Those powdery soft beaches in all your favourite holiday hotspots don't just happen, you know.

Before you even wake up from your sun-food-and-drink-induced sleep at your resort a small army is at work making sure that crescent of sand is tourist-ready.

How do I know this?

Well, I just got back from the little Caribbean paradise of Antigua where time zone changes and a desire to continue my daily runs to burn off the additional holiday consumption of food and wine saw me out jogging on the beach at 6:45 a.m.

This is where I meet Tristan Hines in front of the Sandals Grande Antigua, the luxury adults-only all-inclusive resort where I'm staying.

He's dragging a doubled-up chain-link fence and rope contraption that's cleaning and raking the sand in front of the resort to icing sugar consistency.

“I invented this,” he says modestly.

“I used to rake, but it was too slow.”

Hines is long gone by the time most tourists ever step on the beach.

As such it's understandable that most visitors to beach destinations think pristine beaches simply appear at the edge of turquoise waters.

But every day seaweed, rocks, garbage, shells and shell fragments wash up on shore with the tides and constant wave action.

This stuff has to be raked up – for fenced up, as the case may be – and hauled away to make way for that perfect beach you expect.

Tourists tramping down the sand all day long also means beaches have to be regularly fluffed up to be kept looking 100 percent.

Antigua touts itself as island of sea and sun with 365 beaches – one for every day of the year.

“We have so many beaches that I've only a chance to go to 20 of them,” says Anne Harawood, the public relations manager at Sandals Grande Antigua Resort.

“Antigua is all the beach, but we've improved on it by putting this beautiful resort on the edge of the sand.”

Powdery sand also plays an important role at Sandals' Barefoot by the Sea restaurant.

The eatery is right on the sand oceanfront and you're encouraged to take your shoes off and bury your feet in the sand as you dine – whether it's for a casual lunch or fine dining at dinner when the place is transformed with white tableclothes and candlelight.

Sandals Grand Antigua and Sandal's family-friendly Grand Pineapple Beach Resort on Antigua are packaged as all inclusive flight and accommodation holidays with Air Canada Vacations and Transat Holidays.

General information at antigua-barbuda.org.