Caribbean Travel & Life Names the Top 25 Affordable Hotels

Winter Park, Fla. - Caribbean Travel & Life, the only national travel magazine focusing solely on the region, has teamed up with David Swanson, Caribbean Travel Organization's Travel Writer of the Year for 2007, to reveal an exclusive list of the top 25 affordable hotels. This issue will be available on newsstands April 22.

"David Swanson has been writing this magazine's Affordable column for 10 years now," says Editor-in-Chief Dave Herndon. "The decade mark struck me as a good time to ask him to reflect on 23 years of traveling the region and to select from all his coverage a 'greatest hits' collection, the crème de la crème of affordable Caribbean hotels."

Swanson has made a quest of finding special places that just happen to be affordable: hotels with smart hosts who know their home turf and are eager to share their secrets with guests; inspired inns distinguished by innovative design; resorts with roll-out-of-bed access to breathtaking beaches or lush tracts of rainforest. These are boutiques at bargain prices.

Chosen from more than 1,000 hotels and divided into three price ranges, here is a sample of the 25 tropical gems worth checking out. In the price range of $105 or less, Blachi Koko in Bonaire is situated just 50 feet from some of the Caribbean's finest diving and snorkeling. No panorama tops that of Mafolie Hotel in St. Thomas, where in the category of $105 to $145 a night you can be 800 feet above sea level, overlooking the port of Charlotte Amalie. Able to splurge just a bit more? Within the range of $145 to $200 a night, check in at Manchebo Beach Resort in Aruba, where the resort's second-best asset is a snazzy spa with open-air Balinese massage gazebos.

Here's the complete lineup, full of pleasant surprises:

$105 or Less

Hotel Playa Colibri, Dominican Republic

Velero Beach Resort, Dominican Republic

Da House, Puerto Rico

Blachi Koko, Bonaire

Kariwak Holistic Haven and Hotel, Tobago

Jake's, Jamaica

Frigate Bay Resort, St. Kitts

Admiral's Inn, Antigua

$105 to $145

Mafolie Hotel, St. Thomas, USVI

Sibonné, Turks and Caicos

La Sagesse Nature Center, Grenada

Mary's Boon, St. Maarten

Rockhouse, Jamaica

Greenbank Guesthouse, Bermuda

Harmony Studios, St. John, USVI

Cooper Island Beach Club, British Virgin Islands

Sea Foam Haciendas, Barbados

$145 to $200

Coco Palm, St. Lucia

Grand Case Beach Club, St. Martin

Manchebo Beach Resort, Aruba

Shangri-La Caribe, Mexico

Ti Kaye Village, St. Lucia

Plein Soleil, Martinique

Kú, Anguilla

Village St. Jean, St. Barts

Published nine times a year by Bonnier Corporation, Caribbean Travel & Life is your personal connection to the good life in the Caribbean. In addition to Caribbean Travel & Life, Bonnier publishes numerous other lifestyle magazines, including Islands, Florida Travel & Life and Spa.