The hotel world has a new list to debate.

The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2026 has been announced, bringing together everything from grand European institutions and tiny Italian hideaways to remote Indonesian resorts and some of the most ambitious new city hotels in Asia and the Middle East.

At number one? Rosewood Hong Kong, taking the top spot for the second year running.

Do we agree with every position? That’s where it gets interesting.

Because deciding whether one exceptional hotel is objectively better than another is almost impossible. Is a 24-room villa on Lake Como really comparable with a skyscraper overlooking Victoria Harbour? Should a beach resort in Mexico be judged alongside a Parisian palace? And would we necessarily send every client to the hotel sitting highest on the list?

Probably not. But that isn’t really why we find lists like this interesting.

So, what does making The 50 Best Hotels actually mean?

Unlike some hotel awards, properties don’t apply to appear on The 50 Best Hotels.

The ranking is decided by an Academy of more than 800 international voters, split across 13 regions. The panel is made up equally of travel journalists, hoteliers and experienced luxury travellers, and each voter selects seven hotels they have personally stayed at within the previous three years.

There isn’t a checklist against which every hotel is scored. Instead, voters decide what they believe constitutes one of the world’s best hotel experiences.

The resulting ranking isn’t a scientific answer to the question of which hotel is the best. It is an annual snapshot of which stays have made the biggest impression on a very well-travelled group of people.

And that makes the list fascinating.

At RASK, the conversation starts with the person travelling. Two hotels can be equally exceptional on paper and still suit completely different people. We think about the atmosphere you want when you walk through the door, whether you like a hotel to be somewhere you barely leave or simply the best possible base for a city, how much you value privacy, the restaurant scene, the service style and even how you like to spend your mornings.

Those details are far more useful to us than whether a hotel happens to sit at number 11 or number 31 on a list.

So, rather than dissecting all 50 positions, these are the hotels on this year’s list that particularly caught our attention.

No.1 Rosewood Hong Kong

We weren’t exactly surprised by this one.

Rosewood Hong Kong has now been named No.1 for two consecutive years, and it is also a hotel we talk about frequently at RASK.

The scale alone is impressive. It rises above Victoria Harbour in Kowloon, with extraordinary views back towards Hong Kong Island, yet manages to feel far more intimate than you might expect from a hotel of its size.

But it’s the detail that makes it memorable. Tony Chi’s interiors, brilliant restaurants and bars, Asaya, an enormous sense of space and the sort of service that notices the small things.

We’re also Rosewood Elite partners, so Rosewood is a collection we know closely and can offer our clients additional benefits.

If we were going to choose a No.1 from this year’s list, we can certainly understand the argument for this one.

No.5 Passalacqua, Lake Como

If Rosewood Hong Kong represents the grand scale of modern luxury hospitality, Passalacqua sits at almost the opposite end of the spectrum.

There are just 24 rooms within this 18th-century villa overlooking Lake Como, and that’s a large part of its charm.

It feels personal, layered and gloriously Italian. Gardens tumble towards the lake, rooms are filled with antiques and colour, and days can revolve around swimming, boats, long breakfasts and doing very little at all.

Passalacqua was actually named the world’s No.1 hotel in the inaugural 2023 ranking. Three years later, we’d still have it very high on our own wish list.

No.6 Rosewood São Paulo

We’ve stayed at Rosewood São Paulo a few times now and, frankly, could write a lot about it.

For starters, this is not a beige hotel. Philippe Starck’s interiors sit alongside 450 works commissioned from Brazilian artists; trees are climbing the Jean Nouvel-designed tower, and Rabo di Galo, the jazz bar, has a ceiling so brilliantly bonkers it deserves a visit before you’ve even ordered a drink.

More importantly, the place has a pulse. São Paulo comes through the doors. Restaurants fill up, there’s live music downstairs, people actually use the bars, and you never get the sense that everyone has disappeared into their rooms by 9 pm.

Which is also why we love it for solo travel. Breakfast alone becomes a pleasant hour at Le Jardin; an afternoon by the pool needs no company, and sitting at the bar with a caipirinha feels entirely natural. You can dip in and out of São Paulo as much as you please, knowing there’s plenty of life waiting when you get back.

Just be warned: Rosewood São Paulo is quite capable of eating into your sightseeing schedule.

No.6? We’re not arguing.

No.11 Aman Tokyo

Tokyo is very good at sensory overload. Aman Tokyo is the antidote.

You arrive 34 floors above Otemachi to soaring ceilings lined in washi paper, enormous windows and a sense that somebody has turned the volume down on one of the busiest cities on earth. The rooms continue the theme: huge by Tokyo standards, beautifully restrained and, crucially, equipped with deep stone baths beside the windows. Tokyo at night, from a bath, is difficult to improve upon.

