Hotels

The walls at Sacred Sands are packed with straw. Not metaphorically - straw bale construction means compacted bales stacked, framed, and finished in terracotta clay, resulting in walls so thick they function as their own acoustic system, insulation layer, and fire barrier all at once. It is an uncommon way …

Most hotels describe themselves as historic. Palacio del Inka was a palace, then a Spanish colonial mansion, then a museum, and is now asking if you'd like a pisco sour. The stones - massive, fitted without mortar with an Incan precision that has outlasted earthquakes - belonged to Qorikancha, the …

There's a river running through this resort that no engineer designed. It seeps out of the earth at the base of Arenal Volcano, picks up heat and minerals from somewhere deep underground, and winds through 7,790 sq m (83,880 sq ft) of rainforest garden before you even get to stick …

You're watching pelicans glide in formation over the Pacific, listening to a conversation at the long communal table spiral from Mexican food politics to astrology, nursing something cold from the bar - and you haven't looked at your phone in three hours. The Wi-Fi password is "disconnecttoreconnect" for a reason. …

There aren't many hotels where the Director of Culture is a real job title, or where a New York art collective has installed an oversized bed designed for the giants of the distant future. RYSE, Autograph Collection, set in the anarchic energy of Seoul's Hongdae neighborhood, operates somewhere between hotel, …

If the idea of sleeping in what is essentially a very well-designed wooden box fills you with dread, Capsule Hotel Copenhagen would like a word. Opened in March 2025 in the heart of Vesterbro, this 22-pod property is the first Nordic outpost of a Swiss hospitality group that has been …

The Cold War's most ominous legacy in Arkansas has been transformed into one of the most unusual places you can spend a night in America. The 6,000-pound blast door doesn't budge at first. You pull, and nothing happens, and then you pull harder, and eventually the thing that was built …

At 1,550 meters (5,085 feet) above sea level, perched on an Alpine meadow near the Austrian-Bavarian border, there is a small hotel that can only be reached by cable car. No road leads to it. No taxi will drop you there. The nine-suite retreat called Eriro sits on the Ehrwalder …

Somewhere on a mountaintop above Lake George, tucked behind life-size lion statues and Gothic iron gates, sits a place that's hard to believe exists. Highlands Castle is the kind of property that sounds like a fever dream until you're standing on its terrace watching the light change over the Adirondacks, …

Bawah Reserve sits in a corner of the Anambas Archipelago so remote that the only way in is by seaplane, which lands directly in a turquoise lagoon. There are no televisions. WiFi is real but limited. There are no cars, no roads, and no reminders that the rest of the …

On a wild stretch of Benguerra Island, where sand dunes roll into the Indian Ocean and dugongs graze offshore seagrass meadows, Kisawa Sanctuary has built something unusual: luxury villas incorporating 3D printing technology, staffed largely by locals, and driven by a commitment to marine science. The 300-hectare property sits on …

Most airport hotels are functional in the way that airport food is functional - they'll do the job, but nobody is bragging about them at dinner. The Grand Hyatt at SFO is something else entirely. Opened in late 2019 on the grounds of San Francisco International Airport, it is the …

There's a secret door built into a hillside in Kenya. Step through it, walk a short tunnel, and you emerge to one of the most disorienting views in East Africa: a vast, golden sweep of Maasai Mara plains stretching 2,000 feet (610 meters) below you, lit by shafts of afternoon …

There are 26 pyramid-shaped villas arranged around a thermal lake in Fort Myers, Florida. The water bubbling up from 30 meters below the surface smells faintly of sulfur, changes color with the seasons, and is loaded with magnesium, potassium, calcium, and selenium. And yes, people keep coming back. Pyramids in …

Most hotels stake their identity on a lobby artwork or a rooftop bar. Corendon Amsterdam New-West went a different route and installed the front half of a real Boeing 737 on the seventh floor. That alone would be enough to earn the place a mention, but the hotel turns out …

There is a photograph taken of you on arrival and placed on your nightstand by the time you reach your suite. The card alongside it reads: "We are celebrating you." This tells you almost everything you need to know about La Residence. The hotel - part of the family-owned Royal …

Maison Mystique does not announce itself. It accumulates - vine-draped archways, a hidden whisky lounge behind a door that gives nothing away, glass domes of preserved butterflies frozen mid-flutter - until the place stops feeling like a hotel and starts feeling like a house that has been quietly waiting for …

You cross an active airport runway to get there. The building you're sleeping in was built in Malaysia and transported across the ocean on a ship. Barbary macaque monkeys live on the limestone rock looming outside your window. And you're permanently at sea - except you're not, because the vessel …

There are no light switches at Feynan Ecolodge. No minibar, no television, no electricity sockets in the rooms. What you get instead is candlelight flickering off stone walls, a sky so dense with stars it feels structural, and the sound of nothing in particular. Located deep inside Jordan's Dana Biosphere …

There are plenty of reasons to visit Norway in winter. But most of them involve heading north - to Tromsø, to Finnmark, to the kind of latitudes where the aurora borealis is practically a nightly obligation. What fewer people know is that some of Norway's most quietly extraordinary winter experiences …