The most beautiful hotels in the USA
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The USA is home to some of the most beautiful hotels in the world. From a luxury tented camp in the Utah desert to a private island getaway in Florida, these are the kind of stays that are destinations in themselves.
Joe FletcherCamp Sarika By Amangiri
Since Amangiri opened in 2009, a startling concrete mirage in the middle of the 180-million-year-old southern Utah desert, no other hotel has been quite so talked about, photographed, longed for and held up as the ultimate 21st-century escape. So when the Aman group announced it was going to add a tented camp a five-minute drive down the juniper and wild sage-scented road, in a post-Covid reality when space, nature and privacy were most coveted, heads turned. Camp Sarika is a collection of 10 canvas-topped pavilions lodged into the watercolour Colorado Plateau where, from minute to minute, the light and weather shifts – it's a wild amphitheatre of earthly drama. The advantage of staying here versus the minimalist main hotel is the oasis-like solitude. Private decks are built to make the most of the surrounding landscape, with plunge pools and fire-pits. The camp has its own restaurant, which takes its cues from the American Southwest (pozole rojo pork stew, wild-game chilli), as well as a main pool and spa, plus hiking, canyoning and fireside evenings with Eli Secody, a Navajo storyteller. National parks and the Navajo Nation reservation are within driving (or helicoptering) distance; nearby wonder Lake Powell can be explored by boat or – in true Aman fashion – via a sunrise hot air-balloon ride. As with all the brand’s outposts, the service here is intuitive and attentive, the details subtle but utterly elevated. A next-level extension of one of the world’s greatest hotel experiences. By Leslie Pariseau
FLASH POINT Request a telescope for midnight stargazing – this is among the ultimate places on the planet to see the Milky Way.
The Prospect Jaime KowalThe Prospect Hollywood, Los Angeles
With star-spotters thronging the Walk of Fame, Hollywood has lost a bit of its lustre. But building on the cache of institutions such as Musso and Frank Grill and the Magic Castle, there’s a growing movement to bring some of the bygone elegance back to the neighbourhood. At the forefront is this Martyn Bullard Lawrence-designed hotel in a Thirties Regency-style building just off Hollywood Boulevard (originally named Prospect Avenue). The period façade, black-and-white-striped window awnings and a glossy candy apple-red door flanked by sculptural shrubbery recall a time when Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow lived around the corner. And the interiors, done up in Bullard’s maximalist style (he’s behind the high-wattage Sands outside Palm Springs), are a power anthem to colour, pattern and texture, and feel like a sensory jackpot in a town where the coastal-cool subtlety of washed-out earth tones and understated textiles is fast becoming predictable. Here, rooms mix Chinoiserie wallpaper with leopard-patterned carpets and brass canopy beds. Any surface that isn’t lacquered is mirrored. Meanwhile the lobby is a space for lingering with jade-green walls, enamel-topped café tables and towering gilded palm trees. The westsiders can have their sunrise beach runs and Café Gratitude keto bowls. This is a place for lazy mornings in silk dressing gowns and a bright swipe of lipstick before a breakfast of Tartine Bakery pastries and Champagne in the shady courtyard garden – a proper slice of old Hollywood. By Krista Simmons
FLASH POINT Guests have access to the nearby private co-working space and social club NeueHouse Hollywood, in the original CBS studios.
