Renamed One&Only Le Touessrok for its relaunch, this is certainly the glitziest hotel on the island. Smart and chic, it is a temple to conspicuous spending, a place to see and be seen.

Half the property is built up on a tiny peninsula (allowing every one of the 200 rooms a sea view) and the layout of bridges and steps leading up and down and round and round made me feel as if I were trapped in an Escher optical illusion.

That claustrophobia evaporated once inside my airy, split-level junior suite. The centrepiece of the enormous bathroom is a giant demi dodo-egg bath so vast, curved and smooth that it feels like a water slide. There’s a shower you could hold a party in, and two thicknesses of bathrobe are provided.

The 32in plasma screen TV with CD, VCD, DVD and a whole alphabet of PC games, sound systems, optic fibre lights, internet consoles and cappuccino machine must be Nirvana for techno-savvy gadgetphiles — the rest of us can call our 24-hour butler to switch them on.

The spirit of excess extends to breakfast, where chefs whip up a culinary world tour including fried noodles, raw vegetable juices, seafood, roast pork, waffles: caviar soufflé could probably be arranged.

There’s a Givenchy spa, Matt Roberts gym and Bastien Gonzalez, podiatrist-to-the-stars, pedicure parlour right there, but if you try to dip more than a toe in the sea a vigilant beach attendant will admonish you to buy plastic shoes to protect against the sea urchins or take a boat ride to the offshore watery playground, the Ile aux Cerfs.

(0800-316 5125, www.tropicalplaces.co.uk), half board from £1,815.

Legends

A new hotel built on the site of the old Le Grand Gaube, on the rocky north of the island, which had its grand opening in December, Legends is designed on feng shui principles — to bring success to the hotel and harmony and relaxation to the guests — so its 198 rooms form a zig-zag shape (representing a dragon) sitting around a tightly curved cove.

The public areas have touches such as a lily pond, tubs of bamboo and a statue of Buddha. But is it practical in the bedrooms? Entering my misleadingly named “superior room” (it was one of the 126 standard rooms) was a bit of an obstacle course because feng shui rules will not allow a clear run from the door to the balcony, so the oddly shaped little wardrobe (no sharp corners to disturb the energy flows, you see) was in between.

The lavatory does have its own cubicle, but the elliptical bath is in the middle of the room. With much tugging I was able to pull down cane blinds between the bath and the beds, but should you be sharing with someone who you’d rather did not see you in the altogether (quite possible in a twin room), then they won’t do much to screen your modesty. But at least with the blinds down, you don’t have to look at wet towels and your sponge bag while lying in bed.