Overwater bungalows, explained

The overwater bungalow was invented in French Polynesia in 1967 by three Californians who had bought a hotel with no beach. Sixty years later it is the most photographed hotel room in the world and the one most often booked for the wrong reasons. Here is what it is, where it is real, and how to decide.

What you get

A room on stilts over a lagoon, a deck with steps into the water, and usually a glass panel in the floor. Privacy depends entirely on layout: some rows face each other across a jetty, some face open water. The water underneath ranges from a metre of sand to a living coral garden, and that difference is the whole experience.

Where it is real

• The Maldives has the most, at every price from mid-range to absurd, and the lagoons are the clearest. Choose a house reef within swimming distance. Guide.
• Moorea and Bora Bora have the originals and the mountains behind them, which no atoll can offer. The lagoon at Bora Bora is the most beautiful; Moorea costs less and has more to do. Guide.
• Mauritius, Zanzibar, Mexico and Dubai have a handful each. They are fine, but the water is not the point in the same way.

When to choose a beach villa instead

With small children, always: no railings, no sand and stairs into deep water do not mix. If you want to walk out of your door and swim in calm knee-deep water, the beach villa wins. If the lagoon is shallow and sandy rather than coral, you are paying for a view, not a reef. And in windy months on exposed atolls, the deck is unusable and the water is choppy; check the season.

The price

An overwater night usually costs 40 to 100 percent more than a beach villa at the same resort. My advice is to split: two nights over the water for the ritual, the rest on the beach. The budget planner lets you model both.