Adrian GautInness, New York
Featured on our 2022 Hot List of the best new hotels in the world
Within minutes of arriving at this rustic but refined compound, you realize what a welcome shift it heralds for hospitality in the Catskills. With its 28 cabins and 12-room farmhouse and social hub, it marries Scandinavian-style minimalism and throwback Americana, with echoes of the Borscht Belt summer resorts that used to be ubiquitous in this part of the state. There is an excellent restaurant, naturally, with a menu of comfort food with shades of Italian and Middle Eastern cooking. The surrounding area is paradise for hikers and cyclists from spring through fall; in winter, the cabins, with their simple Shaker-style furniture and wood-burning stoves, are cozy refuges for relaxing under a throw and gazing out at the frost-kissed landscape. Jesse Ashlock
Fredrika StjarnessbhShou Sugi Ban House, New York State
There’s a kick-off-the-espadrilles-and-down-a-turmeric-juice relaxedness to the first wellness escape in the Hamptons, because the philosophy here is thrillingly simple: focusing on the basics of self-care in what owner Amy Cherry-Abitbol likes to call intuitive wellness. It’s just what highly strung New Yorkers need. The point of Shou Sugi isn’t to break anyone down, military- or medical-style, but rather to create a space to just feel better, in blond-wood studios with deep Japanese tubs and sun-flooded barns. There’s graceful yoga in the morning, hikes on the sand dunes or a resetting session on the vibro-acoustic table where soft currents do wonders for migraines, as well as hydrotherapy treatments and classes on gut health. Though should lying by the pool seem like the correct speed, that’s fine too. The mantra is to indulge in all the things that are good for you – and that includes that third slice of Danish seeded bread with plum preserves. By Erin Florio
FLASH POINT Don’t miss out on divine feasts – suppers of roasted duck breast and Japanese aubergine – devised by Noma co-founder Mads Refslund and served at the communal table
Castle Hot Springs, Arizona
If the bumpy, dusty, boulder-filled road on the approach to this retreat 50 miles north of Phoenix doesn’t tip off that this is not the typical manicured Arizona hotel, then the roadside wild burros – descendants of donkeys set loose in the 19th century after the area’s gold mines went bust – might. The setting hasn’t changed much since the spot opened in 1896. Or even before that, when the Yavapai people bathed in its mineral-rich springs. The 1,100-acre ranch and curative waters were the very things that brought the USA’s industrial elite – Roosevelts and Astors – to Castle Hot Springs in the early 20th century and would have continued to pull in glamorous sunseekers if fires hadn’t eventually shuttered it in the 1990s. Now, around 25 years since its last guests, a local Phoenix couple has reopened it. They’ve added thoughtful updates: cottages with outdoor fireplaces and a smart nouveau-south-west look; a top-notch restaurant led by Gordon Ramsay-trained chef Christopher Brugman and supported by a team of energetic agronomists who source fruits and vegetables from the farm. But, importantly, the owners have preserved all that was wonderful and wild, such as the horse riding and hiking trails and the simple hot-spring pools built directly into the canyon. And they’ve kept the hotel’s rich history alive, letting myth and fact mingle freely (stories about JFK, who recuperated here after World War II, accounts of Navajo ghosts, rumours of buried gold). This is one escape which knows that success in these parts lies as much in being ready for the future as it does in embracing the past. By Rebecca Misner
FLASH POINT Bedrooms have outdoor bathtubs with special faucets that deliver water directly from the hot springs for a private, restorative soak.
Joe Thommas @joethommasThe Maker Hotel, New York
Art-loving New Yorkers don’t need much excuse to escape up to Hudson for the weekend, with its throngs of antique shops and galleries and woodworking studios run by Brooklyn-transplant creatives. But this 11-room hideaway was a welcome new draw in a year when most city dwellers were confined to exploring their home state. A cabinet of curiosities writ large, it fused together a 19th-century carriage house, a Georgian mansion and a Greek Revival villa on a sunny corner of Warren Street, the town’s main artery, and filled them with an equally period-hopping collection of one-of-a-kind treasures worthy of the hotel’s name. There’s a metal writing desk made by a French blacksmith and woven rugs picked up in Morocco, as well as original painted ceilings and stained-glass windows. The four suites are dedicated to various makers – The Artist, The Writer, The Architect, The Gardener – and all are stocked with products by Fresh, the beauty brand founded by co-owners Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg. Downstairs, there’s a pool and a light-filled restaurant inside a conservatory. But the best part is the low-lit, velvet-clad bar, an extension of The Maker’s old-world bohemian glamour that’s primed for future partying. By Lale Arikoglu
FLASH POINT Check out the Fragrance Library with around 180 scents for guests to try. The limited-edition eau de parfum The Maker is a woody, spicy number blended by Glazman and local nose Christopher Draghi.
