Best Hotels & Lodges

Views Boutique Hotel could not be more aptly named: the outlook from its hilltop setting are simply breathtaking. And the service here is as elevated as the location – pure luxury, with a dash of glamour. The hotel lies just outside Wilderness, a quiet, pretty town on the Garden Route, South Africa's best-loved road-trip destination. The property is enormous, with several tiers and balconies and a design that combines contemporary style with an emphasis on privacy. Book here to spend some time on this beautiful stretch of pristine coastline, where you'll find plenty of natural treasures, good eateries, and markets.

Fukuoka is one of Japan's great unsung cities — a place with possibly the best street food scene in the country and a location that makes it the perfect springboard for exploring Kyushu. Tucked into the Canal City Hakata complex, the Grand Hyatt brings a dose of calm to a city that thrives on its own buzz. Recently refreshed with 'Hakata Retreat' rooms that incorporate local craftsmanship into every detail (think in-room matcha bars and handwoven textiles), it's a hotel that takes its surroundings seriously. And its proximity to Fukuoka's famed yatai food stalls is the cherry on top.

Perched above Beppu, Japan's undisputed hot spring capital, the sleek ANA Intercontinental was the first international luxury hotel to open in the region and it makes the most of its extraordinary setting. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame astonishing views of the bay, as well as the city's famous steam plumes and surrounding mountains. With beautifully designed onsen fed by Beppu's mineral-rich waters, a French-inspired chef's counter restaurant and local artisan touches woven throughout, this is a seriously polished base from which to explore Kyushu's geothermal heartland.

Driving the Garden Route between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth is normally all about exploring the coast, with a few stops in cute little dorpies (towns) en route. Now, Gondwana Game Reserve, just inland from Mossel Bay, offers travellers the chance to stop over and see some big game. Surrounded by the impressive Outeniqua and Langeberg ranges, and forming part of the world's richest plant kingdom (1000-plus species on the reserve alone), Gondwana is a nature-lover's treat. Ulubisi House is its newest and most exclusive offering. Booked on a sole-use basis, it has its own private guide, chef and butler.

Most visitors to Tuscany head for the well-trodden hills of Chianti or the honeypot towns further north. But those in the know make a beeline for the Maremma, a wild, sun-drenched stretch of southern coastline where cowboys still herd long-horned cattle and the beaches remain gloriously empty. It's here, on a 500-hectare estate of vineyards, olive groves and cypress-lined avenues, that you'll find the former summer residence of Grand Duke Leopold II, L'Andana. The Moretti family (of Bellavista and Petra wine fame) have turned it into a refined country retreat with a Michelin-starred restaurant, ESPA spa and the Tyrrhenian Sea just a few kilometres down the road.

Atop Ischia's Monte Vico, just above the village of Lacco Ameno, sits the elegant San Montano Resort & Spa, revived by the De Siano family in 2008 and polished anew in 2025 alongside its induction into Relais & Châteaux — the first on the island. Seven acres of lemon groves, lavender and bay scatter down to a private cove, with eleven thermal pools dotted between them and sweeping views over the marina to Mount Vesuvius. Combined with inimitable hospitality and a location away from the crowds, it really does feel like its own little slice of heaven.

Takamatsu is one of Japan's best-kept secrets — a laid-back port city on Shikoku's northern coast that serves as the gateway to the extraordinary art islands of the Seto Inland Sea. Naoshima, Shodoshima and Megijima are all a short ferry ride away, and back on the mainland, Ritsurin Garden (arguably Japan's finest) and Kagawa's legendary sanuki udon scene await. The hotel itself is a full-service city property, polished rather than boutique, but its position couldn't be better: one minute's walk from JR Takamatsu Station and directly opposite the ferry terminal. For exploring this corner of Japan, it's hard to beat as a base.

