The champagne was cold, the carpet black and the winners over the moon: as far as expectations go, the second edition of The World’s 50 Best Hotels ticked all the boxes you’d look for in a blockbuster industry event. But would there be surprises, too? And what exactly makes a hotel a ‘Best’ hotel? We attended to find out.
You couldn’t have missed last year’s inaugural World’s 50 Best Hotels awards ceremony, held at London’s Guildhall, even if you’d tried. The format came seemingly out of the blue and immediately grabbed the attention of travel and hotel aficionados the world over, including ourselves: we were amazed by both its scale and impact, which catapulted 2023’s winner Passalacqua – a family-owned Lake Como hideaway that only opened in 2022 and quickly became an OutThere favourite – to overnight fame. It should hardly be surprising then that we were on the very edge of our seat as one winner after another was revealed at the event’s 2024 edition: Fiji’s Kokomo Private Island came in at number 50, The Tasman, a Luxury Collection Hotel in Tasmania, ranked 49th and the Riviera Maya’s Hotel Esencia, another OutThere staple, made the 48th spot.
Many of our personal favourites featured on the prestigious list, from Cape Town’s Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel (#28) to Bangkok’s The Siam (#26), and the sleek Aman Tokyo (#7) to escapist Nihi Sumba (#10). The ultimate honour, meanwhile, was bestowed upon our friends at Capella Bangkok, officially the world’s best hotel 2024, closely followed by Passalacqua and Rosewood Hong Kong at numbers 2 and 3 respectively. Looking at the full list of winners, a few trends from last year prevail. For one, Asian hospitality continues to excel, with 7 of the 10 highest-ranking properties on the continent. Europe, too, fares noticeably well, not least owing to heritage hotels from London’s Claridge’s (#11) to Oetker Collection’s legendary Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc (#17).
As last year, other regions saw less recognition, with Rosewood São Paulo (#24) being the sole South American property represented and St. Barth’s Eden Rock (#36) – another Oetker Collection icon – standing out as the only Caribbean hotel on the list. North America was featured eight times in total, largely thanks to hotels by some of the world’s biggest hospitality brands, from Four Seasons to Aman. That said, Chablé Yucatán (#16), which forms part of the decidedly smaller Chablé portfolio, was recognised as the best hotel on the continent (much to the team’s joy, as we were delighted to witness!).
Meanwhile, both Oceania and Africa scored four entries, with Brisbane’s The Calile becoming the former region’s top hotel at number 25, while Africa’s leading property of Mountain Nelson, A Belmond Hotel was joined by Marrakech’s mesmerising La Mamounia (#31) and Royal Mansour (#38) as well as Singita Kruger National Park (#44) in South Africa. In the Middle East, Atlantis The Royal (#9) and The Dorchester Collection’s The Lana (#23) showcased Dubaian hospitality, while Six Senses Zighy Bay (#45) was the only Omani hotel on the list.
A total of 10 special awards were handed out in addition to The World’s 50 Best Hotels list, with Bulgari Tokyo receiving the Nikka Best New Hotel Award 2024 and Soneva Fushi seeing recognition with the Lost Explorer Best Beach Hotel Award 2024. Aman was declared the Most Admired Hotel Group 2024, and Rosewood CEO Sonia Cheng was honoured with the SevenRooms Icon Award 2024. We were particularly excited for The Peninsula Istanbul after noticing that the brand was absent from last year’s ceremony, which we found curious given its status as one of the world’s leading hotel brands, paired with the consistency of service across its global portfolio.
But distinctions aside, the question of what actually makes a ‘Best’ hotel – or, for that matter, even just a ‘good’ hotel – remains to be answered. There’s a lot hotels and resorts can do to tick the boxes: Want industry-leading design? Hire a ‘starchitect’. Need to up your environmental credentials? Implement a green strategy. Looking for buzz on social media? Team up with some LVMH or Kering mega brand to design your pool umbrellas (or don’t – we personally find these collaborations totally passé). None of this comes a hotel particularly cheap, of course, which goes some way in explaining why corporate hospitality giants with access to funds to throw at projects continue to rank highly among The World’s 50 Best Hotels.