Brittany ConerlyThe Chloe Hotel, New Orleans
Away from the French Quarter revelry, NOLA’s most authentic spirit is found in the unassuming corners where history quietly collects in layers, as it has at The Chloe. This 14-room Victorian jewel box in the Garden District is the imagining of hotel and restaurant hit-makers LeBlanc and Smith and local designer Sara Ruffin Costello. They have dressed the building’s 19th-century bones in the city’s eclectic style: a Spanish-tiled front porch full of rocking chairs for cocktail hour, a maze of clubby and bohemian low-lit parlours that lead to the backyard bar and lap pool. Since opening day, the property has also become a neighbourhood magnet for chef Todd Pulsinelli’s menu, which is equal parts modern New Orleans (crab-baked Gulf oysters, shrimp chilli dumplings) and comfort (twin-stack cheeseburgers, bavette steak with fries). Upstairs the bedrooms all have turntables and vinyl from beloved record store Peaches – each album by a musician born in town or inspired by it, from Louis Armstrong to Solange – as well as skincare from home-grown Oxalis Apothecary and a fridge stocked with interesting tipples. The lingering impression here is one of overlapping universes – old and new, subtle and daring. A grown-up distillation of New Orleans’s raffish charm. By Leslie Pariseau
FLASH POINT The pool bar is where the fun starts with frozen Margaritas and changing shot-and-beer pairings that may combine pineapple rum with Pabst Blue Ribbon and tequila with Mexican lager.
Montage Healdsburg, California
Northern California’s wine country retreats often model themselves on faraway places; destinations with longer traditions and more old-world gravitas. This is too bad, because their location, between the Pacific and the Mayacamas Mountains, is pure magic, and by this point on the American-wine timeline, there’s no need to apologise for who you are. This is why the arrival of Montage’s first property in the region, and Sonoma’s first all-the-bells-and-whistles resort, is so exciting. It celebrates its own landscape, leaving the 22,000 live oaks in place and pulling a palette of dun and moss from the surrounding sun-soaked vineyards. The hotel acknowledges that, as recent wildfires have shown, this is fragile terrain: its 130 Cali-modern rooms are raised, to disturb the land as little as possible. The restaurant offers a bounty of Sonoma’s best, with everything – from the Pliny the Elder IPA to the lamb shank – sourced from within miles. And the local sixth-generation vintners who frequent the sprawling terrace bar are happy to remind you that there is, in fact, plenty of history in these parts. By Rebecca Misner
FLASH POINT For a wine hotel it’s surprisingly family friendly, with a kids’ programme, separate family pool and potions from gentle, plant-based brand Bāeo Essential Organics in rooms.
Little Palm Island, Florida
Dream of the world’s top tropical private-island resorts, and immediately places such as the Maldives, the South Pacific and the BVIs come to mind. The continental USA? Not so much. But it turns out that a rare private-island retreat is once again thriving on an isle off the Florida Keys: the small but mighty Little Palm Island. This hideaway had been catering to the travel elite since 1988, but was ravaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017. Spinning tragedy into opportunity, the hotel embarked on a complete rebuild and redesign that took nearly three years to complete. By summer 2020, a rejuvenated Little Palm Island emerged, a study in timeless beachy elegance: crushed seashell pathways leading to thatched-roof bungalows. Combined with the island’s natural setting, castaway vibe, new programming and new facilities, it finally feels on a par with the world’s best far-flung idylls. Little Palm Island 2.0 proves that sometimes a sequel is even better than the original. By Paul Rubio
FLASH POINTThe new SpaTerre is a high point: a breezy, two-story atrium offering Biologique Recherche facials, CBD treatments (using products by Mana Artisan Botanics) and massages, such as the dreamy four-hands Ocean Wave treatment.
The IngallsCommodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts Collection, Austin
A former Roaring Twenties party pad, a Catholic school, a grand hotel: this place has lived several lives. But none more beautifully executed than its current one as Auberge’s first city retreat, in Austin’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. Built in 1928, the towering structure originally served as the country home for ‘Commodore’ Edgar and Lutie Perry. The pair liked to entertain in Gatsby-era lavishness and designer Ken Fulk spent two years visiting Round Top, Texas’s famous antiques fair, to recapture that Southern-heritage look through every corner of the Italianate mansion and terracotta-roofed inn. The good-times experience has been updated with CBD cocktails and candlelight meditation sessions, while in the restaurant, a husband-and-wife chef duo play with Texan flavours in standout dishes such as green-corn hushpuppies with horseradish. Soon many of the ingredients will come from the two-acre garden. A stately foil to the tech-opolis of downtown Austin. Mandy Ellis
FLASH POINT Take a picnic basket for lunch under a striped tent in the grounds as a breeze wafts scents from the estate’s fruit trees.
Kyle KnodellThe Rockaway Hotel, New York
The Rockaway, when it was announced, seemed to be a tall order: a hip, boutique hotel in the heart of an everyone-knows-everyone Queens beach enclave (the Irish pub across the street is family-run and full of regulars). The locals were sceptical: do we need to be bringing in weekenders from the city and farther afield? For them, Rockaway Beach has everything they need. But the owners – local boys done good in Manhattan – knew they could bring a cool hotel to the area that would serve both visitors and the community. So they created sunny, blond-wood rooms and a chic poolside bistro all a few blocks from the beach. Indeed, judging from the number of locals who come in for breakfast, a bite, to say hi or grab a coffee throughout the day, they've pulled it off. And the guests coming in for short- or long-term stays, ready to plop by the pool with a book, hit the rooftop bar for a drink and join those neighbours with regular fitness classes and to walk the boardwalk one block over, see it too. The Rockaway Hotel is bringing something new to this corner – without replacing anything it already has. By Corina Quinn
FLASH POINT Tuna tartare tacos at The Rooftop, with views of the ocean on one side and Manhattan on the other.
Nck SimoniteHotel Magdalena, Austin
Spread across four open-air buildings on sprawling grounds, Hotel Magdalena is the latest from Austin’s homegrown hospitality hitmakers Bunkhouse. On the former site of the Austin Opry House, it’s in a part of town long frequented by the city’s musicians, including Willie Nelson. The hotel pays homage to the neighbourhood’s roots (rooms are decorated with works by local music photographer Scott Newton) while also drawing on the nostalgia of Austin’s late-Seventies lake culture. A 900-square-foot pool echoes the city’s popular Barton Springs, and tiered garden beds planted with cypress and sycamore evoke the Barton Creek Greenbelt. With their cool concrete floors, high ceilings ribbed with sustainable timber and bathrooms in glossy colour-pop tiles, the lake-house-like rooms are a respite from the heat. Conceived and executed largely by women, Magdalena is welcoming and intuitive, a fitting nod to its namesake, the patron saint of women. By Stirling Kelso
FLASH POINT The restaurant’s take on Southern favourite Moon Pie is made with homemade marshmallow ice cream – save room.
Adero Scottsdale, Arizona
With easy access to 55,000 acres of hiking and biking trails that criss-cross the saguaro-studded Sonoran landscape, days at the new Adero Scottsdale are made for outdoor adventures. But it’s after the seemingly always-shining Arizona sun finally sets that things really get exciting. The hotel has the distinction of being within a Dark Sky community (of which Arizona only has a handful). This means, in layperson terms, that you’ll have access to some killer stargazing, and on-site Dark Sky experts (fondly referred to as ‘Star Dudes’) lead night-time sessions. For self-guided tours of the galaxy, telescopes, along with daily night-sky charts, can be delivered to guest rooms; 177 of them, kitted out in desert hues with a mid-century vibe (Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and school Taliesin West is just a few miles away). If sipping while looking skyward is preferable, the outdoor lawn and terrace at the hotel’s bar-restaurant, Cielo, is a solid place to watch the surrounding McDowell Mountains turn a sherberty shade as the stars take the stage for the late show. By David Duran
FLASH POINT The Adventure Concierge can kit you out with all the latest gear (the hotel has a partnership with REI Co-op outdoor wear) and lead you to less-wandered trails and secret spots that haven’t made the guidebooks or online forums just yet.
