Where to stay on Amelia Island

Where you sleep on Amelia Island decides what your trip is about, more than on most islands this size — because the two halves of it are genuinely different places.

Downtown, or the south end

Downtown Fernandina Beach is the historic port town: Victorian inns and bed-and-breakfasts, a few small hotels, and the ability to walk to twenty restaurants, the museum, the marina and the shops. The trade-off is that the beach is a two-mile drive east.

The south end is the resort half: the Omni, the Ritz-Carlton, the villas and rentals of the former Amelia Island Plantation, and Summer Beach. You are on or beside the sand, with golf, pools, spas and children's programmes. The trade-off is a ten-to-fifteen-minute drive to dinner downtown and no walkable restaurant district outside the gate.

Oceanside Fletcher Avenue is the compromise most people miss: mid-size hotels and a handful of small inns directly behind the dune, five minutes from downtown. You get the sand and the short drive to Centre Street.

Choosing

• Walk to dinner, drive to the beach → downtown.
• Walk to the beach, drive to dinner → south end.
• Short drive to both → oceanside Fletcher Avenue.
• Golf, tennis, spa, kids' club → south end resorts.
• A porch, a small property and breakfast included → downtown inns or oceanside inns.

Vacation rentals

A large share of the island's inventory is condominium and house rentals, concentrated in the south-end communities and along the oceanfront. They are the right answer for a family or a week-plus stay, and the wrong one for a two-night trip where you would rather someone else made breakfast.

When to book

Two weeks book out months ahead and reshape the whole island: the Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival in early May and the Concours d'Elegance in March. Spring generally and the winter holidays are also tight. Late summer is the softest window on price, at the cost of heat, afternoon storms and hurricane season.

What we do not publish

Nightly rates. They move daily and any number here would be wrong by the time you read it. We also do not publish ratings or review scores, ours or anyone else's. What we publish is what the property is, where it sits, and what that means for your day.