I have looked about, inc. development/proposed features, and i cant find any tag for an area who’s surface is paved, either tarmac, stone etc. The areas im talking about would be for example, an area in front of an important building that cannot really be considered a path. One way of looking at it would be the area ‘could be’ landuse=grass, however it has been paved for whatever reason. Also is there anything similar for gravel? There must be tags for these surfaces, mustn’t there? 
According to Taginfo (http://taginfo.openstreetmap.de/keys/surface#values), there are over 410,000 instances of surface=asphalt and over 290,000 instances of surface=gravel. Why not use those?
Start with surface=asphalt/gravel/… + area=yes. At that point, you already have the “area covered with asphalt/gravel” aspect mapped.
For additional tags, it really depends on what that area is used for. Does it make sense for people to walk there? Then highway tags such as path or footway, or pedestrian in an urban setting, would be worth looking at. Is it used for delivery? Then highway=service would come to mind.
from the highway=pedestrain page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dpedestrian)
“highway=pedestrian together with area=yes is also the common way to map squares and plazas. Draw the way at the outer limits (usually walls, buildings, etc.), not in the center of the roads. If there are roads passing over, map them as usual and make connecting nodes at all intersections with the pedestrian area.”
then adding surface=* should describe the location fairly well