The Lodge at Blue Sky, Auberge Resorts Collection, Utah
There are scores of smart hotels in the mega-mountain spread of Park City and Deer Valley, from the haute-Western Waldorf Astoria to the old-Europe-vibe Stein Eriksen Lodge. But less than half an hour north, on 3,500 acres of the sagebrush-pocked Uinta Mountains, The Lodge at Blue Sky adds something entirely more immersive. Known for getting under the skin of a place, Auberge devised a hotel that does that literally – beyond the main lodge of local limestone and pine, cedar-walled suites (each with an outdoor fire pit) are built into a hillside and carpeted in grass or snow, while five oxidised-steel creek-side cabins are so seamlessly integrated there may be a moose standing on the path to breakfast. This serene isolation calls for hiking or Nordic skiing through high-desert scrub and Alpine lakes, fly-fishing in 35 miles of streams or shooting clays on an 18-station course (the paper casings melt back into the earth) – and, of course, hearty lunches of dishes including ribs and cherry pie at the restored 19th-century log tavern in a meadow of wildflowers. In winter, the lodge’s own heli-skiing outfit can drop the more adventurous into remote bowls and steep glades and zip the rest to its private Park City lounge by first tracks. But it’s the 50-plus horses at Saving Gracie, a sanctuary run by hotel co-owner Barb Phillips, that are the soul of the operation. Nearly half are rescues from slaughter (Phillips proudly calls herself a ‘horse thief’, the name also given to the lodge’s signature whisky cocktail) which have been gentled via natural horsemanship methods. ‘We build up the horses’ trust,’ she says. Ours too. By Alex Postman
FLASH POINT Borrow a mountain e-bike to zoom downhill to the High West Distillery, Utah’s first whisky makers in more than 130 years.
Mauna Lani, Auberge Resorts Collection, Hawaii
Ask any Hawaii loyalist about the storied Mauna Lani retreat on the Big Island and they’ll nod knowingly. For decades, the hotel has been a mainstay, drawing celebrities, well-heeled families and staycationing locals to the Kona-Kohala coast. To say that there was some nervous anticipation when it emerged as an Auberge Resort after a $200 million renovation is playing it supremely cool. But, full exhale, the brand stuck the landing. There’s still that soothing sense of nostalgia and history that comes with seeing an old friend. But, as with all good reunions, there’s some change and even a surprise or two. For starters, it’s lost that Eighties feel – gone are the high-gloss bamboo furniture and dark-wood shutters, replaced with a decidedly Hawaiian-2.0 look of light wood, soft sea shades and lots of white. The ancient Kalāhuipua’a royal fishponds are still there, now an easy walk from the sleek, adults-only swimming pool. And the beach out front remains one of the best places for surfing or snorkelling as sea turtles and the occasional spinner dolphin cruise past. The seaside CanoeHouse restaurant, led by former Nobu chef Matt Raso, plates up Kona abalone, grilled kampachi and produce from local farms, while a Goop store addresses any failure to pack enough beach cover-ups. Indeed, the crowd may be savvier and more well-travelled than ever, but beach hair and flip-flops at supper are still just fine, preserving what’s always been the best part of Mauna Lani: its laidback, aloha ease. By Megan Spurrell
FLASH POINT No one tells stories like Hawaiians, and Danny Akaka, the Mauna Lani's kahu hānai (which loosely translates to ‘traditional knowledge keeper’) knows everything about the mythology and history of the island – as well as some off-the-record tales about the hotel’s good old days.
