The four rankings we follow
Michelin Keys: three Keys
The Michelin Guide has rated hotels from one to three Keys since 2024. Three Keys is the top level, the "extraordinary stay". We recorded the 155 three-Key hotels of the selection updated in September 2026, with the number of rooms the Guide gives.
Forbes Travel Guide: Five-Star
The 2026 Star Awards give five stars to 343 hotels, after a service inspection. The list comes from the official winners page. Forbes weighs heavily on the United States (78 hotels) and on China, Hong Kong and Macau combined (47).
Palace: the French distinction
The Palace label is decided by the French state, not by a guide. The 2026 list has 33 hotels, 13 of them in Paris. We took it from the Michelin article that publishes it. The Ritz is not on it.
World's 50 Best Hotels: the ranking
A vote by more than 800 anonymous judges, 50 hotels in all. The 2026 edition was published in Paris on 15 September. Rosewood Hong Kong is first for the second year running.
The scope: a hotel is here if it holds at least one top rating
The list is the union of the four rankings. Overlaps are rare: Rosewood Hong Kong, first in the world, is not Five-Star at Forbes, and most Forbes Five-Star hotels have no Michelin Key. The list is therefore broader than any single ranking, and you can filter by distinction.
Fourteen hotels were added at the editors' request although they appear in none of the four lists: Rosewood and The Ritz-Carlton Grand Canal in Abu Dhabi, Laucala Island in Fiji, Amanyangyun in Shanghai, The Ritz and The Lanesborough in London, Hotel Imperial in Vienna, Villa d'Este on Lake Como, The Gritti Palace in Venice, Aman Kyoto, Amanzoe in Greece, The Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur, Reid's Palace in Madeira and Le Negresco in Nice. They carry the label "Editor's pick". Other hotels mentioned on the same occasion, such as Emirates Palace or the St. Regis Saadiyat, are already on the Forbes list.
A hotel is matched from one list to another by name, city and country. Names differ from one source to the next (Bulgari and Bvlgari, for instance), so we checked doubtful matches by hand.
Short entries and detailed entries
Hotels do not all have the same level of detail, and we would rather say so. A detailed entry gives a nightly price, the number of rooms, the history, highlights and an official link, all sourced. A short entry gives the distinctions, the place, a position on the map and the number of rooms from the Michelin Guide when there is one.
One short entry becomes a detailed one every day: we research a hotel, check its information and enrich it. Sorting by price therefore lists the detailed entries first, and the others follow. The "Detailed entries only" filter isolates the hotels whose price is known.
Reading prices with caution
Luxury rates are never published as a fixed grid. For each detailed entry we recorded several figures from different sources: booking sites, comparison engines, magazines, official pages. The gaps are huge. The Crillon, for instance, appears between €1,550 and €2,300 a night depending on the source and the date.
The price shown is therefore an order of magnitude: an entry-level room in regular season, converted into Swiss francs and rounded. The sources used are given under each price. Three traps to know about:
- Per room or per person. Safari operators quote a price per person, booking sites a price per room.
- Taxes and service. They can add up to 35% at some Baja California resorts.
- Season. Badrutt's Palace costs far more in winter. The Eden-Roc closes from mid-October to mid-April.
| Tier | Indicative nightly price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Luxury | Under CHF 1,000 | Grand historic or urban hotels, often more affordable in Asia or North Africa |
| Ultra-luxury | CHF 1,000 to 1,999 | European palaces, resorts in high season |
| In a class of its own | From CHF 2,000 | Private islands, suites only, desert retreats |
What we do not verify
We have not stayed in any of these hotels. The entries rest on public sources, cross-checked where possible, and on the properties' official pages. When two sources contradict each other on a figure, such as the number of rooms, we say so or leave the field empty.
Many map positions come from the Michelin Guide and are exact. The others were looked up in OpenStreetMap by hotel name, or failing that by city: they place the hotel, not its front door.
Rankings change every autumn. The Michelin Keys were recorded in October 2026; Forbes, the Palaces and the World's 50 Best correspond to their 2026 editions.
Sources
- Michelin Guide: three-Key hotels (filtered list, 155 hotels)
- Forbes Travel Guide: 2026 Star Awards winners
- Michelin Guide: the 2026 list of 33 French Palaces
- Wallpaper: the full World's 50 Best Hotels 2026 list
- The World's 50 Best Hotels (official site)
Room counts, opening dates and prices on detailed entries come from hotel pages, travel magazines and comparison engines, consulted in October 2026. The detail of the prices appears under each entry.