Asia
From silent towers above Tokyo to castaway islands in the Indian Ocean.
No continent stretches the idea of a hotel further than Asia. Here a stay might be a monastic tower of paper and stone above the world's busiest city, a floating palace on a Rajasthani lake, or a jungly private island where the dress code is bare feet and the ceiling is the Milky Way.
Service reaches an almost telepathic pitch across the region, and the best addresses fuse deep tradition with a fearless appetite for the new. These are our favourites, from Kowloon to the Baa Atoll.
Hotels in Asia
Coastal HideawayAhilya by the Sea
Ahilya by the Sea reviewed: art-filled villas on Dolphin Bay, two pools, room choices and the difference between a waterfront hideaway and a beach resort.
Check rates for your dates
Village RetreatThe Postcard Cuelim
The Postcard Cuelim reviewed: a six-room South Goa retreat, patio and suite choices, Goan cooking, airport logistics and why this is not a beachfront resort.
Check rates for your dates
Oceanfront HideawayAbode by the Beach
Abode by the Beach in Ahangama reviewed: Rock versus Beach Suite, oceanfront setting, all-day dining and how it differs from Abode's garden property.
Check rates for your dates
Coastal ClubhouseSoho House Mumbai
Soho House Mumbai reviewed: public room bookings, city versus sea views, Juhu location, club atmosphere and the categories worth considering.
Check rates for your dates
Garden ResortThe Oberoi Rajvilas
The Oberoi Rajvilas reviewed: garden and tent categories, its resort setting outside central Jaipur, dining and whether the extra distance suits your trip.
Check rates for your dates
Restored HaveliHaveli Dharampura
Haveli Dharampura reviewed: restored Old Delhi architecture, room categories, Lakhori dining, arrival logistics and the separate Golden Haveli building.
Check rates for your dates
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
Temple District RetreatPark Hyatt Kyoto
With only 70 rooms beside Kodaiji, Park Hyatt Kyoto offers an unbeatable dawn address and design of exceptional restraint. The city's crowds remain outside; suite availability and pricing demand strategy.
Indicative from $1,300 / night
Riverside ResortCapella Bangkok
Every one of Capella Bangkok's 101 rooms faces the river, but the seven pool villas bring the city almost to water level. Service is intimate, food formidable and the setting quietly addictive.
Indicative from $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
Urban SanctuaryAman Tokyo
Thirty-three floors above Otemachi, Aman took the top of a corporate tower and made it the calmest room in Tokyo. It works because of everything it leaves out.
Indicative from $1,150 / night
IconMarina Bay Sands
Three towers, a ship balanced on top, and the most famous rooftop pool on earth. It's a spectacle, and it earns the hype.
Indicative from $520 / night
Grande DameThe Peninsula Hong Kong
Since 1928 the Peninsula has been Kowloon's answer to the grand hotels of Europe: a colonnaded lobby, harbour views, and a helipad on the roof.
Indicative from $780 / night
Barefoot LuxurySoneva Fushi
The resort that taught the Maldives that barefoot could mean luxurious. Vast Robinson Crusoe villas, an open-air cinema, and some of the best diving in the Indian Ocean.
Indicative from $2,200 / night
Palace HotelThe Oberoi Udaivilas
Built the way a maharana's residence would have been, with domes, courtyards and reflecting pools mirrored in the lake. Regularly voted among the finest hotels on earth.
Indicative from $900 / 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
Mountain RetreatThe Khyber Himalayan Resort & Spa
Kashmir's grandest mountain hotel sits right by the Gulmarg gondola, wrapped in deodar forest and snow for half the year. Ski in winter, trek in summer, and warm up by the fire either way.
Indicative from $300 / night
Beach ResortWeligama Bay Marriott Resort & Spa
Overlooking the gentle crescent of Weligama Bay, this is an easy, family-friendly base for the island's best beaches, whale watching off Mirissa, and learning to surf.
Indicative from $240 / night
Palace HotelJai Mahal Palace
A gentler, greener alternative to Jaipur's grander palace hotels, this Taj property wraps you in history and formal gardens a short drive from the bazaars and forts.
Indicative from $200 / 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
Palace HotelRambagh Palace
Peacocks on the lawns, marble corridors, and suites once lived in by a maharaja. This Taj flagship is the full Rajasthani fantasy, and it delivers on every inch of it.