Downstairs, there’s an eight-seat omakase counter at Musashi; upstairs, a 30-metre pool seemingly suspended among the skyscrapers. The spa sprawls across two floors and includes onsen-style stone baths, should your own bathtub somehow not be enough.

We’d build Aman Tokyo into a bigger Japanese journey rather than treat it as a standalone city break. A few nights here, then Kyoto, perhaps somewhere rural, and suddenly the bullet train timetable starts looking rather exciting.

No.15 Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab, Dubai

Dubai is hardly short of ambitious hotels, which makes it all the more impressive when a new one gets everyone talking.

Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab opened as the yacht-shaped third act to Jumeirah Beach Hotel’s wave and Burj Al Arab’s sail, and it has very quickly become somewhere Dubai actually goes, rather than simply somewhere visitors check into. There are G-Wagons at the valet, locals filling the restaurants, and enough happening around the marina to make an early night feel mildly irresponsible.

Inside, the nautical idea is handled with considerably more restraint than the words yacht-themed hotel might suggest. Every room faces the sea, corridors curve gently through the building and the restaurant line-up is formidable: Greek at Iliana overlooking Burj Al Arab, Japanese at Kira, steak at The Cullinan and a very grown-up martini at Rialto. Then there are four pools, a three-storey Talise Spa and an 82-berth marina out front.

Our own Jonas has stayed and adores it, so we’ll be linking his trip here too. There are some hotels where a glossy opening tells you very little. Hearing from someone who has actually slept in the bed, eaten in the restaurants and navigated breakfast is considerably more useful.

No.19 Le Bristol Paris

Parisian palace hotels are not known for understatement. Le Bristol, however, has had a century to work out exactly what it is doing.

It opened in 1925 and has since hosted the sort of guest list that reads suspiciously like an exhibition catalogue: Coco Chanel, Picasso, Mondrian and Dalí among them. Today there are Louis XV and XVI furnishings, silk, antiques and marble, but also a rooftop swimming pool and enough warmth to stop all that grandeur from becoming intimidating. It has been part of the Oetker Hotels Collection since 1978.

Then we need to discuss lunch. Or dinner. Preferably both. Epicure has three Michelin stars, while 114 Faubourg handles the bistro end of proceedings, and Café Antonia makes a persuasive argument for abandoning whatever you had planned around teatime.

For a Paris trip where the hotel should feel every bit as Parisian as the city outside, Le Bristol knows the assignment.

No.23 One&Only Mandarina, Mexico

There are no hotel rooms at One&Only Mandarina. Instead, 105 villas disappear into 88 acres of rainforest on Mexico’s Pacific coast, tucked into the trees or balanced above the cliffs, each with its own plunge pool.

This is where we’d send someone whose out-of-office needs to be taken seriously.

The setting does much of the heavy lifting, with jungle behind and Pacific ahead, but there’s plenty to tempt you out of your villa. Carao hangs over the cliff with a menu by Enrique Olvera; there are two beaches, polo fields, a volcanic-rock spa and a bar hidden up in the canopy. Even the bathing can happen outdoors.

It can also do that clever thing of feeling wildly romantic without becoming impractical if children are involved. Which matters, because paradise is considerably less paradisiacal when you’ve booked the wrong room configuration.

No.27 Four Seasons Astir Palace, Athens

We have a weakness for a hotel that solves an itinerary problem, and Four Seasons Astir Palace solves a very good one: Athens or Greek islands?

Have both.

The hotel sits on the pine-covered Vouliagmeni peninsula on the Athenian Riviera, with three private beaches and the city within reach. You can spend a morning among the antiquities, be horizontal beside the Aegean that afternoon and take the hotel’s private tender out towards the islands when the mood strikes.

There’s plenty of old-school Riviera glamour in its DNA too. The original Astir Palace was a 1960s playground for Greek royalty and Hollywood names, and the Four Seasons incarnation hasn’t scrubbed away all of that history. The bungalows are where we’d look first, while food ranges from Matsuhisa to Michelin-starred Pelagos.

Athens deserves much more than a night en route to Mykonos. This is a fairly convincing way to prove it.

No.29 Copacabana Palace, A Belmond Hotel, Rio de Janeiro

If you’re going to Rio, there is something rather wonderful about leaning all the way into it.

Copacabana Palace has been sitting opposite that famous sweep of beach since 1923, with an all-white façade, chandeliers and unapologetic glamour. It has hosted royalty, rock stars and Hollywood for more than a century, yet the reason we’d still book it isn’t nostalgia. The place remains thoroughly plugged into Rio.

And despite all that old-school glamour, it works brilliantly with children. Jonas has stayed with his young family and loved it, which tells you far more than a family-friendly tick box ever could. There’s space to settle in, the pool can happily swallow entire afternoons and being directly opposite Copacabana Beach means Rio is right there when everyone is ready to explore.

