service is super-smooth, delivered with a streamlined professionalism unusual for the Caribbean (aided by a four-to-one staff-guest ratio). The colonial-style suites don't have a thread out of place. The bathrooms are also huge, with acres of marble and baths so cavernous they feel almost immoral. The beds enfold you in silk covers and the seductive scent of perfectly pressed Frette linen. The grounds, modelled after the Château de Versailles, are striking, extending for a quarter of a mile on seven terraces with cushion-soft lawns (looked after by some 16 gardeners) and Carrara marble and bronze statues that include a 12th-century Hercules. Flanking this grandiose piece of theatre is a 12th-century Augustinian cloister, and a gorgeous pool where attendants in crisp white shorts bring you fluffy towels, the latest magazines and a Discman. They even administer 'Evian misting'. But this is not simply a five-star-resort by numbers. The hotel's history offers a whiff of glamour. Before the South African hotelier Sol Kerzner arrived with a cool $100 million to throw at its refurbishment, The Ocean Club was owned by Huntington Hartford II, a famous playboy of the 1950s and 1960s who made it Hollywood's Caribbean playground. Not much has changed. Americans still like to come here; so much so that British guests will definitely feel outnumbered. ROOM TO BOOK The luxury beachfront rooms. Ones on ground floor have gardens; first-floor alternatives have better views of the ocean. Avoid rooms flanking the busy night-time Courtyard Terrace restaurant CONTACT One&Only Ocean Club, Paradise Island (00 1 242 363 2501; fax: 363 2424; email: vernipa.major@kerzner.com; www.onenandonlyresorts.com). Doubles from US$525