But any travel aficionado knows it takes more than a Dyson hairdryer and a TechnoGym to make or break a hotel. There’s a sense of generosity, for one, that allows guests to feel as though they are wanted for reasons other than their mere purchasing power. And if this summer you stayed in a hotel room in the Mediterranean that was half the price just five years ago, yet found yourself being charged €8 for a can of Diet Coke from the minibar (while paying north of €1,500 a night), you know exactly what we mean by this. Properties like South Africa’s LGBTQ-owned Sterrekopje do an excellent job at replacing the transactional with the personal. When we stayed, we felt not only recognised but cared for, which left no doubt in our minds that the hotel was a genuine passion project of its owners, not a mere money-making machine.
Similarly, the best hotels are those that think outside the box and recognise their guests’ individual needs. This starts with ensuring prospective guests that their unique preferences and requirements are being recognised and catered to, and it goes beyond anticipating whether they want their beds turned down if checking in late. A good start for any hotel would be to include a diverse range of people in its marketing collateral. Properties in more traditional parts of the world can let queer travellers know that they are welcome by simply depicting members of the community. Heavier people wondering whether a hotel will have a bathrobe to fit them, meanwhile, will feel reassured seeing others with their body shape shown on a hotel website. And disabled travellers often look for accessible rooms in vain, as hotels frequently fail to take pride and highlight their accessible inventory, as Inclu Travel founder Richard Thompson recently argued in conversation with OutThere.
And though making prospective guests from different walks of life feel included is important, there’s another crucial factor as to whether or not a hotel can ever truly be ‘good’. In the age of over-tourism, which has been more widely reported on in 2024 than ever before, hotels have a responsibility not simply towards their guests, but to those living within their surrounds. What’s the real quality of a shiny, new temple of luxury in Bali or Mallorca, when locals lose access to their beaches? And what’s to be said for a new urban hotel in Rome or Barcelona, if its very presence gentrifies the surrounding streets in a way that renders them unaffordable to artists, teachers, nurses and families who have lived there for generations? We’re not calling for a stop to development here, of course – hospitality and travel are among the world’s biggest employers, and the benefits they offer to society are unparalleled.
But in 2024, a ‘good’ hotel needs to have a reason for being in the destination it is in – and a purpose that includes having meaningful interactions with local communities. Hiring locally and creating working conditions that enable staff to live fulfilling lives in a hotel’s chosen destination is one thing, and it encapsulates everything from paying competitive wages, fostering a working environment in which staff feel encouraged to progress in their respective careers, and not penalising those who need time off to start a family, look after others, or take care of themselves when things get rough. Beyond that, hotels have a unique opportunity to support locals through artist residencies, involvement with charitable causes or simply by breathing new life into previously unloved grounds and edifices.
The best hotels understand themselves not just as places to stay but as culture-shaping forces for good. As with anything anyone does in life, they have a chance to innovate, improve and inspire. Crucially, hotels and resorts – luxury or not – can build a bridge between those who call a destination their home, and those who come to visit. Tim Brooke-Webb, Managing Director of The World’s 50 Best Hotels, explained that ‘the true power of hospitality lies in its ability to connect people and make lasting memories’ in his welcome speech. He’s not wrong, and we’d argue that this connection needs to go beyond the walls of a hotel and extend to the communities that live in the world’s most visited destinations.
To us, The World’s 50 Best Hotels are really 50 of the world’s best hotels, which isn’t to devalue the format but to recognise that what qualifies as good or ‘the Best’ is different to each and every guest, and therein arguably lies the very essence of modern luxury. John Blanco, General Manager of overall winner Capella Bangkok explained that he wants his guests’ main takeaway to be ‘how they felt during their stay’. And, reminiscing about our personal favourite properties, they often felt not much like hotels at all.
This might sound contradictory, but it alludes to a certain je ne sais quoi that sets special properties apart from those that don’t think outside the box and evolve with the times. Though some entries frankly surprised us, most of the hotels featured truly are among the very finest globally. And if they seek to be not just the ‘Best’, but also to be simply ‘good’ – in all the ways that matter in 2024 and beyond – they are certainly deserving of recognition.
Can’t get enough of Awards season? Entries are now open for OutThere’s very own Experientialist Awards, set to return in 2025. Revisit the winners from this year’s Awards here.
Photography courtesy of The World’s 50 Best Hotels, Capella Hotels and Resorts, Passalacqua and the Rosewood Hotel Group
