The best hotels and resorts in the world: The Gold List 2023 (Part 6)

🌼Malibu Beach Inn – California

Unless you’re perched above the South Pacific in an overwater bungalow, it’s hard to get more oceanfront than the Malibu Beach Inn. Situated a short sandy jaunt between the famed Nobu restaurant and iconic Malibu Pier, the inn has 47 guest rooms overlooking “Billionaire’s Beach,” with postcard views from sunrise to sunset. But what’s even more mesmerizing is the natural soundtrack of constantly crashing waves that lulls you into a hypnotic trance as you’re taking in the views from your balcony or drifting off for the night. While staying in your room is particularly enticing—especially with meticulous personal touches like monogrammed pillows or a printout of a map for that hike that you casually mentioned during check-in—one peek below will beckon you down to Carbon Beach Club. The restaurant’s chic coastal style is parlayed through rift oak furniture and Italian linens by Bellino Fine Linens, all part of a redesign by Waldo Fernandez, who has decorated for A-listers including Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Taylor. Yet the real seduction lies at the deck’s edge, where you may find yourself suspended over the rocky coast, waves booming, whales in sight, grilled branzino on the table, and a local glass of Cabernet in hand as the sun drops. It’s sensory overload at its best and you’ll be singing “California Dreaming” by dessert. Doubles from Rs59,390.

🌼The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort – South Carolina

I’m not sure my children have ever asked to go back to a hotel as often as they’ve asked to return to the Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, the stately beachfront property on Kiawah Island, just south of Charleston, South Carolina. They loved it for many reasons, including an on-site ice cream shop, a very kid-friendly pool, and most of all an extremely fun day camp, part of a nearby complex that has a water park where they played for hours after the day’s session was over. The camp gives parents time for grown-up activities, including visiting the spa, playing tennis, and utilizing the multiple golf courses, including the beachside Ocean Course, a repeat site for the PGA Championships. Kiawah is a place that effortlessly facilitates a family choreography of separating and reuniting: for group rides on the beach cruisers available to reserve near the front entrance; for delicious meals at one of its dozen restaurants, like the Atlantic Room, which overlooks The Ocean Course, where local chef John Ondo lovingly prepares creative takes on lowcountry classics like she-crab soup and shrimp and grits; and for playing on the grand lawn as dusk settles over the Atlantic. Doubles from Rs20,480;

🌼NoMad Las Vegas

Las Vegas has always excelled at transporting its guests to borrowed locales–Venice, Paris, Egypt. But until NoMad Las Vegas entered the scene in late 2018, no one on the Strip had succeeded in delivering guests to a classic boutique hotel. MGM Resorts partnered with the Sydell Group to remaster the aging Monte Carlo to create Park MGM as well as NoMad Las Vegas, a 293-room boutique hotel that occupies the top four floors of the Park MGM. The most genius decision of the team was importing French architect and designer Jacques Garcia, known for his Belle Époque opulence. A NoMad guest-only elevator transports you to rooms whose freestanding tubs (some right in the bedroom), velvet draperies, and dressing tables accessorized with crystal glassware feel a bit like they should have a view over the Champs-Élysées—not T-Mobile Stadium. Perhaps most transporting is the Garcia-designed NoMad Library restaurant, inspired by the Royal Cabinet of Reading in Rio, whose 23-foot-high ceilings are lined with 25,000 books acquired from the collection of the late philanthropist David Rockefeller. And although the room is lavish, it winks at its Vegas locale. For instance, unless you read the inconspicuous little plates below them, you’d never know that the gracious classical busts atop wall-mounted plinths are tributes to notable 19th-century women gamblers like “Poker Alice” Ivers and Lottie Deno. And because a fascinating hotel concept attracts fascinating people, you’ll see them at NoMad Bar over dishes like truffle-and-foie-stuffed chicken (served in sandwich form at brunch) where you’ll wonder if you really are in Las Vegas, which, after all, is the truest sign that you really are in Vegas. Doubles from Rs22,000;

🌼1 Hotel South Beach – Miami Beach

In between the neon-trimmed Art Deco mainstays of South Beach rises this soothing, nature-inspired hotel that delivers a holistic retox-detox Miami fantasy–with a welcomed, eco-conscious slant. The social media-hungry favor the property for its endless picture-perfect expanses, from Miami Beach’s largest rooftop swimming pool to 600 feet of full-service linear beachfront and an eye-catching lobby, anchored by a triple-story, moss-strewn living wall. Meanwhile, the fit and the fabulous can’t get enough of the advanced wellness programming (glute camp and metabolic meltdown are two favorites), an on-site Soul Cycle studio, and the cutting-edge Anatomy Gym. The 1 Beach Club, which frames the property’s southern perimeter, houses Miami’s top feet-in-the-sand resto-bar; it’s a Tulum-inspired reverie of driftwood furniture and woven textiles planted in the sands among sea grapes, towering palms, and potted succulents. The 1’s guest rooms and suites are both vacation and staycation gold; they’re unexpectedly large, starting at 550 square feet, many with ocean-view balconies, and all featuring floor-to-ceiling glass doors or windows plus open floor plans. Finally, the 1 Hotel South Beach stands alone as a sexy, eco-warrior on a beach where environmental efforts skew surprisingly lax. The 100 percent carbon neutral resort features the likes of recycled pine headboards, clothes hangers made from recycled paper, and in-room water filters, proving that sustainability and luxury can beautifully coexist. Doubles from Rs64,500;

