The luxury hotel industry has never been more crowded, which makes the truly great brands easier to identify. Every major city now has three or four properties draped in marble and staffed by people in tailored uniforms. The differentiation lies elsewhere: in a philosophy that holds across 40 countries, in a staff ratio that borders on the absurd, in the particular feeling of walking into a lobby and knowing, within 90 seconds, that you are somewhere genuinely considered. Price alone does not explain it. The Ritz-Carlton costs what Aman costs. What separates the great from the merely expensive is intention.
Pursuitist editors and contributors have logged thousands of nights across the world’s finest properties over the years, from a private pavilion at Amanpuri to a harbor suite at The Peninsula Hong Kong. The verdict is not especially surprising to anyone who travels seriously, but the reasons are worth spelling out. Here are the five hotel brands that Pursuitist’s editorial team would choose, and exactly why each one earns its place on this list.
1. Aman Resorts
Signature property: Aman New York, from $3,200/night | Global portfolio: 36 properties, 20 countries
Adrian Zecha founded Aman in 1988 with a single resort in Phuket called Amanpuri, financed largely by friends because no bank would lend for a property with fewer than 55 rooms. That stubbornness about scale became the brand’s defining feature. Today, most Aman properties operate with under 40 rooms, and the staff-to-guest ratio at many hovers around six to one. That ratio explains everything. You are never a transaction at an Aman. The team knows your name before you land, your dietary preferences before dinner, and what you actually want from a stay in a way that feels intuitive rather than scripted.
The physical properties are architectural benchmarks. Aman Tokyo occupies the 33rd floor of the Otemachi Tower with ceiling heights and open-plan spaces that convert one of the world’s most frenetic cities into something approaching silence. Aman New York, in the 1921 Crown Building at 57th and Fifth, has 83 suites averaging over 1,000 square feet each, plus a 25,000-square-foot spa. Amanvari, which opened in Baja’s Costa Palmas with just 18 rooms, sits within a 1,500-acre property with a superyacht marina on the Sea of Cortez. Each property adds to a portfolio defined by restraint, craftsmanship, and an architectural dialogue with its surroundings that our contributors have not encountered anywhere else at this price point.
Pursuitist Take: Staying at an Aman does something to your standards that is difficult to undo. The hush of an Amanpuri pavilion at dusk, or the scale of a suite at Aman Venice inside a 16th-century palazzo, recalibrates what you expect from a hotel entirely. Our editors have stayed at properties across four continents and the verdict is consistent: once you have experienced a property where you are genuinely the only thing the staff is thinking about, the Marriott Bonvoy app loses its appeal permanently.
Key Facts: Founded 1988, Phuket | 36 properties across 20 countries | Average fewer than 40 rooms per property | Staff-to-guest ratio approximately 6:1 | Rates from $550/night (Amangalla, Sri Lanka) to $3,200/night (Aman New York)
2. Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts
Signature property: Four Seasons Bangkok at Chao Phraya River, from $650/night | Global portfolio: 130+ properties
Founder Isadore Sharp opened the first Four Seasons in Toronto in 1961 with a philosophy of combining the service culture of a European grand hotel with the efficiency of a North American motor hotel. What emerged was the gold standard for large-scale luxury hospitality: a brand that can staff a 299-room property in Bangkok at the same level it staffs a 48-room lodge in the Serengeti. That consistency across 130 properties on six continents is, in our contributors’ collective experience, the brand’s single most impressive achievement.
Four Seasons Bangkok at Chao Phraya River is the brand at its absolute best. Set directly on the river, its 299 rooms are oriented toward the water, and the property feels closer to a private resort than an urban hotel despite sitting in one of Asia’s most chaotic capital cities. The brand is also expanding ambitiously in 2026: Four Seasons Hotel Danieli in Venice, a full restoration of the 14th-century Gothic landmark with boat arrivals and lagoon views, opens later this year. Four Seasons Resort Mykonos opens mid-year with 94 rooms and villas above Kalo Livadi Bay. Four Seasons Gstaad brings 75 rooms to an Alpine setting with an outdoor pool and winter ice rink. No other brand at this scale, in our editors’ experience, executes expansion with this degree of consistency.
Pursuitist Take: Four Seasons is the brand you book when you need it to be right. Not experimental, not austere, not a design statement: right. Our contributors have stayed at Four Seasons properties across Tokyo, Paris, Maui, and Nairobi, and the service consistency is the actual product. If you are traveling somewhere new and want to eliminate the variable of a disappointing hotel, Four Seasons eliminates it.
Key Facts: Founded 1961, Toronto | 130+ properties worldwide | Rates from $450/night | New 2026 openings: Venice (Hotel Danieli), Mykonos, Gstaad
3. Rosewood Hotels & Resorts
Signature property: Rosewood Hong Kong, from $800/night | Global portfolio: 30+ properties
Founded in 1979 by Caroline Rose Hunt in Dallas around the conversion of a historic mansion, Rosewood now operates under CEO Sonia Cheng with a philosophy described internally as “A Sense of Place”: each property is architecturally, culinarily, and culturally calibrated to its location in a way that makes a Rosewood in Hong Kong feel categorically different from a Rosewood in London or Los Cabos, while maintaining a coherent residential warmth across all of them. It is a formula our editors have watched the brand execute with increasing confidence over the past decade.
