Zinnia Thapar
Editor and Travel Writer
Zinnia Thapar is an editor and travel writer at The Hotel Life. She leads the current commissioning slate and writes personal hotel reviews, destination guides and editorial features with particular attention to design, service, food and a property's sense of place.
View LinkedIn profile ↗Hotel reviews by Zinnia Thapar
33 personally written hotel reviews currently carry Zinnia's byline.
Walled City HaveliThe Johri
The Johri replaces palace acreage with old-city immersion: an 1871 haveli, eight intensely designed suites, Jaipur's most persuasive vegetarian hotel restaurant and a front door cars cannot reach.
Indicative from $330 / night
Restored FortSix Senses Fort Barwara
Fort Barwara succeeds because the restoration retains weight and imperfection. Forty-eight suites, temple bells and a serious spa make this far more than a palace-shaped stopover to Ranthambore.
Indicative from $900 / night
Urban SanctuaryAman New York
Aman has built an almost acoustically impossible refuge inside the Crown Building. The 83 suites and three-floor spa are exceptional; the price and private-club atmosphere are equally impossible to ignore.
Indicative from $2,500 / night
Lake VillaPassalacqua
The De Santis family restored an 18th-century villa with colour, antiques and operatic generosity. Passalacqua is intimate by Lake Como standards and nearly impossible to experience casually.
Indicative from $1,700 / night
Capital Grand DameThe Imperial New Delhi
The Imperial is New Delhi's great historical hotel: a 1936 landmark on Janpath with a formidable art collection, mature gardens and the rare confidence to let the building speak first.
Indicative from $310 / night
Modern City ResortThe Lodhi
The Lodhi turns a central Delhi address into an unusually private urban resort, with vast rooms, plunge-pool suites, serious fitness facilities and Indian Accent downstairs.
Indicative from $290 / night
Diplomatic PalaceThe Leela Palace New Delhi
The Leela Palace delivers the capital at full volume: generous rooms, a rooftop pool, ambitious restaurants and polished service in the Diplomatic Enclave.
Indicative from $280 / night
Harbour IconThe Taj Mahal Palace
Facing the Gateway of India since 1903, the Taj is more than Mumbai's most recognisable hotel: it is a living civic landmark with Palace rooms, historic restaurants and an incomparable address.
Indicative from $310 / night
Waterfront ModernistThe Oberoi, Mumbai
The Oberoi turns Nariman Point into a precise urban refuge: exceptional service, refreshed rooms, immense windows and front-row views of Marine Drive's Queen's Necklace.
Indicative from $260 / night
Grande DameThe Plaza
A French Renaissance landmark at Fifth and 59th: equal parts fairy tale, film set, and living piece of New York mythology.
Indicative from $895 / night
Cliffside RetreatBelmond Hotel Caruso
A thousand feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea, a former bishop's palace holds the most photographed infinity pool in Italy, and a view that ruins you for anywhere else.
Indicative from $1,300 / night
Safari LodgeSingita Sabi Sand
Conservation-first safari at its most refined: glass-walled suites, a private reserve full of leopard, and service that feels almost telepathic.
Indicative from $2,100 / night
Island RetreatBelmond Hotel Cipriani
On the tip of Giudecca, the Cipriani offers the one thing Venice never can: space. An Olympic-length pool, Casanova's old garden, and no crowds at breakfast.
Indicative from $1,450 / night
Grande DameClaridge's
Royalty checks in under pseudonyms, the foyer pours the best afternoon tea in London, and the service runs like a Swiss watch in white gloves.
Indicative from $990 / night
Urban RetreatPark Hyatt Tokyo
Fifty-two floors up, the New York Bar still swings, the pool still floats under a glass vault, and the whole place still hums with cinematic melancholy.
Indicative from $720 / night
Desert RetreatAmangiri
Aman built into the raw geology of the Colorado Plateau: a minimalist compound where a central pool curls around a 165-million-year-old rock.
Indicative from $3,400 / night
Hollywood LegendThe Beverly Hills Hotel
Bungalows, banana-leaf wallpaper, and a poolside where studio history was written. A touch faded now, but the myth is fully intact.
Indicative from $850 / night
Design OutpostFogo Island Inn
On stilts at the far edge of Newfoundland, a social-enterprise hotel where every dollar goes back into the community and every window frames raw, roaring ocean.
Indicative from $1,975 / night
Wilderness LodgeExplora Patagonia
Inside Torres del Paine National Park, an all-inclusive base camp for serious hikers, with guided treks by day and a spa over the water by night.
Indicative from $2,600 / night
Safari LodgePashan Garh, A Taj Safari
Twelve private stone cottages above a wooded valley in Madhya Pradesh, and one of the best chances in central India to track tiger, leopard and the gharial-rich Ken River.
Indicative from $320 / night
Urban Grande DameThe Oberoi, New Delhi
After a top-to-bottom rebuild, the Oberoi is once again the address in Delhi: serene, tech-forward, and run with the quiet precision the group is famous for.
Indicative from $300 / night
Beach ResortW Goa
Bold colour, a clifftop pool and a DJ-driven beach club, all above one of North Goa's best beaches. This is the loud, glamorous end of the Goan spectrum, and it's a lot of fun.
Indicative from $300 / night
Villa ResortW Koh Samui
Every room here is a private pool villa, spilling down a lush hillside to a white-sand beach and one of the island's best beach bars. Design-forward, high-energy, and genuinely spectacular.
Indicative from $500 / night
Wellness ResortSTAY Wellbeing & Lifestyle Resort
Detox programmes, an enormous spa and a calm, garden-filled campus near Rawai make this one of the best-value wellbeing resorts in Southeast Asia.
Indicative from $80 / night
Rainforest ResortThe Datai Langkawi
On Langkawi's north-west tip, The Datai sits inside one of the oldest rainforests on earth, where hornbills and dusky langurs share the trees and the Andaman Sea laps a perfect beach.
Indicative from $700 / night
Wilderness ResortNihi Sumba
A famous private left-hand wave, horses cantering along an empty beach, and a spa reached by a two-hour trek. Nihi Sumba is barefoot luxury at its wildest and most soulful.
Indicative from $1,400 / night
Grande DameThe Savoy
A riverside legend since 1889, with an American Bar that pours some of the world's most famous cocktails and a location in the very thick of the West End.
Indicative from $800 / night
PalazzoThe Gritti Palace
Once a doge's residence, the Gritti puts you right on the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria della Salute, with a terrace made for lingering and Venetian antiques at every turn.
Indicative from $950 / night
Palace HotelFour Seasons Hotel George V
A 1928 Art Deco landmark a step from the Champs-Elysees, celebrated for extravagant floral displays, faultless service, and more Michelin stars than any other hotel in the world.
Indicative from $1,600 / night
Palace RetreatRoyal Mansour
Commissioned by Mohammed VI and executed by 1,500 Moroccan craftsmen, this is less a hotel than a walled medina of private houses, with the entire service operation hidden underground.
Indicative from $1,300 / night
Grand DameThe Connaught
Red brick and impeccable manners on a quiet Mayfair corner, with a martini trolley that has become a pilgrimage and service that has never needed to raise its voice.
Indicative from $950 / night
Cliffside RetreatPost Ranch Inn
Adults only, no televisions, and a set of timber and glass cabins built into a Big Sur ridge so carefully that from the road you cannot see the hotel at all.
Indicative from $1,600 / night
Riviera ClassicSplendido, A Belmond Hotel
High on the hillside above the prettiest harbour in Italy, in a sixteenth-century monastery turned hotel, with terraced gardens dropping toward the sea.
Indicative from $1,300 / night