🌼Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge – Vancouver Island, Canada

A Pacific Coast twist on the traditional African wildlife safari, Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge was ahead of its time when it debuted in the heart of Vancouver Island’s UNESCO-designated Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve in 1995. Reachable only by boat, helicopter, or floatplane, its 25 canvas tents weren’t built for Instagram likes. They were modeled after prospector camps to pay homage to the sound’s history as a gold-mining settlement. Activities were designed to help guests reconnect to nature and themselves, before most people even knew how much they needed a digital detox. And right from the start, the hotel embraced a regenerative approach to tourism, aiming not just to preserve but to improve the surrounding wilderness and livelihood of the local First Nations people.

A three-year, $1.6 million revamp overseen by Australia-based hoteliers James and Hayley Baillie of Baillie Lodges has ensured that Clayoquot remains a pioneer of nature-based tourism and sustainable and responsible hospitality. Those iconic tents have been updated with bentwood boxes commissioned from First Nations artist Moy Sutherland. Three-course meals served at the Cookhouse showcase locally foraged chanterelles and salmonberries and halibut and prawns harvested that day. Local ingredients like kelp and glacial clay also star in spa treatments. The surrounding old-growth rain forest and glacier-fed waterways provide a limitless playground, especially with the resort’s new all-inclusive pricing model, which bundles signature experiences such as hiking, horseback riding, and kayaking into one rate. And you often don’t even need to be out on an adventure to spot the sound’s resident otters, black bears, and eagles. They frequently pop up in the distance while guests soak in cedar hot tubs or flow through yoga poses on the waterfront deck. From Rs2,37,500 per tent, per night for two guests all-inclusive;

🌼Cheval Blanc St-Barth

In a hidden corner of St. Barts, down a steep and winding mountainous road, you come to a Gauguin-like canopy of lush green vegetation, beyond which the half-moon sandy perfection of Flamands beach reveals itself and the Cheval Blanc Isle de France reigns supreme. Low-built and quietly sprawling, the property was elegantly renovated following Hurricane Irma by Parisian design supremo Jacques Grange, whose interiors speak to a chic European aesthetic of quiet indulgences: linens and ikat prints; palettes of pale greens, blues, and pinks; and raffia, bamboo, and stone accents. The atmosphere is almost Parisian (Bulgari hosts a fashion show here, and there’s a Guerlain spa on the premises) but with a devil-may-care attitude. Young French culinary star Jean Imbert’s Creole-inspired menu at La Case (and laid-back beach restaurant La Cabane) is light but gastronomic, and the cocktails are sublime. I spend my lunches with feet in the sand at La Cabane, watching a parade of Birkin bag–carrying Upper East Side ladies power-walking along the beach, moguls on their phones doing business, and boho French girls running into the waves in tiny Eres bikinis. It reminds me of St.-Tropez’s Plage Pampelonne, but a lot less frenetic, and with an ambience that’s both relaxed and indulgent. My assigned butler WhatsApps me when my room is done or a spa appointment is due. But it’s my private yoga sessions in the garden’s pagoda with the late Alber Elbaz’s personal instructor, Nicolas Legrez, that I won’t forget in a hurry. Doubles from Rs63,500

🌼Jumby Bay Island – Antigua

Colorful is the best adjective for Jumby Bay. Emerald-green lizards dart up white-washed walls, tortoises come with red legs, iridescent hummingbirds hover over pink Mexican creepers, and yellow-chested bananaquits search for crumbs on breakfast tables. There are blindingly white sands to cross and turquoise waters to slip into for a world of plump orange starfish, yellow-tailed snappers, rays, and blue tang. All are still vivid in my memory. Beneath all this shifting color is the lush 300-acre private island that remains one of the most exclusive in the Caribbean. Its “no cars, no keys” policy brings a feeling of intimacy to the sensational villas, three restaurants, a spa (think Tata Harper), and the 28 suites (soon to be 40) that make up the hotel, all of which offer luxury as dazzling as the island’s colors. The generously sized suites come with a little entrance courtyard where a wicker chair swings, suspended, in the warm breeze. Terraces overlook the sea or are inset with a pool. Some bathrooms spill outside with vast tubs waiting under palm fronds. Step outside your room to enjoy Taittinger on tap (part of the inclusive rates, which also offer limitless water sports) or sip Antigua black daiquiris made with local black pineapple. Food served at the Estate House, once part of the original sugar plantation, brims with a sense of place. But the best experience has to be a rum tasting with the barman, Jimmy, which leads to serious Caribbean contentment. Doubles from Rs1,88,000;

Cre: cntraveller

Đăng bởi: Đức Lộc Trần