As 2015 winds to a close, I’m taking this final week to reflect on the past 12 months in all things travel. Over the past two days I looked at general changes to air travel and then critically reviewed specific airlines to recap the “Year In Flight.” Today I am revisiting the 10 best hotel experiences I had in 2015. Many of these were new or importantly renovated properties, but some were time tested classics - what they all had in common was that I stayed and critically experienced their charms firsthand. Also, because the luxury hotel boom has gone on unabated, last year I launched two new resources to make it easier for travelers to find critical info, Great Urban Weekend Getaways and Hotel Test Drives.
As a professional travel writer, I have traveled a great deal over the past 20-plus years, and typically stay in 75-100 different places annually. Because the publications I write for skew towards luxury, the hotels I stay in reflect this and are pre-qualified to the degree possible. Nonetheless, more often than not these so called “luxury” hotels are cookie cutter and fail to impress. In many cases, developers think endless expanses of marble or designer staff uniforms make up for service deficiencies and poorly conceived room layouts - note to these hoteliers, they do not.
Today my focus is on just the very best hotels I stayed in this year that impressed me enough so that I would recommend them, regardless of price point. Many were properties I visited for the first time, but a few were repeats. Some I have covered here before in one way or another, and in those cases, I have provided links to past stories for more detail.
Zarafa, Botswana: Talk about blown away - I’ve visited some of the most famous safari lodges in Africa (Singita, Royal Malewane, Ulusaba, etc.) but Botswana’s Zarafa just raised the bar for me. This was my favorite place of the entire year, a truly Bucket List-worthy, ultra-eco conscious luxury lodge that may well be Africa’s best kept travel secret. With higher and more carefully monitored standards for everything from food safety to impact on the ecosystem, Botswana has become the top shelf luxury safari destination on the continent, and Zarafa, which opened in 2008, is its very best. The entire resort has just four “tents,” each the size of a house, with plunge pools, decks, outdoor showers, and pretty much every luxury you could imagine. Zarafa takes everything a step further than other deluxe safari lodges: for example, most include booze, but here each tent has a full bar, in antique chests, stocked with niceties like 18-year-old Glenfiddich. Many lodges offer loaner binoculars, but Zafara gives a four-figure pair of Swarovski binoculars, the nicest I have ever picked up. There are painting sets for budding artists, early morning coffee delivery service rather than make your own, a high tech mister/cooler for the netting shrouded bed, and a high powered tripod mounted spotting scope. But the best amenity is the camera: each tent comes with a professional loaner kit, a Canon 5D body and the highest quality Canon 28-135mm and 100-400mm lenses, $4-$5000 worth of optics. At the end of your stay they copy your photos onto a memory stick to take home. I have never seen this. The camp’s custom Land Cruisers hold fewer people than most game drive vehicles, with pivoting platforms for stabilizing cameras, and even charging outlets. Not coincidentally, Zarafa is the most opulent of several lodges comprising Great Plains Conservation, founded by Dereck and Beverly Joubert, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence and among the worlds’ most acclaimed wildlife photographers and videographers. The award-winning couple shot some of Nat Geo’s most popular documentaries, including the famed Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas, right here. Winners of five Emmys, a Peabody, and the World Ecology Award, their lodges are extremely environmentally sensitive, the couple established the Big Cats Initiative to combat the drop in lion numbers, and most recently they began a new program reintroducing rhinos to Botswana in a way that protects them from poachers. Even at many top safari lodges the food is the weakest link, but here it is superb, and Zarafa is the only Relais & Chateaux property in the country. But ultimately any safari lodge is about wildlife viewing, and Zarafa has it in spades. The four-room resort is one of just three tiny lodges (all co-owned) sharing the unspoiled 320,000-acre Selinda Reserve, so you rarely see more than one other vehicle. The region is especially rich in lions and leopards, one of the best places to see elusive wild African dogs, chock full of bird life, and absolutely overflowing with elephants. It is an unfenced resort and animals wander right up the tents, so you don’t even have to leave to see wildlife - there were elephants and warthogs outside my door constantly, and not a day passed without a significant sighting - from my bed or plunge pool. The top folks at National Geographic could go anyplace in the world for their annual staff wildlife retreat, but they come here, again and again. I totally understand why (Read much more detail about Zarafa here in my earlier piece).
