THE Evason Hideaway at the wonderfully named Zighy Bay, on the Musandam Peninsula of northern Oman, is due to open in May. Expect 80-odd villas with private pools, a fantastic Six Senses spa — and the option of arriving by speedboat or paraglider. And in 2008, Oman attracts another big beast of the hotel world when Gordon Campbell Gray, the hotelier behind One Aldwych in London, opens a hotel outside Muscat.

Until these open, the following three hotels in Muscat offer the best bet for winter sunseekers seeking a cultured, elegant alternative to nearby Dubai.

The Chedi

This opened to some fanfare three years ago and it’s easy to see why: its beautiful gardens, with palm trees, pools and oversized black urns set with geometric precision, lend themselves to fabulous photographs. Take one of the 36 suites, in white villas dotted around the grounds, rather than the 115 standard and deluxe rooms, if you can afford it.

Each suite has a lounge with free minibar, two pre-loaded iPods and a Bose docking station, private terrace with lovely views, a huge bedroom with candles on tall bronze sconces, an enormous sunken bath, and access to a private library with free drinks, canapes and internet access. The other rooms do not. They are small, rather bare and some have uninteresting views of other buildings. Even in the suites, bizarrely, there is nowhere to hang towels in the bathroom, and the bedside lighting is appalling — a spotlight so bright and poorly angled it illuminates the foot of the bed and wakes up your partner.

When I visited, there was only one, rather good restaurant offering four cuisines — Arabic, Mediterranean, Indian and Asian — so you could eat there often and not get bored. A new beachside restaurant opens this winter to ease the booking log-jam that can occur. The extensive breakfast buffet is imaginative and delicious. There are two 30m pools, praise be, but the Chedi pool by the beach suffers from sunbed banditry — even on my low-season visit there were barely enough loungers. The beach is grey and featureless, and occasionally aircraft fly low overhead as they land.

Shangri-La Barr Al Jissah

Resort and Spa Oman’s biggest hotel, with 680 rooms, has been open for less than a year, and is already doing a roaring trade with British and German families. It’s actually three hotels set around one uninhabited bay. All rooms have sea views, there are masses of pools, a dozen restaurants, watersports (but not wet bikes), bars, a nightclub, a promenade area and expensive shops (Porsche, Tiffany) — it feels like an entire resort.

Al Waha, the least expensive of the three, is aimed at families and so has lots of interconnecting rooms and a free Little Turtles club for 3 to 12-year-olds. I stayed at the middle hotel, Al Bandar, connected to Al Waha by the shared beach and the fun “Lazy River” — a 250m channel which you float along at up to 12 knots. Unlike at the Chedi, which put a lot of effort into the rooms’ Arabic styling, my room was anonymous and international, though comfortable and well designed.

Al Husn is the “six-star” hotel, with a helipad, a private beach where a tanning butler checks you have sunscreen, and a pool inaccessible to hoi polloi from the other hotels. The rooms are more Arabic in design, with dark, rich colours. Russell Loughland, sales director, said that they want Al Husn to be a “best-kept secret”, so have turned down a magazine offer to shoot Jordan and Peter Andre’s wedding anniversary there.

I liked this resort more than I expected to, given its size and rather overwhelming chirpiness. It’s very comfortable and Westernised — great cappuccino at the Mokha Café, a terrific selection of books at the Turtles bookstore. Expect lots of children in the school holidays. The Chi Spa opened since my visit but looked a little on the small side, so book treatments in advance.

Al Bustan Palace

The 250-room octagonal hotel, which opened in 1985 to host a regional summit meeting, now looks rather dated, and will close in January for a £53 million refurbishment lasting most of next year. But it is still spectacular, with its beautiful lobby, 38m (125ft) high, where strong coffee and dates are offered to guests, and gardens leading to a private beach. You can eat very well: I had a superb meal in the Al Marjan French restaurant overlooking the gardens, and it also has a well-regarded Chinese restaurant.

The standard rooms are in European or Arabic styles: the latter, with their blue or maroon tiling, felt less dated than the rather chintzy European ones. Ask to see a Matrah suite on the eighth floor, even if you can’t afford it, to admire the bling — even the bidet has gold-plated taps.

The Times Holiday Handbook — The Essential Trip-Planning Guide, by Cath Urquhart (Navigator Guides, £12.95), is available from The Times BooksFirst (0870 1608080, www.booksfirst.co.uk) for £11.50 with free p&p.

Need to know

Getting there: Cath Urquhart travelled with Oman Tourist Office (020-8877 4524, www.omantourism.gov.om), and Gulf Air (0870 7771717, www.gulfairco.com), which offers return fares from Heathrow to Muscat from £380.

Staying: Shaw Travel (01635 47055, www.shawtravel.co.uk) offers five nights’ B&B at the Al Bustan Palace Hotel from £932pp, including flights on Gulf Air and private transfers. A similar package of five nights at the Chedi costs from £891.

Kuoni Travel (01306 747008, www.kuoni.co.uk) offers five nights at the Shangri-La Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa, including flights with British Airways and transfers. B&B at Al Waha starts at £741pp, at Al Bandar from £883pp, and at Al Husn from £1,120pp, including flights with BA to Muscat and transfers to and from the resort, based on two sharing.

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