While most of us huddle around the television with friends and family at Christmas and new year, celebrities head to the sun, for heat, glamour and column inches. It is not holidaymaking as the rest of us know it, more a test of forward-planning, impressive cash-flows — and an outrageous sense of one-upmanship.

No amount of pleading will get you a Crusoe suite at Soneva Gili in the Maldives (last year a celebrity cul-de-sac, with Sven ’n’ Nancy next door to Gareth Gates). All 11 suites at the all-new, eco-glam North Island are full (this may be on account of it being a nature reserve with satellite TV, spa, scuba diving, extensive in-villa dining and restaurant).

All the villas at Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands were reserved 11 months ago. The villa at Sandy Lane, Barbados (five bedrooms, private pool, butler, chef and housekeeper) has been booked since May, even though it costs £11,600 a night. “We started booking for Christmas on January 5,” says Gloria Beyer, who runs the tour operator Azure. “And first and club class fares are always the first to go.”

Could there be anything better, more exclusive? Well, you can always follow in Bono’s footsteps and go seriously off the beaten track; a week or two in deepest Guatemala, on a trip arranged with a level of discretion second only to President Bush’s Thanksgiving flit to Iraq.

Starting two years ago, Chris Blackwell, the hotelier and founder of Island Records, has been helping to arrange trips to Central America. Out of Guatemala (a company which, incidentally, operates out of Miami) meets clients and takes them — plus a chef and a spa therapist — to one or more of the secluded villas on their books. It is the sort of holiday which features a helicopter on 24-hour standby, and is almost guaranteed to be pester-proof, given the high level of jungle and low level of inhabitants with cameras in their mobile phones.

“There is no visibility; we don’t use commercial planes, we don’t stay in hotels,” says Mario Leon, from Out of Guatemala. “This is the sort of holiday for someone who can afford to completely disappear for a while.”

And the guests will probably be clients of Bill Fischer in New York, or the London-based travel agency Earth. Bill Fischer charges his clients £5,800 to join, with an annual retainer of £2,900. And while he represents some of the most demanding (and famous) people in the world, he expects them to be reasonable as well. As Fischer has said: “We don’t want clients to go to a hotel where we have a long-term working relationship and scream at the staff.”

In return he offers to get them into the best hotels and villas in the shortest possible time: “We make things happen, some way, somehow.”

Earth takes the same approach in Britain. It is ex-directory and thinks very laterally. “I mean, the Royal Villa at Le Saint Géran in Mauritius is perfectly nice,” says Dennis Wilde, one of the directors, “but it’s on a public beach, so it’s not exactly the best place to launch an affair.”

Private islands offer more seclusion, which is one of the reasons why Parrot Cay turns into a celebrity consciousness-raising group over the festive period. Julia Roberts, Britney Spears and Robert De Niro have all been to the yoga sessions on past Christmas holidays. Donna Karan and Bruce Willis have bought villas here.

However, when it comes to the truly famous, any beach is a bad idea. “Even if the beach isn’t public,” says Wilde, “there’s nothing to stop a photographer paying a fisherman £1,000 and taking photographs from the water.”

As a result, serious celebrities (and at this level they all take themselves very seriously), tend to be sequestered at inland hotels such as Begawan Giri, Amandari or Amanusa, all in Bali.

And they increasingly book into villas. Paul Merton and Rio Ferdinand can compare notes on the Cap Pavilion villa in St Lucia. Liv Tyler loved her time at the Fustic House (inland Barbados, designed by Oliver Messel) so much that she vowed never to tell the rest of Hollywood.

How do we know this? She told people. For celebrities enjoy boasting about holidays, and for all but a very few of them, a little publicity is a useful thing. In today’s fickle world of fame, the average celebrity (and there is such a thing) makes headlines for only five years before the perfume deal peters out, along with the public interest.

A villa in a smart hotel in a touristy place is the answer. When the Beckham family went to Barbados to soak up some winter sun earlier this year, they stayed in their villa until towards the end, when they emerged — buffed and bronzed — for a stroll along the beach that turned into an extensive photo-opportunity.

Such news management doesn’t come cheap. Azure will charge the better part of £50,000 to hire Cove Spring in Barbados, which Sting and Rod Stewart have rented, over Christmas. Or they would, if it hadn’t gone months ago.

For this type of celebrity, St Tropez is the summer alternative. P Diddy charters a yacht each summer, which allows him to drop in on the South of France for a few choreographed turns on a jet ski which in turn garners him vital coverage for his music and fashion labels.

These people are rich and famous, but they can’t afford to disappear. A villa or yacht, however, gives them the chance to limit the number of photographs.

And then we come to the lowest strata of celebrity, those who head abroad in the hope of garnering publicity. Aware that they haven’t got the money for privacy, they spend Christmas abroad in the hope that a beach shot will help the sales of a new tell-all biography, or garner publicity for a TV programme by filling the newspapers in the generally quiet news days of early January.

Simon Cowell is very fond of Sandy Lane (and being photographed there) and John Leslie was recently spotted at Sandals in St Lucia. Because, even if eventual coverage turns out to be a critique of your paunch in the heat, it at least proves that you aren’t doing panto.

But sometimes celebrities can win by breaking the rules. In Italy last year, Nicole Kidman checked in with her parents to the three-star Hotel Elisa in Peschici. It was far from the sort of hotels that are normally on a paparazzi’s radar. And afterwards, when news leaked out, she was applauded for choosing a £50 a night hotel. It is not, however, an approach that would work for Jade from Big Brother.

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Out of Guatemala can be booked through Earth (www.earthlondon.com). Azure Collection (01244 322770, www.azurecollection.com) has seven nights at Parrot Cay from £1,395pp B&B; Soneva Gili from £1,595 room only and North Island from £6,650 full board. All prices include flights and transfers.

Other operators include Elegant Resorts (01244 897000, www.elegantresorts.co.uk), Seasons in Style (0151 342 0505, www.seasonsinstyle.com) and Scott Dunn World (020-8682 5010, www.scottdunn.com).

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