Just got Island Paradise for The Sims 3!

I like Island Paradise a lot. My biggest recommendation for it though would be to get the nraas overwatch mod, the world has some routing issues with townies which causes the entire game to freeze up on some occasions, and this mod solves them and gets it running again quickly.

Other tips:

• If you have your sim stay at a hotel, you can ask the receptionist for adventures and they'll give you a story you can follow and tasks
  
• If you have Late Night, place a few more bars in the world and replace the actual bar item in existing lots with the Late Night one, then your bars will actually function as bars and you'll have more to do
  
• There's a run down hotel in the world that you can buy for free and have your sim run
  
• Make sure to play with houseboats! They're always fun and different to play in. Also make the most of it being a beach world and try living in a house over the sea.
  
• Try to live on the main island, if you live on the second island it can take ages to get around because you have to drive to the beach, run to the sea, get a boat, go to the other island, run to the road, and then drive to your location. Alternatively you could try placing the Subway stations from Late Night around the world so sims will use those rather than the long process of driving and boating.
  
• Try to place some activity items on the beaches so then there's more to do there!