Hi Sydfly,
I wrote a thread last year on the Isle of Pines property (something like "Starwood's new Pacific Island Paradise" or something).

The Isle of Pines is a bit like Rangiroa or Manihi in FP: it has one great hotel and then barely so much as a shop on the entire island. It's much more beautiful than those atolls though.

You are brought by a mini-bus from the airport, and arrive at this ultra-remote entrance. The hotel consists of duplex bungalows spread out beside the sea. There is also a two-storey block of hotel rooms. The highest vantage points are the 2nd floor rooms and the clifftop bungalows at the side of the property. The style is not so much dated as classic Pacific Island stuff: floral drapes etc, and lots of dark wood. It's like a superior version of Le Meridien Bora Bora, without the African influences.

The hotel has a single indoor-outdoor restaurant which becomes very formal at night. There's nowhere else to eat nearby though, so you have zero options.

The pool was uncomfortably chilly even in January, but the lagoon is so shallow (and the sand so powdery) that you just go straight to the warmer ocean.

The beach is to die for. The water is as turquoise as Bora Bora, but across the lagoon is a wall of the island's unique pine trees in every direction. It's just an amazing view.

The hotel welcomes anyone, but is squarely pitched at a Japanese clientele, with most of the reception staff being Japanese. There is a "natural swimming pool" a 25 minute walk down a waterway, but the best excursion is on a dhow-like boat from a bay half-way across the island. The island tour is good too.

It's a magnificent hotel, but almost at Bora Bora prices. We got round it by having 3 days on the Isle of Pines combined with a week or so at Le Meridien Noumea (a good 5 star hotel which is affordable and in a pretty location, except for the crumbling, derelict Club Med next door).

We paid more for 3 nights on the Isle of Pines than for 7 nights at the sister property in Noumea.

As I wrote earlier, if you've been to French Polynesia and want something similar but novel, you've only got two choices. Go to Aitutaki's Pacific Resort near Rarotonga or go to Le Meridien Isle of Pines. Nowhere else will scratch the same itch: certainly not the flat boring Maldives or seedy Fiji or Mauritius. Only Praslin in the Seychelles comes close.