The Best Hotels and Resorts in the US, Canada, and the Caribbean: The Gold List 2023
Consider the Gold List the answer to the question our editors get asked more than any other: what are your favourite places to stay? Our 29th annual collection, passionately selected by our international team, reveals which seaside resort we return to every August and the city hotel that gets everything right. Now all you have to do is pick the experience that’s right for you – and get travelling.
See the full Gold List of the best hotels in the world
Francesco TonelliThe Mark – New York City, New York, USA
I’m not a fan of the term staycation, but I certainly enjoy the concept. And a delight of living in New York is that hotels here easily double as portholes of escape from my day-to-day existence in Brooklyn. Checking into The Mark, elegantly occupying a block between Fifth and Madison avenues close to Central Park, is like unlocking the door to my secret pied-à-terre on the Upper East Side. Here, tidy bundles of clipped white roses spruce up my dressing table, and the bathtub is a reliable 10 centimetres deeper than any I’d likely have at home. Those familiar with the work of French interiors master Jacques Grange will recognise his trademark restraint here. What The Mark lacks in ostentation it makes up for in subtle, glowing sophistication, from the tiled floor in the very discreet lobby to the sparse hallways that dimly light the way to each pale-blue door, with just the right splashes of commissioned art displayed throughout. Then there are those classic New York touch points, but fancied up a notch: the hot-dog stand with a menu designed by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and picnic baskets for Central Park delivered via pedicab and set up under oak trees with loungers and blankets. The Mark’s calling card is how successfully it transports guests into an elegant version of that very distinct style of life in New York, one that people travel from all over the world to get a taste of. And, for a lucky few, it’s just a subway ride away. Doubles from about £1,065. Erin Florio
Charissa Fay1 Hotel South Beach – Miami Beach, Florida, USA
In between the neon-trimmed Art Deco mainstays of South Beach rises this soothing, nature-inspired hotel that delivers a holistic retox-detox Miami fantasy–with a welcomed, eco-conscious slant. The social media hungry favour the property for its endless picture-perfect expanses, from Miami Beach’s largest rooftop swimming pool to 600 feet of full-service linear beachfront and an eye-catching lobby, anchored by a triple-story, moss-strewn living wall. Meanwhile, the fit and the fabulous can’t get enough of the advanced wellness programming (glute camp and metabolic meltdown are two favourites), an on-site Soul Cycle studio, and the cutting-edge Anatomy Gym. The 1 Beach Club, which frames the property’s southern perimeter, houses Miami’s top feet-in-the-sand resto-bar; it’s a Tulum-inspired reverie of driftwood furniture and woven textiles planted in the sands among sea grapes, towering palms, and potted succulents. The 1’s guest rooms and suites are both vacation and staycation gold; they’re unexpectedly large, starting at 550 square feet, many with ocean-view balconies, and all featuring floor-to-ceiling glass doors or windows plus open floor plans. Finally, the 1 Hotel South Beach stands alone as a sexy, eco-warrior on a beach where environmental efforts skew surprisingly lax. The 100% carbon neutral resort features the likes of recycled pine headboards, clothes hangers made from recycled paper, and in-room water filters, proving that sustainability and luxury can beautifully coexist. From about £657. Paul Rubio
Benoit LineroNoMad Las Vegas – USA
Las Vegas has always excelled at transporting its guests to borrowed locales – Venice, Paris, Egypt. But until NoMad Las Vegas entered the scene in late 2018, no one on the Strip had succeeded in delivering guests to a classic boutique hotel. MGM Resorts partnered with the Sydell Group to remaster the ageing Monte Carlo to create Park MGM as well as NoMad Las Vegas, a 293-room boutique hotel that occupies the top four floors of the Park MGM. The most genius decision of the team was importing French architect and designer Jacques Garcia, known for his Belle Époque opulence. A NoMad guest-only elevator transports you to rooms whose freestanding tubs (some right in the bedroom), velvet draperies, and dressing tables accessorised with crystal glassware feel a bit like they should have a view over the Champs-Élysées – not T-Mobile Stadium. Perhaps most transporting is the Garcia-designed NoMad Library restaurant, inspired by the Royal Cabinet of Reading in Rio, whose 23-foot-high ceilings are lined with 25,000 books acquired from the collection of the late philanthropist David Rockefeller. And although the room is lavish, it winks at its Vegas locale. For instance, unless you read the inconspicuous little plates below them, you’d never know that the gracious classical busts atop wall-mounted plinths are tributes to notable 19th-century women gamblers like “Poker Alice” Ivers and Lottie Deno. And because a fascinating hotel concept attracts fascinating people, you’ll see them at NoMad Bar over dishes like truffle-and-foie-stuffed chicken (served in sandwich form at brunch) where you’ll wonder if you really are in Las Vegas, which, after all, is the truest sign that you really are in Vegas. From about £221. Andrea Bennett
Lisa RomereinMalibu Beach Inn – California, USA