Wynn/Encore, Las Vegas: Amazingly, it took me three dozen trips to Las Vegas with stays at every other well-known hotel before getting to Wynn - though I was deeply familiar with hotelier Steve Wynn’s many previous efforts. But it was worth the wait, and I came away very impressed. Wynn is more self-contained than other Strip hotels, and a top choice of repeat guests who have seen Vegas and don’t feel the need to wander. The “campus” is the most Forbes Star laden property in the world, with a staggering 60 under one roof, including an unprecedented four 5-Stars (two hotels, two spas) and ten 4-Stars (two hotels, eight restaurants). Most uniquely, it is the only casino resort in the city with its own onsite golf course, a huge amenity advantage. It is a very fun design by acclaimed architect Tom Fazio, and operated in the style of a top private country club, with white glove locker-room attendants and every guest need taken care of, including high quality current year rental sets and even rental shoes - in two color schemes to match more outfits. Wynn also has an excellent slate of eateries, even by lofty Vegas standards, especially top tier Japanese, seafood and steakhouse, one of the best and most luxurious buffets on the Strip (just revamped), and by far the best Japanese beef program in the country. It is one of only three U.S. eateries certified to serve real Kobe beef - which is fake almost every place else - as well as a slate of other highly regionalized specialty red meat offerings from Japan. There is no close domestic rival in this regards, making it a national must-visit for serious steak lovers. In similar fashion, they have the only exotic lobster program I have ever seen, with a range of choices even the most diehard foodies may never have heard of, from Scottish blue to rare Juan Fernandez to Moroccan pink lobsters. Wynn and Encore are essentially mirror image sister hotels connected at the hip, each with a spectacular spa that ranks among the country’s best, and each contains a smaller, more luxurious hotel within hotel, called the Tower Suites, with separate private check-in lobbies and other luxury touches. As a big fan of the hotel-within-hotel concept in Las Vegas, I emphatically recommend either the Wynn or Encore Tower Suites, both 5-Star hotels, and nearly identical except for décor style.
Big Cypress Lodge, Memphis, TN: This was the most memorable hotel opening of the year, if only for the sheer audacity and bizarreness of the undertaking. Built as a sports arena in 1991, the Memphis Pyramid is the world’s sixth largest pyramid and once hosted the NBA’s Grizzlies, but has been an empty eyesore along the Mississippi since 2004. When Bass Pro Shops founder and owner Johnny Morris, one of the nation’s wealthiest billionaires, went fishing nearby he saw it and immediately recognized its potential. Known as the “Walt Disney of retail,” for his interactive, elaborately themed and decorated giant stores, Morris is an equally passionate, hands-on, and detail oriented hotelier, running the very impressive Big Cedar Lodge resort outside Branson, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks, a property I have been wowed by on my visits. Morris spent more than $190 million converting the pyramid into a giant retail store, attraction and boutique hotel. The result is simply mind boggling and hard to fathom without experiencing, but the pyramid now contains a huge Bass Pro retail store complete with in-water, indoor marina boat center, the Ducks Unlimited Water Fowling Heritage Center museum, a bowling alley, shooting and archery ranges, restaurants, and the hotel, all linked by a cypress “swamp,” with 600,000 gallons of water features, 2,000 fish, alligators, and very realistic faux cypress trees 100 feet tall that drip faux Spanish moss. The Vegas-style architectural wonder is a puzzle of ponds, streams, tanks and aquariums, all spanned by footbridges. In the center Morris installed the world’s tallest freestanding elevator, which rises to a new penthouse restaurant and outdoor observation deck overlooking the Mississippi. The hotel itself, the Big Cypress Lodge, has a separate elevator lobby and rings the second floor atrium, with rooms, many of them in the form of rustic cabins, some on stilts, overlooking the swamp and retail space, with rocking chair adorned balconies. When staying here, it is very easy to forget you are inside, and especially bizarre at night, when the store closes and only hotel guests are in the vast pyramid. Much of the hotel design is borrowed from Morris’ larger Big Cedar Lodge, and all rooms have hand-hewn beams, virtual fireplaces, plenty of animal mounts, jetted oversized tubs, huge walk-in showers, coffee makers, fresh turn down cookies, and a generous welcome baskets of free snacks. The location is not the best for visiting Memphis, but the experience is so over the top it cannot be missed.
Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe, CA: One of the two ski-in/out Ritz-Carlton hotels in the country, this one is situated mid-mountain at Northstar California, the most luxurious and family friendly of the dozen or so resorts ringing Lake Tahoe. It is easily the top luxury slopeside hotel in the entire region and has the prerequisite full service spa and white glove ski valet with rental shop customers expect from a Ritz caliber ski resort hotel. On a more offbeat note, the hotel offers an array of less predictable but very worthwhile special activity offerings, including guided full moon snowshoe hikes, geocaching and astronomer led stargazing. While Northstar is best known for skiing, Tahoe is more popular as a summer destination, and the hotel offers a huge array of hiking and mountain biking options, both directly on-site and nearby, as well as kayak and stand up paddleboard tours on the lake, access to a top Jack Nicklaus golf course, fly fishing, and its own lavish pool with rentable private cabanas. The hotel’s fine dining eatery, Manzanita, is one of the best in the Tahoe region, sharply focused on seasonal products with a chef’s table and interactive tasting bar. Last season the hotel added a great new outdoor BBQ eatery and casual bar at the ski valet entrance that is a wonderful place to ski up and have lunch or an après beer and take advantage of the many sunny days Tahoe enjoys, with “Spring skiing” conditions all winter long. Northstar California has the best snow making coverage in the region, making it more reliable in off years, and because it lacks true extreme terrain - though there are plenty of black runs - its family reputation tends to keep the most aggressive skiers and riders away, and as a result powder stashes last longer and are easy to find here.
Oberoi Hotels: For sheer lodging luxury, my top experience of the year was a trip to India during which I became intimately familiar with three amazing hotel brands that easily hold their own with the likes of better known names such as Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and Peninsula (you can read a much more detailed piece on India’s Amazing Luxury Hotel Culture here). The most dramatic of these was Oberoi, which mixes modern city hotels with fantasy inspired resorts. I stayed longest at the Oberoi Vanyavilas, a “tented” safari lodge adjacent to Ranthambore National Park, world famous for its Bengal tigers, and it was every bit the equal of the swankiest safari lodges of South Africa, which is really saying something. I also visited the stunning Oberoi Jaipur, a resort inspired by the company owner’s home, a meticulously restored 300-year old royal fort. At the resort, the main castle building houses the lobby and restaurants, and is surrounded by freestanding “tented” villas sprawling across 35 manicured acres meant to evoke the bygone style of royal caravans, luxurious tent cities set up in advance of their arrival. These “tents” have no canvas but instead are huge villas with sunken marble oversized tubs and walk-in showers. I’d favorably compare the more modern urban Oberoi in Delhi to the 5-star Peninsula Chicago, a favorite of mine - except with an even bigger staff. Oberoi operates its own hotel and culinary training programs rather than relying on top schools, assuring an unrivaled level of consistency among managers and kitchens virtually unheard of in the luxury hotel world. At one Oberoi resort, I left my laptop open and returned to find a microfiber screen cleaning cloth next to it. For only the second time I can recall, the cords to my iPhone/iPad charger were tied neatly with ribbons, and there were plentiful universal electric outlets in every hotel. I dined alone at the Oberoi Delhi, and the waiter brought me a leather folder of English language magazines and newspapers. As a solo traveler, the overwhelmingly polite, helpful and friendly staff could not have made me feel any more welcome, while the attention to detail was amazing across the board and across multiple locations. Not surprisingly, Conde Nast Traveler readers ranked four different Oberoi properties among the 15 Best Hotels on Earth - and as the four best hotels in all of Asia, which has the largest collection of top luxury hotels anywhere. That kind of domination goes beyond statistical anomaly or coincidence. As if to punctuate this point, Travel + Leisure just named the Oberoi Udaivilas the world’s single best hotel. Unfortunately, Oberoi has no U.S. properties, but it does have resorts in Bali, Mauritius, Egypt and the Middle East, and Oberoi has also moved into the floating luxury hotel business with two critically acclaimed river cruise vessels. Unconditionally recommended.
Taj Hotels: Another amazing Indian chain, Taj is just a touch less consistent than Oberoi, but still plays in the very top level of luxury hotel brands, and is far bigger with a global reach more appealing to U.S travelers. Properties in this country include the Forbes 5-star Pierre in New York, and two 4-Stars, Campton Place in San Francisco and the Taj Boston. But if anything they are even better overseas, and in addition to the magnificent Taj Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, India (where I returned one day to find a boxed eyeglass cleaning cloth sitting next to my sunglasses), I stayed this year at the fabulous Taj Cape Town, South Africa’s most popular tourism city. From the lobby shops to the rooms, from the opulent spa to the classic pub - with the best selection of local craft beers I saw in the entire country - every care was taken to offer a broader than usual luxury hotel experience suitable for all types of travelers, leisure and business, stuffy and laid back. Since the family-run Taj brand is part of giant family-run Tata, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, which owns both Jaguar and Land Rover, the hotel provides complimentary transport around town in its - you guessed it - Jaguars and Land Rovers. The city’s biggest attraction is its vibrant waterfront neighborhood, so I had the driver drop me there, and he told me to call when I was ready to return, and when I did a few hours later, he arrived in five minutes, just another seamless part of the Taj experience.
