My husband and I are going to Gran Canaria for 5 days over New Years, and we're having trouble finding a place to stay. It seems that most places are extremely popular for families (and hence overrun with children) and/or they require a 7-night stay. We've already booked the plane tickets, but would prefer to find a more romantic (and perhaps smaller) place to stay (as opposed to these huge complexes with hundreds of rooms and/or apartments that cater to holiday packages). Any suggestions?

I've never been so can't offer personal experience, but I've found starting at tripadvisor.com is a good place to start for researching almost any travel location. Their hotel reviews are usually very accurate, they list many if not most of the places in a location, and there are usually good links to articles and more info. Here's the URL for the Grand Canary page

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g...Vacations.html

Here's a link I followed from there that lists hotels by price category

http://www.wguides.com/city/376/subsub_31.cfm

My only other thoughts are, have you checked vrbo.com? (vacation rental by owner) You may find a privately owned place.

I also did a web search for "discount hotels AND grand canaria" and came up with this website that seems to have availabilities

http://www.hotel-reservations.8k.com...y_islands.html

but I have no personal experience with them. Also what about lastminute.com and laterooms.com? On laterooms they only go to Dec 20 now though.

To broaden your options during this ultra-high season, you might consider other islands in the Canaries, such as Tenerife, Palma or Lanzarote, which can be reached via a rather short flight from Gran Canaria.

Hi jmtg,
We just returned from GC and your concerns are justified.
We found it to be very tacky and commercialised, it was not what we had expected at all.
Not sure if you are British, but it was just like Blackpool with sun, and I for one; hate that !!
So I suggest that if you need an apartment or hotel, you should avoid Puerto Rico, and Playa de Ingles, we went to Masspolomas and it seemed quite new and much less tacky.Although lots of building was going on there too.
Look out for anything with a small commercial center, it will be full of English pubs and Irish bars.And the touts will hassle you to go into their crummy restaurant for brekkie or dinner all the time.
Porto mogan seemed quite nice but we only stayed a few hours.
We hired a car and it was not worth it.The island is just not very pretty, it seems to have little culture that we could see and the drive up to teror, was just that terror. Nice village with church but certainly not worth the dangerous drive.
I suggest you find a Villa somewhere and ignore the surroundings as most of the island seems to be a building site.
Sorry to be negative but its what we found, however the weather was fabulous.

Good Luck

Muck

I can only agree with Muck.
Especially around Xmas & New Year the Canary Islands will be overrun by families with children. I'm not sure you will be able to find a small and charming hotel on Gran Canaria. You may try www.secretplaces.com
For a bigger chance of nice weather, make sure you stay in the south of the island, rather than in Las Palmas.