Stephen Kent JohnsonMaison De La Luz, New Orleans
A layered, tactile, kaleidoscope like this – from pro outfit Ace – could only exist in the Big Easy. ‘New Orleans is such an amalgam of culture and languages and histories,’ says Kelly Sawdon of Atelier Ace. ‘It’s rich and complicated and somewhat messy in a beautiful way.’ The address is Ace’s second in the city, and a more intimate, flamboyant and narrative number than its more formulaic sibling across the street. A collaboration between Atelier Ace and Los Angeles-based, Iranian-born siblings Shamshiri Studio, it’s taken over a former City Hall annex built in 1908 and filled it with a travelling steamer trunk of curiosities. The lobby – with its twin staircases, Art Deco lights and front desk straight out of The Grand Budapest Hotel – is Golden Age Europe. The sitting room, an Egyptian adventure with hieroglyphic artwork, while the breakfast room (huge windows, parquet floors and custom-drawn wall coverings) feels like a Parisian bistro for lingering over café noir and beignets. And in the bedrooms, vivid-blue bed frames and navy-piped white linens are layered with curious details, from coffee tables etched with zodiac symbols to sculpted snake handles slithering through shower doors. Finally, a place that artfully distills the bohemian hedonism and mysticism of New Orleans in a gloriously designed jewel box. By Paul Oswell
FLASH POINT There’s a bar within a bar for hotel residents: push back one of the library shelves to reveal a bijou salon that is excitingly exclusive.
Riggs, Washington DC
In a capital scene abuzz with newcomers, Riggs easily grabs the attention. The first American property from Lore Group, the firm behind Sea Containers London and Pulitzer Amsterdam, is housed in a former bank dating from 1891. Nearly two dozen American presidents came here to do business, stepping into the very same sweeping lobby. The reception desk, a modern interpretation of a teller counter, furthers the theme. Yet there’s a fun-spiritedness not usually associated with personal finances, from the swirly wallpaper and headboard fabric by NYC-based design studio Voutsa to the clever spin on a bank safe that houses the mini-bar. Off the lobby, Café Riggs, steered by Momofuku alum Patrick Curran, works for quick coffees and power lunches alike, provided you can stop staring at the high ceilings and Corinthian columns. Downstairs in the former bank vault, Silver Lyan, from bartending superstar Ryan Chetiyawardana (Mr Lyan), slings high-concept house cocktails in an underground speakeasy. Everything from the Manhattan cherries to the art (a cheeky optical illusion) chimes with the hotel’s sense of whimsy and fun. Here the dress code may be buttoned down, but make sure the top one is undone. By Sarah Firshein
FLASH POINT Book the Louisa Adams – one of the four First Lady suites that take their cues from former White House residents: it has its own baby grand piano.
Thompson Washington DC
Too smart to be dismissed as hip, but too cool to be grand, this hotel is instead sophisticated and timeless enough to attract all sets of the city’s global crowd. Washington, DC is the country’s perennial host, regularly welcoming dignitaries and activists in equal parts. Thompson’s addition – in the heart of the rapidly developing Navy Yard neighbourhood, steps from Nationals Park and right by the Anacostia waterfront and marina – ties the hotel landscape together, the much-needed bridge between the presidential Hay-Adams and historic Watergate, and pulsating newcomers such as Eaton Workshop and The Line. NYC-based Parts and Labor Design did the interiors, which are streamlined and purposeful with knowing nods to the area’s maritime legacy. But its real power play is the restaurant and skyline bar, both partnerships with Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, which could be stand-alone openings of the year in their own right. Maialino Mare, a seafood-focused sister spot to the beloved New York City trattoria, quickly became the hottest reservation in town after opening (political bigwigs Nancy Pelosi and journalist Maureen Dowd were at its launch). Meanwhile, rooftop Anchovy Social puts Washington at cocktail sippers’ feet. A clever new candidate for the capital’s hotel hub. By Corina Quinn
FLASH POINT Buy a Frères Branchiaux candle from the mini-bar to support the three local brothers who make them – ages 9 to 14 – while 10 per cent of proceeds go to nearby homeless shelters.