Leela Delhi, India: In light of Oberoi and Taj, I’d be remiss to leave out Leela, a smaller luxury Indian brand. I stayed at just one property, the Delhi flagship, but it was the most impressive urban hotel I stayed at in all of 2015, simply stunning. The poshest of the city’s properties, this is a spare no expense flagship that takes rooms, lobby, spa, shops and dining to the highest level. Even the swimming pool is stunning. It takes a bit of the Las Vegas approach to its culinary program, importing world famous eateries that otherwise do not exist in India, including sushi temple Megu and the only Le Cirque in Asia. One Leela signature touch is its Royal Club, a private club floor with cocktail, snack and concierge service, available across the brand. The Leela Delhi is at least on par with any modern, urban 5-star in this country, yet almost no one in the U.S. knows it. Leela was founded in 1987 by Captain Krishnan Nair, who made his fortune in the textile and fashion industries (he named the chain after his wife), and this pedigree is reflected in the opulent décor and expensive fabrics found at every turn. Leela operates just eight hotels, all in India (with four more under construction). If you visit Delhi you cannot do better.
The Crawford, Denver: The Crawford is simply the coolest new hotel I have visited in a long time. It is a great model for the boutique/hip hotel industry that opened last July and is the centerpiece of a total renovation of historic 120-year old Union Station in the heart of Downtown. But is not just a hotel in a train station, it is a train station as hotel, a triumph of architecture and design. It uses the main waiting room of the grand building as its lobby, and in each arched entryway surrounding the hall, which once led to trains, there is a bar, restaurant, coffee shop, or retail store, which are also part of the public space. Guest rooms rise above both sides of the great hall, with its 65-foot atrium ceiling. While the bars and restaurants are part of the hotel, they appear standalone, functioning as a modern urban food hall concept, attracting a substantial crowd of locals and visitors alike, adding to the vibrant energy. The Crawford is as hip and lively a hotel scene as you can imagine, but not in a self-consciously and artificially hip Brooklyn-esque way. The bars and restaurants spill out of their own spaces into the park-like common area, full of comfortable chairs and couches, long tables with outlets and workstations (free wifi), and serviced bar seating, while a raised platform in the center has dual table shuffleboard “courts.” You can mix and match, ordering food and drink from different outlets simultaneously. It’s a mix of people doing work, reading, hanging out, playing, eating and drinking, and it all works. There are 112 hotel rooms, split into three design styles; Pullman with an art deco train car feel; Classic, which are more typical luxury hotel rooms with Victorian flair; and upper level Lofts with industrial exposed wooden timbers and vaulted ceilings. All feature large walk-in marble showers with multiple heads and nice touches like upscale Bigelow toiletries, fast, free wifi, lots of outlets, fancy Nespresso coffee machines, and iPad minis with tourist information. There are hundreds of pieces of art throughout the hotel with a focus on the American West. The house car is a Tesla of course, and the only major shortcoming is that the spa is located two blocks away at a sister hotel. I did a more detailed profile of the Crawford earlier this year.