Preferably after lunch. Ristorante Hotel Cipriani has a Michelin star, while evenings have a habit of stretching just late enough to make tomorrow morning’s sightseeing feel negotiable.

And because it’s Belmond, our Bellini Club relationship means we can arrange additional benefits for RASK clients too.

No.31 The Peninsula Istanbul

Istanbul is a city best seen from the water. The Peninsula Istanbul has clearly taken note.

It stretches across four buildings on the Galataport waterfront, including three historic landmarks, with the Bosphorus running along its front garden. There are lovely details everywhere: original Bauhaus touches from the former 1940s passenger terminal, Turkish ceramics, a century-old clock tower still ticking away on its original mechanism and a lot of gold tiles.

But we’d spend an unreasonable amount of time looking outwards. Breakfast on the terrace comes with ferries crisscrossing the Bosphorus; later, Gallada takes over the rooftop for dinner and drinks as the city lights up across the water.

And when Istanbul traffic inevitably has other ideas? There’s Pen 1, the hotel’s beautiful 16-metre mahogany motor yacht. Have the hotel collect you by boat instead.

No.35 Nihi Sumba

NIHI Sumba started life as a surf shack. It now has private-pool villas, a clifftop spa and a chocolate factory, but thankfully nobody seems to have ironed out its wild side.

Getting there is part of it. Sumba is an hour’s flight east of Bali, and NIHI then spreads across 567 acres of jungle and a huge sweep of beach on the island’s western coast. There are just 27 villas, rough stone paths instead of polished resort corridors and one of the world’s most famous surf breaks rolling in out front.

Then there are the horses.

NIHI’s Sandalwood horses are taken down to the beach for a swim each morning, and guests can ride them through the water or gallop along the sand. Add surfing, waterfalls, fishing, hiking, outdoor showers and spa treatments overlooking the ocean, and your shoes become increasingly redundant as the week goes on.

This isn’t somewhere we’d squeeze into three nights between Bali hotels. Come all this way and give Sumba the time it deserves.

No.40 Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo

Monte Carlo has never had much interest in quiet luxury.

Thank goodness.

Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo has occupied Casino Square since 1864, with the Casino opposite, supercars perpetually circulating outside and the Mediterranean just beyond. Our clients love it here, and for a racing weekend we’d struggle to think of a more fitting address. Monaco is already in full theatre mode; you may as well stay right in the middle of it.

The hotel can certainly keep up. Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse has three Michelin stars, Le Grill sits on the rooftop, and hidden beneath the hotel is an extraordinary wine cellar holding thousands of different labels. There’s also access to Monte-Carlo Beach Club when you need a few hours away from Casino Square.

No.44 Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc

Plenty of hotels have tried to bottle the glamour of a summer on the Côte d’Azur. Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc has been living it for well over a century.

Hidden among pines at the tip of Cap d’Antibes, it has all the images you already have in your head: the white château, striped parasols, Mediterranean stretching out ahead and that famous saltwater pool carved into the rocks back in 1914.

We know it well through Oetker Hotels, and this is a hotel where the way you arrive matters almost as much as the room you book. Our preference? By sea. Take a private tender across the Mediterranean and step off beneath Eden-Roc rather than arriving by car.

From there, the diary needn’t be demanding. Swim from the rocks, claim a cabana, order lunch at the Bar-Grill, take a boat out for the afternoon and be back in time for something cold as the sun drops.

No.49 The Connaught, London

And finally, home turf.

London has several hotels on this year’s list, but The Connaught is one we’d return to again and again.

It manages to feel unmistakably Mayfair without being trapped by its history. There’s Hélène Darroze’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, the Connaught Bar, the Aman Spa and some truly beautiful suites.

For a special weekend in London, we’d be very happy to check in here.

So, do we agree with The 50 Best Hotels?

Mostly.

There are hotels we’d move up. There are others outside the top 50 that we’d happily choose over something ranked above them. And there are plenty of brilliant hotels that don’t appear in the top 50 at all.

You only need to look a little further down the 51–100 list to see what we mean. Park Hyatt Tokyo sits at No.53, the newly opened Orient Express La Minerva in Rome at No.66, Amangalla (one of Charlie’s favourites whilst in Sri Lanka) at No.71, and Aman New York, where Jonas recently spent an indulgent long weekend, at No.87. We’d happily plan a trip around any one of them.

If this year’s list has prompted a few ideas, speak to the RASK team. Whether it’s a weekend at The Connaught, a honeymoon combining Nihi Sumba with Bali, a few nights at Passalacqua or a bigger journey through Japan with Aman Tokyo, we’ll help work out which of the world’s best hotels deserves a place on your own list.