My girlfriend and I spent 3 nights at the Reef View Hotel in February. The hotel was acceptable, clean, large rooms, staff were very helpful but overall the place was a little tired and the building was out of place with the beautiful surroundings.

The resort was nice but all a bit too contrived, shops and restaurants were overpriced with minimal selection. Best place to eat was the deli but this shut at 4pm. The manta ray resaurant was reasonably good, large portions and good pizzas but over £20 a pizza was expensive.

The biggest question was where did everyone go? The pools were quiet during the days and the nightlife almost non existent. There were 2 bars and were either completely empty or only had a few people in.

The triple trip to Whitehaven, look out and snorkling in the coral reef made for a great section of our 5 week Oz holiday though

Picked up a great cheap holiday package deal through Jetstar $649 for 7 nights including breakfast and flights! So decided to pack up the kids and go!

January is wet, humid, hot however the rain was always intermittent so plenty of time to still get out and about and enjoy everything along as you don't mind hot and humid - if you do go some other time.

We had a Gardenview room which is the first 4 floors, definitely ask for floors 3 or 4 and you still get lovely views of the ocean.

Breakfast is great with lots to choose from and good quality. There are 3 location choices,but the hotel itself is the best setup I found.

Be prepared for early morning cleangof your room, if you don't like getting woken early on your holidays put out the do not disturb sign :)

We arrived in glorious sunshine and that's the way it stayed for 4 days. Catseye beach is beautiful. We had free use of the catamarans, canoes and paddle boards, great fun. I did the Adrenalin Rush sailing, superb fun. Breakfast in the hotel good as well as the evening meal, we ate at the Steakhouse, ace and at the Mariners, expensive but good. Have a cocktail at the yacht club watching the sun go down! Whitehaven beach is a must, stunning, we went on the Jetrider. We went on the 3hour kayak trip, a wonderful way to see round the island. The shuttle buses are an easy way to get round but can be busy, it's not that far to walk to most places. Would we go back? Tomorrow if we could!!

This is a big concrete block of a hotel that is aging and understandably struggling against salt air and a tropical climate. It's not pretty from the outside and the public areas look like they have lost the battle against mould and mildew. But the views from inside out make up for this as they are absolutely stunning. The rooms are large, intelligently designed and comfortable, though not luxurious. The service was patchy, bordering on bizarre: e.g. just before 8 a.m. each morning housekeeping put on an amazing performance of repeatedly hammering on the door and screeching. If you didn't let them in the and there, your room wasn't cleaned for the rest of the day (not that anyone could possibly sleep through the 8 am production). This extraordinary housekeeping ritual, combined with the grotty, understaffed and over-packed breakfast room and several episodes of broken down lifts, gave a youth hostel ambiance to what is really quite an expensive hotel. It could have been so be so much better with proper staff and a bit of a tidy up. Surely it wouldn't kill the Reef View to give guests slippers or a robe? Thus it only gets 3 stars and all of them are for the view.

Prices: it's true that everything is expensive on Hamilton, but that's to be expected on an island where everything has to be shipped or flown in and there's a captive market. However, the cost of some of the activities surpassed natural island/tourist inflation and got close to gouging.