Ritz-Carlton Montreal: After a century as Montreal’s grandest hotel, new owners did the unthinkable, and in 2008 closed the Ritz-Carlton completely for four long years of renovations. $150 million later, it is better than ever, with fewer rooms, better rooms, Canada’s first and only Dom Perignon bar, and a notable new restaurant, Maison Boulud by chef Daniel Boulud (an all new spa is coming soon). As a result, this year readers of Travel + Leisure magazine named it the best city hotel in Canada, U.S. News & World Report named it Canada’s best hotel period, and it became the only hotel in Quebec to earn 5 AAA Diamonds. It also earned eight Forbes Stars in 2015 - four each for the hotel and the eatery. But the real test was my own visit and it passed with flying colors (except for the rather disappointing breakfast service). Rooms are superb even for a luxury hotel, with technology used extensively, but for guest convenience rather than show. Control panels use simple icons like a light bulb with a slash through it that darkens the room completely, a simple concept, yet one that seems to befuddle most hotel designers. Blackout curtains and blackout blinds, both automated, do an excellent job, there are plenty of outlets and USB ports, including several at the desk. Best of all are the large, luxury bathrooms, with radiant heated floor, oversized walk-in shower, separate soaking tub, motion detector floor level lights for nighttime visits, and a fully featured automated Japanese toilet, awesome but rarely seen outside top Japanese hotels. All stays include the bells and whistles a luxury hotel should offer, including free fast wifi, free shoeshine, high-end linens, good turndown service, a pillow menu, and bathroom extras like a dental kit. But what makes a luxury hotel really luxurious is staff and service, and the Ritz-Carlton Montreal excels. Since half the original property was converted to residences with a separate entrance, the hotel is much smaller than it looks, with just 98 rooms and 31 suites, an urban boutique hotel with big hotel facilities. Front door staff and front desk staff are consistent, remember you, and every time you come and go it has that feel of coming home, probably the hardest thing for a hotel to get right. Maids are friendly in the hall, and staff is proactive in their service. I loved this hotel (Read my more detailed review here).
The Landing, South Lake Tahoe, CA & NV: As the largest city on the lakefront, and home to casino gaming, world class golf, skiing and plenty of entertainment, South Lake Tahoe is a top year round tourist destination with a lot going for it. But until now, there has been no luxury lodging. That is what makes The Landing such a welcome - and surprising - addition. A truly independent boutique hotel (77 rooms), it is a labor of love by a Southern California couple who are of Greek descent and well-traveled. The Landing reflects what its owners have come to love about hotels and dining, and they obviously have good taste. It has a residential, homey feel, with lots of handpicked art and fresh flowers, and a low key lobby with two desks, rather than a counter, where every arriving guest is greeted with a glass of bubbly. The guest rooms are fabulous, with just enough of the Tahoe lodge rustic aesthetic to remind you where you are, without becoming kitsch: exposed wood and impressive stonework surrounding the gas fireplace, vintage European ski posters, and a bookshelf full of classics. Most rooms have terraces, many with lake views, plus wet bars, coffee makers, free Wi-Fi and plenty of outlets. Awesome bathrooms are the centerpiece, with state of the art jetted tubs and oversized walk-in steam showers with rain shower heads. Toiletries are L’Occitane, toilets are heated, the radiant floor is adjustable, and even the towel rack has a thermostat you control, something I have never seen in any other hotel. Even in the best hotel brands, you would only get this kind of bathroom in a top tier suite. But lots of new “luxury” hotels spend a fortune on fixtures and still fail. It’s the staff that makes The Landing work, and luxury here is understated, not formal, as fits a small beachfront resort in a very laid back community. When I went to the bar with a local who had been there once before, months earlier, the bartender remembered what he drank. On another night I asked about wines by the glass, and a different bartender offered me a generous taste test. Bellmen practically fell over themselves retrieving my skis, water bottles were foisted on me, and waiters doted. Technically, anytime you check into a hotel you are a guest, but at The Landing, I truly felt like a guest. The owners hired Maria Elia, a renowned Greek chef, author and TV personality in England, to design the menu and serve as consultant, and the results are impressive, not traditional Greek but modern Californian with a Mediterranean spin, showcasing fresh local produce and high quality seafood (great grilled octopus!), along with house made tzatziki and tahini. The food is very good and even the simplest dishes shine. There is a large global wine list with a sizeable Greek section and several Greek wines by the glass, something you are not going to find elsewhere in South Lake Tahoe. The attention to detail is pervasive, but the place is also a ski season bargain, with rates of $2-300 (going up to around $700 in peak summer). It has a ski storage room and shuttle for the very short ride to Heavenly, the largest (4,800-acres) and highest (10,067’) of the many Tahoe area resorts, with the biggest vertical on the west coast. The Landing has a small spa and salon, well equipped gym, shared private beach just outside the door, pool, and lakefront outdoor section of the bar and restaurant that is enjoyable year round. If I could stay anywhere in greater South Lake Tahoe, summer or winter, it would be The Landing (read more detail here).
Thanks for reading and happy travels in 2016!
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(Note: In most cases, I did not personally pay for my stays while working - few business travelers do. Sometimes I had expenses from publications, often the rooms were paid for by a tourist board or third party entity, and in other cases the rooms were simply provided free of charge by the hotels. Of course, this was also the case for the many other properties that did not make the cut).