Follow a winding road up through Moscato vineyards to the hilltop village of Santo Stefano Belbo, and you'll find this handsome former monastery surrounded by centuries-old parkland and vine-striped hills. Cistercian monks founded the place back in 1619 on the old salt road from Liguria, and you can still feel that contemplative calm, even as you're sipping a Barolo in the candlelit cellars or soaking in a repurposed wine barrel at the spa. Firmly rooted in the UNESCO-listed Langhe region, it's a stone's throw from Barbaresco and Barolo country, with the truffle capital of Alba just fifteen minutes away. For food and wine lovers, this is the true epicentre.

Okayama, the 'Land of Sunshine' sits between Osaka and Hiroshima on the Sanyo Shinkansen. Most travellers glide straight through without realising what they've missed, namely one of Japan's three great landscape gardens, a brooding black castle and the whitewashed canal town of Kurashiki, all just a ferry hop from Naoshima's contemporary art scene. Hotel Granvia Okayama, run by JR West, is the natural anchor for all of it. Attached to the station by a covered walkway, with nineteen floors of views over city rooftops and distant mountains, it's a large, reliable hotel whose greatest attribute is exactly where it stands.

Set at the foot of the 350-million-year-old Warmwaterberg Mountains in the heart of the Little Karoo, Sanbona Wildlife Reserve is a 54,000-hectare sprawl of dramatic rock formations and stark wilderness. San Bushmen once roamed this landscape, and their paintings can still be found in rocky fissures and shelters. Sanbona Dwyka Tented Lodge, one of various lodges here, lies in a particularly lovely setting on a horseshoe bend of a dry ravine dotted with thorn trees and surrounded by spectacular ancient rock formations. The service is splendid, the food is top-notch and the tranquil atmosphere is idyllic.

Right at the southernmost tip of Japan, where the country meets the azure waters of the East China Sea, is the sleepy Ryukyu Archipelago. The main island, Okinawa, is a blue zone known for its incredible quality of life, and it's a theme that runs throughout every stay at HOSHINOYA. After a scenic journey through fields of sugarcane and chrysanthemums, you'll arrive at the sanctuary and its lush gardens of cherry and papaya trees and colourful bougainvillaea. Step inside the high white walls, inspired by ancient Japanese castles, and discover sensational sea views around every corner — the perfect setting for a journey of discovery.

40 minutes by high-speed boat from Naha, Tokashiki Island barely registers on most Japan itineraries, which is rather the point. Kerama Terrace sits in the fishing hamlet of Aharen, a two-minute stroll from a beach so clear the locals gave the water its own name: Kerama Blue. Behind a Bali-inflected lobby (dark timber, palm shadows, low lighting), just seven adults-only rooms mean you'll recognise every other guest by breakfast. Founded by a former dive instructor, the hotel still arranges its own diving and snorkelling trips, sea turtles a near-certainty and, come winter, a fair shot at humpback whales offshore. This isn't Okinawa's resort strip. It's something smaller, and far better for it.

Miyako-jima sits at the southern edge of Japan's Okinawa Prefecture, a low, sugarcane-covered island ringed by water so clear that locals simply call it Miyako Blue. Rosewood's first Japanese outpost occupies a private peninsula here, its concrete villas (designed by Dutch architect Piet Boon) built from limestone quarried from the very shore they overlook. One beach faces sunrise, another (a short stroll away) catches the sunset, and between them sit four restaurants, an infinity pool split neatly between grown-ups and children, and a spa scented with shikuwasa citrus. Barefoot luxury, with a five-year masterplan behind every stone path.

10 minutes by ferry from Ishigaki, Taketomi Island sits in Okinawa's Yaeyama archipelago and is home to just 400 people, a handful of red-roofed hamlets, and now a fourth village built specifically to match the others. HOSHINOYA Taketomi Island had to follow the same building code as its neighbours: Ryukyu limestone walls, coral-sand paths, terracotta roofs guarded by squat little shisa lions. Inside, though, it's all soft linens, deep soaking tubs and a 46-metre pool shaded by banyan trees. Chef Tatsuo Nakasu cooks Okinawan seafood through a French lens, and after dark, the island's Dark Sky status means the stars do most of the talking. Slow travel, done properly.