Hotels

The Apurva Kempinski Bali: A Cliffside Palace Above the Indian Ocean

Spread across Nusa Dua's cliffs like a modern interpretation of Bali's terraced rice paddies, The Apurva Kempinski Bali commands attention from every angle. This 475-room resort cascades down the hillside in a symphony of stone and water, with a 250-step grand staircase inspired by sacred temples running through its heart. …

Treebones Resort - How a Family Built Big Sur's Most Unusual Hotel

Sleep in a human-sized nest perched in the trees. Wake to whales breaching offshore from your solar-powered tent. Dine on sushi made with herbs picked minutes earlier from the garden. At Treebones Resort on California's Big Sur coast, the line between camping and luxury blurs into something altogether more interesting …

The LINE DC - Where a 1912 Church Became Washington's Coolest Hotel

A neoclassical church with 60-foot vaulted ceilings and patinated copper doors now houses one of Washington DC's most distinctive hotels. The LINE DC transformed a century-old First Church of Science into a boutique property that actually feels like it belongs in its Adams Morgan neighborhood – complete with an in-house …

Ten Thousand Waves - A Japanese Mountain Spa Transplanted to the New Mexico Desert

Four miles up from Santa Fe, where piñon pines and junipers blanket the Sangre de Cristo foothills, sits something that shouldn't really exist: a faithful recreation of a Japanese mountain onsen, complete with cedar-scented hot tubs, sake bars, and guests padding about in yukata robes. You can soak under falling …

Spa

The Aldenberg Hotel - Sleeping Above the Vault in Versailles's Reborn Bank

A historic bank building in downtown Versailles has been transformed into a 29-room boutique hotel with its own craft distillery, a steakhouse that channels 1950s glamour, and a rooftop bar on the way. The former Woodford Bank and Trust Company now offers clawfoot tubs, equestrian-inspired design, and the kind of …

Hotel Zed Victoria - Where 1970s Swank Meets Radical Self-Expression

Canada's first hotel room intentionally designed for sex. A retrofitted Airstream trailer in the parking lot. A water slide that runs year-round. Hotel Zed Victoria – a riot of neon, velvet, and unapologetic fun – operates far outside the standard business hotel playbook. Working rotary phones sit beside QR codes …

The Crescent Hotel: America's most haunted resort where a cancer charlatan once peddled poison

This 1886 mountaintop hotel in the Ozarks offers ghost tours through a former morgue, a rooftop bar with sunset views, and the kind of dark history most hotels would rather forget. In the 1930s, a con man named Norman Baker ran a fraudulent cancer hospital here, injecting dying patients with …

The Standard, Bangkok Mahanakhon - 155 Rooms Inside a Pixelated Skyscraper

The Standard, Bangkok Mahanakhon occupies the lower floors of a 77-story tower that looks like it's being digitally deconstructed in real time. This 155-room property brings New York hotel swagger to Bangkok's Silom district, sitting 314 meters above street level in the King Power Mahanakhon – that glassy skyscraper with …

Krallerhof - The Austrian Hotel With a 50-Meter Pool Floating in a Lake

In the Austrian village of Leogang, a family-run hotel has just pulled off something remarkable. The Krallerhof isn't content with being another five-star alpine retreat – it's gone and built what might be Europe's most architecturally audacious spa. Picture a 50-meter infinity pool suspended in a lake, with the jagged …

Aito Igloo & Spa Resort - Sleep in a Treehouse, Plunge Into a Frozen Lake

Half an hour from Rovaniemi, down a winding forest road that makes you wonder if you've taken a wrong turn, sits a resort that manages to be both deeply luxurious and authentically Finnish. Aito Igloo & Spa Resort offers panoramic treehouse accommodation overlooking a frozen lake, a proper wellness center …

El Tovar Hotel - Roosevelt Told Them Not To Build It. They Built It Anyway

Standing a mere 20 feet from the Grand Canyon's edge, El Tovar has been perched on this precipice since 1905, when the notion of building a luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere was either visionary or mad. Theodore Roosevelt stayed here. So did Albert Einstein. The dining room still …

Ciel Dubai Marina - Inside the World's Tallest Hotel: 82 Floors, Eight Restaurants, and Crazy Views

A 377-meter (1,237-foot) tower. An infinity pool on the 76th floor. Eight restaurants spread across 82 floors. Dubai's latest architectural statement has arrived, and it's already snatched several Guinness World Records in the process. Ciel Dubai Marina, Vignette Collection by IHG opened its doors this week as the world's tallest …

Desert Rock – The Saudi Resort Built Directly into Mountain Faces

Villas carved into cliffs, pools that appear to float in midair, and a restaurant overseen by a Michelin-starred chef – Desert Rock is rewriting the rules of desert luxury in Saudi Arabia's ambitious Red Sea development. Twenty minutes from Red Sea International Airport, hidden among granite massifs where the Hejaz …

AMOY Hotel Singapore - Check In Through a 200-Year-Old Temple

Most hotels have lobbies. AMOY Hotel by Far East Hospitality has a 200-year-old temple. To reach reception, you walk through the Fuk Tak Chi Museum, one of Singapore's first Chinese temples, past artifacts from the 1800s depicting the lives of early Chinese migrants. The hotel has transformed a heritage shophouse …

Fairmont Golden Prague - A Brutalist Beauty Returns

The Fairmont Golden Prague is many things at once – a museum of Czech modernist art, a showcase of 1970s design ambition, and a functioning luxury hotel that somehow makes concrete feel intimate. The former InterContinental, shuttered for five years and just reopened in April 2025, represents one of the …

HOSHINOYA Fuji - How Japan Does Glamping

Imagine waking up to Mount Fuji framed in floor-to-ceiling windows, then stepping onto your private terrace to toast marshmallows by a built-in fireplace – all while someone else handles the cleanup. Welcome to HOSHINOYA Fuji, where camping meets five-star comfort in the most unexpected ways. Japan's first glamping resort takes …

Peckforton Castle - A Victorian Landowner's Medieval Fantasy Made Real

This isn't one of those hotels that calls itself a castle because it has turrets painted on the wallpaper. Peckforton Castle is the real deal – or at least as real as a Victorian landowner's fantasy of medieval life could get. Built between 1844 and 1850, it comes complete with …

Hotel Château Gütsch: A Fairytale Castle Above Lake Lucerne

Towering over Lucerne from its hilltop position like something plucked from a Bavarian fantasy, Hotel Château Gütsch is the sort of place that makes you stop and stare from street level. This 19th-century folly castle, modeled after Neuschwanstein, offers what every Swiss hotel promises but few truly deliver: genuinely spectacular …

Kato Dool Wellness Resort - A Technicolor Refuge on the Nile

Some places whisper, and some shout. Kato Dool does something in between – it hums. Sprawled across a hillside in Aswan's Nubian village of Gharb Soheil, this wellness resort is painted in shades that could make a sunset jealous: turmeric yellows, coral pinks, sky blues. It's the kind of place …

Boys Hall - A Smuggler's Hideout Turned Kent's Most Charming Escape

Picture this: a 17th-century manor house with secret tunnels in the cellar, a stash of gold coins hidden under the floorboards, and a king on the run from parliament once sleeping in your bed. Boys Hall, just outside Ashford, isn't your average countryside hotel. Brad and Kristie Lomas spent three …