Gold List 2022 hotels

The Post Ranch Inn is an immersive experience of Big Sur’s singular coastline, in luxury environs with high-touch yet laid back amenities.

Heritage romance, modern boldness, gourmet excellence—and the feeling that life is good

A princely estate whose understated glamour shares the spotlight with Portofino’s natural beauty.

It’s the most elegant and intimate of the hotels in Las Vegas, despite its size.

An icon for all the right reasons, this Faubourg Saint-Honoré stalwart earns regulars who eventually feel like family.

When you arrive, you're met with a dramatic, triangular roof meant to resemble a traditional Hawaiian canoe house.

Huge Murano chandeliers, hand-woven carpets, intricate miniature paintings, sandstone elephant statues—Leela Palace is like the incredibly grand home of a globetrotting modern-day maharajah.

For a long time, lodges in South Africa tended to be geared toward the Big Five. Grootbos, on the fynbos slopes near Walker Bay, south of Cape Town, is different. This 6,177-acre private reserve is about treasuring the smaller, finer things. With 889 plant species, seven of which are newly discovered, it is first and foremost a rare botanical treasure trove, in which owner Michael Lutzeyer has employed some of the Cape’s leading botanists and entomologists. The lodges are glassy and contemporary, but there’s a constant call outdoors—from the outside showers to tracking elusive aardvark and Cape leopard, or having lantern-lit dinners in a 1,000-year-old milkwood forest, all fairy-tale tangles. You can ride horses across the sands, past ancient sea caves; go on flower safaris, tree-planting expeditions, and whale-watching flights to see the calving Southern right whales that migrate inshore between July and December. Most of the food on the carbon-negative reserve is grown on site, and nothing comes from more than 30 miles away, with many of the staff graduates of the in-house hospitality academy. But the main takeaway of Grootbos is that just stopping and looking—at the interconnectedness and mad beauty of life—is the most mesmerizing thing of all. 

The smartest new country-house hotel in years—time was taken to get this utterly right and it has paid off, with a dream team behind the food and design.

The Hotel Bel-Air is the very definition of exclusivity.

A palatial Andalusian finca, with golf on the side.

Fresh off a tasteful, careful transformation, this hotel has again assumed its place as one of the finest in Vancouver.

A 40-minute drive along the North Island’s South Pacific coast from the Art Deco town of Napier, this place is a 6,000-acre working farm in a rolling coastal landscape, but also a golf course, a wildlife sanctuary, and one of the most invigorating stays in New Zealand. As you climb a forested hill toward the farm’s lofty timber-and-stone lodge, there’s a sense of being let in on a beautiful secret (one shared by Benedict Cumberbatch, who spent lockdown at a neighboring house). There are soaring ceilings and agricultural tools in the main building and smart black-and-white photographs of animals in the 22 cottages with fireplaces, but the overall impression is of a crisply modern take on farmhouse style. This is also a sanctuary for the kiwi and ancient tuatara and, as I discovered on an off-road jaunt to the estate’s sea cliffs, a breeding ground for seabirds and seals. There are miles of hiking and mountain-biking trails across the glacial landscapes, and you always have the option to take picnic hampers to the beach. The Farm is one of those places where you meet other ruddy-cheeked guests over abalone-like moon shell clams and local lamb after a day’s adventures. I sleep better at this hideaway, as the gulls cry and the clouds roll in, than almost anywhere else on the planet. From $1,600. —Kendall Hill

Reminiscent of a Bedouin village, the resort sits among the rolling dunes of the world's largest uninterrupted sand desert.

The Carlyle is an Upper East Side institution that feels like its own world.

A true beach and city break in one.

To stay here amid all the incredible old-world opulence is to really get a taste of Jodhpur’s gilded glory.

The Peninsula delivers on its luxe amenities and services; it's opulent, but not stuffy.

Scattered atop a seaside bluff, 30 acres of charming New England-style cottages.

Few hotels are as synonymous with their destination as La Mamounia is with Marrakech.