Funafuti Lagoon Hotel

The Funafuti Lagoon Hotel, long known as the Vaiaku Lagi, is the principal hotel of the world's least-visited country: a modest, government-owned property at Vaiaku on Funafuti atoll, directly facing the lagoon and barely a minute's walk from the runway apron where Tuvalu's few weekly flights arrive to a crowd of waving islanders. Every visiting official, journalist and curious traveller passes through its doors, making the terrace bar the closest thing the nation has to a public forum.

Rooms are simple, air-conditioned and lagoon-facing in the better categories, where sliding doors open to a horizon of impossible turquoise; sunset from the waterfront lawn, beer in hand, is Tuvalu's signature luxury. The restaurant serves fish landed metres away, island staples and Australian-influenced plates, with meal times that follow flight days and community events.

The hotel is also the base for understanding Tuvalu's poignant position at the front line of sea-level rise—the famous runway floods at king tides, and boat trips to the Funafuti Conservation Area's untouched islets show what is at stake. Facilities are few, the pace is gentle and the welcome sincere: as the leading stay in an extraordinary country, the Lagoon Hotel is exactly what it needs to be.