A New Design Book Spotlights Hospitality Gems Across the Globe
Delving deep into its collection, The Leading Hotels of the World shows that an exceptional hotel is more than meets the eye.
Courtesy of The Monacelli Press.
Our coffee tables might grow restless after the release of Design: The Leading Hotels of the World, bound to give anything with legs—even table legs—a bit of wanderlust. The ritzy read celebrates remarkable hospitality design, handpicked by an institution with a notably discerning lens, making it bona fide eye candy for travel enthusiasts.
The lens itself, a collection known as The Leading Hotels of the World, has refined its appreciation for hospitality design for nearly a century. Founded in 1928 with mostly European hoteliers within its portfolio, LHW comprises over 400 hotels across 80 countries (a testament to the growing reaches of luxury travel), although only about 70 hotels made the cut throughout 292 design-centric pages.
La Réserve Paris: Hotel and Spa. Paris, France. Photo by Gaelle Le Boulicaut.
“Each property stands out with distinctive architecture and interiors, and deep connections to its cultural surroundings—whether it’s the repurposed medieval hospital turned urban oasis at Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp or the Zen-inspired tranquility of The Greenwich Hotel,” says Lauren Alba, vice-president of global marketing communications at LHW.
Many of the hotels featured in the book grace our own pages, such as Arizona’s Ambiente, with sensational views over Red Rock Country through glass atrium rooms, or Costa Rica’s Nayara Tented Camp, where dyed tents harmonize with the landscape as volcanic peaks beckon in the distance. Other familiar icons stud the list, such as the Ritz Paris and Okura Hotel Tokyo—not to mention Canadian stars like Montreal’s Le Mount Stephen and Vancouver’s Azur Legacy Collection Hotel.
“Every one of these places is different, a thing unto itself,” Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger writes in the book’s foreword. “That, of course, is what really marks a great hotel: that it is like no place else.”
Nayara Tented Camp. La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of Nayara Tented Camp.
Reflecting the rare quality of each handpicked gem, the cover shimmers like peridot, debossed with a lattice pattern and foil stamping. That energy continues inside, where interviews go beyond the surface of each hotel, proving that great hotels are as much about captivating visuals as enriching experiences. Expanding the scope, thoughts from creative icons like Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park and fashion designer Gabriela Hearst pepper the pages, homing in on the intersection of architecture, food, and fashion throughout hospitality design.
For Spencer Bailey, the book’s editor, starting the multivolume series with design made perfect sense. His own background (currently the editor-in-chief of The Slowdown and formerly of Surface Magazine) aligned with the project, while design also serves as a way to reveal the breadth of the collection, long synonymous with multigenerational grand dame properties and lavish architecture. “But LHW’s offering is much more diverse than just that,” Bailey says, nodding to properties like Capella Singapore and The Okura Tokyo. “As I put it in the book’s Introduction, the entire LHW portfolio could be considered a veritable A to Z of many of today’s, well, leading architects and designers, including Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Yoshio Taniguchi, and Patricia Urquiola, to name a few.”
La Mamounia. Marrakech, Morocco. Photo courtesy of La Mamounia.
Published by Phaidon and Monacelli (the former acquired the latter in 2020), the collection feels right at home. “We both serve a discerning global audience that appreciates craftsmanship, storytelling, and a connection to culture,” Alba notes of the partnership. “Together, we’ve created a beautiful first volume that celebrates the stunning architecture and interiors of our properties, and also the remarkable stories and experiences behind them.”
In case you missed the hint, this is just the first volume of many to come as LHW plans to spotlight different themes throughout its legion of hotels. And as first volumes go, this edition is off to a stunning start.