The portfolio spans genuine icons. The Carlyle in New York has hosted every U.S. president since Eisenhower and remains the benchmark for Midtown Manhattan luxury, with Bemelmans Bar still drawing nightly jazz crowds to its 1947 Ludwig Bemelmans murals. Hotel de Crillon in Paris, an 18th-century palace on Place de la Concorde originally commissioned by Louis XV, reopened after a four-year restoration with rooms designed by Karl Lagerfeld and Cyril Vergniol. Rosewood Hong Kong, a 413-room skyscraper on Victoria Dockside in Kowloon, manages the difficult trick of feeling intimate despite its scale, which our contributors have consistently flagged as a standout achievement in contemporary luxury hotel design. Rosewood Blue Palace in Crete opens in 2026.
Pursuitist Take: Rosewood earns its place at the very top of our list by doing something technically difficult: making a 413-room skyscraper hotel feel intimate. The residential logic of the brand, the library lounges, the art collections calibrated to each location, the food and beverage programs that would stand alone as destination restaurants, adds up to an experience that our editors place closer to Aman than to most five-star competitors. The 2026 pipeline is exceptional. Watch it closely.
Key Facts: Founded 1979, Dallas | 30+ properties globally | Rates from $600/night | 2026 opening: Rosewood Blue Palace, Crete
4. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Signature property: Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, from $700/night | Global portfolio: 40+ properties
Mandarin Oriental has operated from a single premise since its founding in Hong Kong in 1963: a hotel should function as a genuine expression of the city it occupies, delivered at a standard of service that guests remember specifically rather than generally. The flagship on Connaught Road in the heart of the financial district remains the brand’s reference point: a property where the concierge has been in the role for 20 years, where the dining program across Cantonese, French, and Japanese restaurants operates at Michelin level, and where the harbor views from the upper floors have not dimmed in six decades of competition from newer towers.
What distinguishes Mandarin Oriental from competitors, in the view of our contributors who have spent considerable time across the portfolio, is its culinary program and spa network. The brand operates one of the most awarded restaurant portfolios in luxury hospitality, with Michelin-starred dining at properties in Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona, and Geneva. The Mandarin Oriental Spa, present at most properties, pioneered the integration of Eastern wellness philosophies into Western luxury spa design. The Tokyo property, in the Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower with views of Mount Fuji on clear days, and the Paris property in the 1st arrondissement with its rooftop pool overlooking the Opera Garnier, are two of the finest urban hotel experiences our editors have encountered.
Pursuitist Take: Mandarin Oriental is the choice for travelers who take food and wellness as seriously as the room itself. The service culture here is quieter than Four Seasons and less theatrical than Aman, but its consistency is formidable. Our contributors return to this brand specifically when the table matters as much as the suite, and it has never let them down.
Key Facts: Founded 1963, Hong Kong | 40+ properties worldwide | Multiple Michelin-starred restaurants across portfolio | 2026 opening: Puerto Portals, Mallorca | Rates from $500/night
5. The Peninsula Hotels
Signature property: The Peninsula Hong Kong, from $800/night | Global portfolio: 13 properties
The Peninsula operates 13 properties. Thirteen. In a landscape where competitors measure portfolio size in hundreds, that restraint is itself a statement of philosophy. The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels company, which has owned and operated The Peninsula since 1928, has never sold the brand, never franchised it, and never opened a property it did not control completely. The results, in the experience of our editorial team, are unmistakable. The Peninsula Hong Kong, open since 1928 on Salisbury Road in Kowloon with its famous Rolls-Royce fleet and harbor-facing grandeur, is one of the handful of hotels our contributors cite without hesitation when asked for the single best hotel experience of their careers.
The brand’s urban properties are where it shines brightest. The Peninsula Paris, which opened in 2014 after a 96 million euro restoration of a Haussmann-era building near the Arc de Triomphe, has a rooftop restaurant with Eiffel Tower views and interiors that layer French Art Deco against contemporary Asian design. The Peninsula New York, at 55th and Fifth, completed a comprehensive renovation in 2023 adding 24 new suites and a reimagined spa. Each property is managed by a general manager with an average tenure that significantly exceeds the industry norm, and our contributors have noted that continuity more than once as the invisible ingredient in a Peninsula stay.
Pursuitist Take: The Peninsula proves that 13 hotels managed with absolute ownership and patience outperform groups with 10 times the properties every time. The afternoon tea at Peninsula Hong Kong, served since 1928 in the ground-floor lobby under its gilded ceilings, is one of those rituals our editors return to specifically, the kind that reminds you travel has texture beyond check-in and check-out. The Rolls-Royce fleet is genuinely useful. The suites are genuinely large. The brand has never felt the need to catch up with anyone, and it shows.
Key Facts: Founded 1928, Hong Kong | 13 properties, zero franchises | Never sold, never franchised | Peninsula New York renovation completed 2023 | Rates from $700/night
The Pursuitist Verdict
The five brands above occupy distinct positions in the luxury hotel hierarchy, and the right choice depends entirely on what you are optimizing for. Aman is the most singular experience in global hospitality, for guests who want intimacy and architecture at any price. Four Seasons is the most reliable at scale, the brand our contributors trust when the stakes of a trip are high. Rosewood is the most exciting brand in the category right now, growing faster than anyone and doing it without visible compromise. Mandarin Oriental is where you go when the table and the spa matter as much as the room. The Peninsula is where you go when you want to be treated the way hotels used to treat people, with a formality and attention that has nothing to do with trends.
What they share is ownership of intention. None of these brands is what it is by accident. They have all made deliberate choices about what they will not do, which properties they will not open, which corners they will not cut. In a category drowning in five-star properties that deliver four-star results, these are the five that keep their promise every time. Our editors stake their reputations on it.
Nightly rates reflect current average starting prices for standard accommodations as of early 2026 and vary by season, location, and availability.
