Where to stay in the Canary Islands

An expert guide to the best hotels for Canary Island holidays, including the top resorts, boutiques and budget hotels in Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro.

Tenerife

The weather is the number one reason why most people flock to Tenerife’s shores, to enjoy almost guaranteed sunshine all year. Family-friendly and just a four-hour flight away, it is consistently one of Britain’s top winter sun destinations. Most holidaymakers head to the south-western resorts of Los Cristianos, Playa de las Americas and Costa Adeje where the bulk of the island’s holiday accommodation is located. Although it’s hard to see the join between the two resorts, Los Cristianos is quieter than its neighbour and attracts a more mature visitor.

Where to stay
 

• The best budget hotels in Tenerife

Gran Canaria

Forever in the enormous shadow of its neighbour to the west, Tenerife, Gran Canaria is nonetheless never so eclipsed that it cannot provide temperatures around the 20 degrees mark as March makes the rest of Europe shiver. In truth, the third-largest Canary Island is a fabulous destination. The capital Las Palmas offers elegant culture at its Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno – but saves its best for the beach in the shape of Playa de las Canteras.

Where to stay

• The best all-inclusive hotels in Gran Canaria

Lanzarote

This may surprise you, but Lanzarote is turning into a rather upmarket destination. Don’t expect anything glitzy or flashy though; this quiet revolution is all about staying in chic, eco-friendly places and spending your days cycling, walking, surfing or sampling the local wines. All over the island, you see the influence of the visionary artist, architect and environmentalist César Manrique, who saved Lanzarote from the ravages of rampant development. His extraordinary creations accentuate the unique geology of the island and are now its main tourist attractions.

Where to stay

• The best hotels in Playa Blanca

Fuerteventura

Golden drifts of sand, like fine-spun silk, ripple towards the sparkling shore. Goats are herded across arid plains dotted with windmills. And long-dead volcanoes, scarred and deformed, pierce the cloudless sky. Just 50 miles from Saharan Africa, the island of Fuerteventura has a breathtaking, barren beauty. Despite the volcanic terrain, it has some of the best beaches in the Canary Islands – miles and miles of largely deserted sand. Guaranteed sunshine and negligible rain make it a great year-round destination, and there is no time difference after the four-hour flight.

Where to stay

• The most incredible hotels in the Balearics

La Palma

The Spanish know La Palma as La Isla Bonita: “The Pretty Island”. And she is indeed a beauty. Plentiful panoramas represent one good reason to visit: of volcanic cones and rocky barrancos (ravines), lush forests, terraced hillsides studded with rainbow hamlets, craggy coastlines and the limitless, cobalt Atlantic. You’ll find another two at the end of your legs. Because walking is the big draw on the north-westernmost Canary Island: laced with more than 600 miles of waymarked footpaths, it’s a treat for trekkers.

Where to stay

• Amazing parador hotels in Spain

La Gomera

The pint-sized La Gomera is one of the archipelago’s best-kept secrets: unspoilt and picture-book perfect, with rough and ready palm-studded beaches, sleepy mountain villages of marzipan-coloured houses, banana plantations, eye-watering ravines and a stunning rainforest of ancient laurel trees. With its own microclimate, it’s a walkers’ paradise.

Where to stay

• The best beach hotels in Spain

El Hierro

Lanzarote has its extraordinary lava fields, Tenerife its towering volcano of Mount Teide and La Palma the cavernous crater of the Caldera de Taburiente. But if you want sheer scale, the sense of being a fly on a green wall, you have to come to El Hierro, the Isle of Milk and Honey, the smallest and most westerly island of the Canarian archipelago. The stupendous gulf (El Golfo) is all that remains of the inner wall of a volcano crater too mighty even to imagine. 

Where to stay