According to The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2023, whose inaugural awards ceremony was held in London this week, two of the world’s top five hotels may be found in Hong Kong.
Asia also takes up four of the top five spots, with the 24-room Passalacqua, the overall winner, being challenged by the Rosewood Hong Kong (No. 2), Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok at Chao Phraya River (No. 3), Hong Kong’s The Upper House (No. 4), and the Aman Tokyo (No. 5) in Japan.
The competition is a sister event of the renowned World’s 50 Best Restaurants (now ranked No. 1: Central, in Lima, Peru) and World’s 50 Best Bars (Paradiso, Barcelona).
The World’s 50 Best Hotels Academy, a group of 580 well-traveled experts in the hotel and travel sectors, half of whom are women, selects the properties.
To prevent lobbying, all voters—aside from the regional “academy chairs”—remain anonymous.
Each voter selected the top seven hotels from among those they had stayed in over the previous 24 months.
Properties were assessed in six sponsored categories in addition to the overall best hotel category:
- Nikka Best New Hotel Award – winner: Capella Bangkok, Thailand
- The Flor de Caña Eco Hotel Award – winner: Singita Lodges, Kruger National Park, South Africa
- The Lavazza One To Watch Award – winner: The Lodge at Blue Sky, Utah, United States
- The Lost Explorer Best Beach Hotel Award – winner: Soneva Fushi, the Maldives
- The Art of Hospitality Award – winner: Gleneagles; Scotland
- The Carlo Alberto Best Boutique Hotel Award – winner: The Newt, England
Of the 50 “best” hotels that give the awards their name, 18 are located in Asia. Other notable Asian hotels that made the list include the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, Thailand (No. 10), Raffles Singapore (No. 17), Nihi Sumba, Indonesia (No. 18), Capella Singapore (No. 28), Desa Potato Head, Bali, Indonesia (No. 40), and Atlantis the Royal, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (No. 44).
The fact that the winner of another ranking, Venice’s Belmond Hotel Cipriani, which topped the 1,000 World’s Best Hotels list by French company La Liste in June, failed to even make this top 50 list is indicative of the peculiarities associated with various attempts to rate experiences as subjective as hotel stays.