The HotelsForKings Awards 2026

What are the HotelsForKings Awards?

They are our once-a-year attempt to answer a simple question honestly: of every luxury hotel we have scored, which is the best for each way people actually travel? We do not run reader polls, sell entries or take sponsorship, because any of those turns an award into advertising. Instead we take the same 0 to 10 scores we apply to more than two thousand properties across the site, and we let the numbers pick the winners. That makes the awards an extension of our data rather than a separate popularity contest, and it means a winner earns its place the same way every ranked hotel on the site does: on Romance, Service, Value, Design, Food and Location, weighted and applied consistently. The point is not spectacle. The point is a shortlist a traveller can trust because nobody paid to be on it.

The 2026 winners

The 2026 Hotel of the Year is Tawaraya Ryokan in Kyoto, scoring 9.9/10, the joint-highest mark in our catalogue alongside Cheval Blanc Randheli in the Maldives, Cheval Blanc Paris and Singita Sasakwa Lodge in the Serengeti. Category winners run as follows: honeymoons go to Cheval Blanc Randheli at 9.9, anniversaries and best safari lodge to Singita Sasakwa Lodge at 9.9, wellness to COMO Shambhala Estate in Bali at 9.8, families to Albany in the Bahamas at 9.6, solo travel to Tawaraya Ryokan at 9.9, and business to La Reserve Paris at 9.6. Singita is named Best Hotel Brand at a 9.8/10 average across five rated properties. Every placement is decided by score, and none can be bought.

Why Tawaraya Ryokan is Hotel of the Year

Four hotels share the top mark of 9.9 this year, and we gave the overall title to the one that does the most with the least. Tawaraya Ryokan has operated in central Kyoto for roughly three centuries, and it wins not on scale or spectacle but on a near-perfect execution of a single idea: the ryokan as the highest form of hospitality. There are only a handful of rooms, each opening onto a small garden, and the service, the food and the sense of place score at the ceiling of our rubric. It beats the Cheval Blanc properties and Singita on our overall title because it is the purest expression of what a great hotel can be, a place where nothing is oversized and nothing is missing. For a solo traveller in particular it is unmatched, which is why it also takes our Best for Solo Travel category. It is the rare winner that feels less like a resort and more like being a guest in the most gracious house in Japan.

Inside the category winners

The category titles reward very different kinds of excellence, which is the point of scoring hotels by how people travel rather than by a single leaderboard. Cheval Blanc Randheli takes Best for Honeymoons on the strength of its private-island seclusion and the romance and design marks that a honeymoon leans on hardest. Singita Sasakwa Lodge sweeps anniversaries and safari, and anchors the Best Hotel Brand title, because Singita scores at the top of our rubric with unusual consistency across every property we rate, which is exactly what a brand award should measure. COMO Shambhala Estate wins wellness as a true destination spa rather than a hotel with a spa attached, where the whole stay is built around the programme. Albany takes families as the rare property that welcomes children without diluting the luxury, and La Reserve Paris wins business on service, discretion and a central location that suits a working trip. Read together, the winners are less a ranking than a map: pick the category that matches your trip, and the best-scoring hotel for it is named.

What these awards deliberately do not measure

Honesty means naming the limits of any award, including our own. These are editorial scores, so they reflect our rubric and our judgement, not a reader vote or an audited guest-satisfaction survey, and a hotel that would top a popularity poll may not top ours. Value is only one of six criteria, so a winner is not necessarily the best use of a limited budget; a 9.9 hotel is often eye-wateringly expensive, and our budget-luxury coverage exists precisely because the awards do not answer that question. The categories are broad by design, which means the single best hotel for your exact dates, party and priorities may be a close runner-up rather than the named winner. And scores move: a change of chef, ownership or management can shift a hotel between editions, so a 2026 title is a snapshot, not a permanent verdict. We would rather state all of that plainly than imply the list is the last word.

How to use the winners list

Treat the awards as a starting shortlist, not a booking instruction. Find the category that matches your trip, read the full profile behind the winner for its honest cons as well as its strengths, then check the deeper ranking it comes from, because the runners-up are frequently a better fit for a specific budget, season or location. If price is the deciding factor, start from our value-focused rankings instead of the top of a category. If you are choosing between two winners for different reasons, the individual hotel profiles carry the per-criterion scores that break the tie. The whole catalogue behind these awards, all 2,250 rated hotels, sits within The HotelsForKings 100 and the wider rankings, so the awards are best used as the door into the data rather than a substitute for it.

Frequently asked questions

Related: The HotelsForKings 100 · State of Luxury Hotels 2026 · press & data.