Best hotels in Ethiopia

The Golden Tulip occupies a city block near the heart of Addis Ababa's business district, close to several diplomatic embassies and a kilometre from Bole International Airport. Classy and modern, the hotel's facilities are freshly minted and extremely well constructed. Designed to serve international and business travellers, it contains several convenient amenities for business and leisure: a handful of restaurants and bars, a gym, a 24-hour shuttle service and a top-notch concierge service. This is the kind of place you don't have to second-guess.

The only one of its kind, Lale’s Camp is located in the Omo Valley, on the eastern banks of the Omo River. The camp comes with a mess area and a maximum of seven sleeping tents. It also serves as an excellent base for day and overnight trips. The food is hearty fare, with cooked breakfasts, picnics and three-course dinners, while the service is lovely. A first-class piece of adventure accommodation, Lale's Camp links traditional destinations with areas rarely visited. Lale's Camp opens up corners of the country in comfort and in style.

Arba Minch means "forty springs" in Amharic, and the name gives you the gist — this is a town built on water. It sits on a ridge above two of Ethiopia's great Rift Valley lakes, Abaya and Chamo, with Nechisar National Park stretching between them on a grassy plain locals call God's Bridge. Chamo has one of the densest Nile crocodile populations in Africa; you can see them sunning themselves at the Crocodile Market, a stretch of shoreline where they gather in numbers that take a moment to process. Up in the hills behind town, the Dorze people weave cotton and grow enset in villages built around tall, beehive-shaped bamboo houses. Arba Minch is also the jumping-off point for the Omo Valley and Konso further south, which makes it a natural stopover on any southern Ethiopia itinerary.

One of, if not the top hotel in Axum, Atranos Fantasy Hotel & Spa is highly praised for its central location, offering spacious, carefully furnished rooms that blend charm with comfort. Known for its tasty, freshly cooked food and helpful, courteous staff, it is a recommended, pleasant choice for a memorable stay in the historic city.

Axum is one of those places that stops you in your tracks — ancient obelisks, the supposed resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, and a sense of history so dense you can almost feel it. The Atranos is the city's most ambitious hotel by some margin: a six-storey property that took 13 years to build and wears its ambition proudly. Rooms come with their own jacuzzi, there's a pool, spa, gym, and multiple restaurants serving everything from injera to Italian pasta. It's not polished five-star by international standards, but for Axum it's genuinely impressive — and the best base you'll find for exploring one of Africa's most extraordinary ancient cities.