Indicative from $480 / night
Palace HotelUmaid Bhawan Palace
An immense Art Deco palace on a hill above the Blue City, part royal residence, part museum, part Taj hotel. Staying here is like being a guest of the Maharaja, because in a sense you are.
Indicative from $650 / night
Grande DameRaffles Singapore
After a careful restoration, the all-suite Raffles is back to its shuttered, palm-filled, ceiling-fan best. Order a Sling at the Long Bar and let the peanut shells fall where they may.
Indicative from $750 / night
Cliffside RetreatAmankila
On a quiet stretch of Bali's east coast, thatched pavilions step down a jungled cliff to one of the most photographed pools in Asia and a private beach club below.
Indicative from $1,050 / night
Jungle RetreatFour Seasons Resort Bali at Sayan
You cross a bridge to a rooftop lotus pond, then descend into the jungle canopy of the Ayung River valley. This is Ubud's most dramatic arrival, and one of Bali's great spa retreats.
Indicative from $850 / 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
Urban RetreatThe Upper House
Andre Fu's serene interiors, unusually large rooms, and a top-floor restaurant with harbour views make this the thinking traveller's Hong Kong hotel. Quiet luxury, done to perfection.
Indicative from $550 / night
Skyline HotelHopewell Hotel
The largest five-star hotel on Hong Kong Island, folded into the landmark Hopewell Centre II above Wan Chai, with big, high-floor rooms and sweeping views over the city and the harbour.
Indicative from $150 / night
Grand DameMandarin Oriental, Bangkok
The hotel that more or less invented Asian luxury hospitality, sitting on the river with a staff-to-guest ratio and an institutional memory that nothing built since has matched.
Indicative from $420 / night
Asia Guides
GuideWhere to Stay in Goa: Choose the Holiday Before the Hotel
A waterfront house, a village retreat and a beach resort are three different holidays. Here is how to choose between them.
4 min read · September 21, 2026
GuideWhere to Stay in Mumbai: The Neighbourhood Comes First
Colaba, Marine Drive, Bandra or Juhu? A better Mumbai stay begins by refusing to cross the city unnecessarily.
4 min read · September 21, 2026
GuideJaipur: Palace Resort or Walled-City Haveli?
The garden and the bazaar offer different kinds of luxury. Choose which one you want to wake up inside.
4 min read · September 21, 2026
GuideRajasthan by Road: Jaipur, Fort Barwara, Udaipur and Jodhpur
Four stops, one excellent driver and enough time to let the desert state reveal itself beyond the palace gates.
6 min read · August 2026
GuideKyoto at the Quiet Hours
The city has not lost its grace; it has lost the middle of the day. See it at dawn, after dinner and in the spaces between the famous temples.
5 min read · August 2026
GuideThree Days in Delhi: The City in Layers
Old Delhi at breakfast, modern India along the ceremonial avenues and a final evening in Mehrauli: a route through the capital that respects its scale.
4 min read · September 2026
GuideMumbai in a Long Weekend: Harbour to Bandra
Art Deco at dawn, Colaba after breakfast, a working lunch in Fort and one excellent night north of the sea link: Mumbai without pretending traffic is incidental.
4 min read · September 2026
Guide48 Hours in Tokyo, the Hotel Insider's Way
How to fall for the world's most overwhelming city in two well-planned days.
4 min read · August 2026
GuideThe Maldives, Decoded: Choose the Island Before the Villa
Reef, transfer, meal plan, beach: the decisions that matter more than an overwater photograph.
4 min read · April 2026
GuideSri Lanka in Ten Days: A Route With Room to Breathe
Culture, hills and the south coast—plus what to cut when the journey starts doing too much.
4 min read · February 2026
GuideKoh Samui, Unhurried: Beaches, Waterfalls and Where to Stay
Samui can be a party or a hideaway. Here's how to find the quiet coves, the jungle interior, and the right beach for the trip you actually want.
3 min read · June 2026
GuideBali, Two Ways: Jungle and Sea
The classic Bali trip splits the island in half: a few days inland around Ubud, a few more on the coast. Here's how to balance the two.
3 min read · June 2026
GuideBangkok for People Who Think They Know It
Beyond the Grand Palace and the rooftop bars, the city is doing something far more interesting. A guide to the river, the old quarters, and the food that never makes the lists.
3 min read · August 2026