Unless you’re perched above the South Pacific in an overwater bungalow, it’s hard to get more oceanfront than the Malibu Beach Inn. Situated a short sandy jaunt between the famed Nobu restaurant and iconic Malibu Pier, the inn has 47 guest rooms overlooking “Billionaire’s Beach,” with postcard views from sunrise to sunset. But what’s even more mesmerising is the natural soundtrack of constantly crashing waves that lulls you into a hypnotic trance as you’re taking in the views from your balcony or drifting off for the night. While staying in your room is particularly enticing – especially with meticulous personal touches like monogrammed pillows or a printout of a map for that hike that you casually mentioned during check-in – one peek below will beckon you down to Carbon Beach Club. The restaurant’s chic coastal style is parlayed through rift oak furniture and Belgian linens by Bellino Fine Linens, all part of a redesign by Waldo Fernandez, who has decorated for A-listers including Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Taylor. Yet the real seduction lies at the deck’s edge, where you may find yourself suspended over the rocky coast, waves booming, whales in sight, grilled branzino on the table, and a local glass of Cabernet in hand as the sun drops. It’s sensory overload at its best and you’ll be singing “California Dreaming” by dessert. From about £595. Jennifer Blaise Kramer
Courtesy HalekulaniHalekulani – Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii, USA
An oasis of beachfront calm and elegance tucked just off Waikiki’s bustling main strip, Halekulani transports guests back to Hawaii’s golden era when honeymooners like Ernest Hemingway would come for sunset daiquiris at House Without A Key, the hotel’s restaurant and bar. For years, the grande dame was a little too stuck in the past, but the pandemic provided the opportunity to undertake an 18-month renovation that secured the property’s legacy as one of Hawaii’s most refined stays. All 453 rooms have been updated with expected modern conveniences, like Nespresso machines and complimentary high-speed Internet with higher bandwidth, plus high-tech touches like Toto toilets. Beloved traditions, like nightly mele (music) and hula beside the 135-year-old kiawe tree at the House Without A Key, continue. But the restaurant named for Charlie Chan’s first novel now has a new open-air bar from which to take in the show while you sip mai tais and nosh on ahi tataki. Attentive staff always at the ready with sunblock or another hula punch make it hard to pull yourself away from the sparkling pool (a photo favourite for its cattleya-orchid mosaic floor). But it’s worth leaving your lounger to take advantage of Halekulani’s For You, Everything program, which gives guests free access to some of Oahu’s top cultural venues, like the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture, and Design. If you can’t bring yourself to leave the tranquillity, at least take in the hotel’s renowned art collection, which has finally been formally curated for guests. From about £539. Jen Murphy
Courtesy Oetker CollectionJumby Bay Island – Antigua
Colourful is the best adjective for Jumby Bay. Emerald-green lizards dart up white-washed walls, tortoises come with red legs, iridescent hummingbirds hover over pink Mexican creepers, and yellow-chested bananaquits search for crumbs on breakfast tables. There are blindingly white sands to cross and turquoise waters to slip into for a world of plump orange starfish, yellow-tailed snappers, rays, and blue tang. All still vivid in my memory. Beneath all this shifting colour is the lush 300-acre private island that remains one of the most exclusive in the Caribbean. Its “no cars, no keys” policy brings a feeling of intimacy to the sensational villas, three restaurants, a spa (think Tata Harper), and the 28 suites (soon to be 40) that make up the hotel, all of which offer luxury as dazzling as the island’s colours. The generously sized suites come with a little entrance courtyard where a wicker chair swings, suspended, in the warm breeze. Terraces overlook the sea or are inset with a pool. Some bathrooms spill outside with vast tubs waiting under palm fronds. Step outside your room to enjoy Taittinger on tap (part of the inclusive rates, which also offer limitless water sports) or sip Antigua black daiquiris made with local black pineapple. Food served at the Estate House, once part of the original sugar plantation, brims with a sense of place. But the best experience has to be a rum tasting with the barman, Jimmy, which leads to serious Caribbean contentment. From about £1,888 per night. Mary Lussiana
RAFAEL LUHRSCheval Blanc St-Barth – St Barts
In a hidden corner of St Barths, down a steep and winding mountainous road, you come to a Gauguin-like canopy of lush green vegetation, beyond which the half-moon sandy perfection of Flamands beach reveals itself and the Cheval Blanc Isle de France reigns supreme. Low-built and quietly sprawling, the property was elegantly renovated following Hurricane Irma by Parisian design supremo Jacques Grange, whose interiors speak to a chic European aesthetic of quiet indulgences: linens and ikat prints; palettes of pale greens, blues, and pinks; and raffia, bamboo, and stone accents. The atmosphere is almost Parisian (Bulgari hosts a fashion show here, and there’s a Guerlain spa on the premises) but with a devil-may-care attitude. Young French culinary star Jean Imbert’s Creole-inspired menu at La Case (and laid-back beach restaurant La Cabane) is light but gastronomic, and the cocktails are sublime. I spend my lunches with feet in the sand at La Cabane, watching a parade of Birkin bag–carrying Upper East Side ladies power-walking along the beach, moguls on their phones doing business, and boho French girls running into the waves in tiny Eres bikinis. It reminds me of St.-Tropez’s Plage Pampelonne, but a lot less frenetic, and with an ambience that’s both relaxed and indulgent. My assigned butler WhatsApps me when my room is done or a spa appointment is due. But it’s my private yoga sessions in the garden’s pagoda with the late Alber Elbaz’s personal instructor, Nicolas Legrez, that I won’t forget in a hurry. From about £637. Vassi Chamberlain
Tom Cahalan/Courtesy Clayoquot Wilderness ResortClayoquot Wilderness Lodge – Vancouver Island, Canada
A Pacific Coast twist on the traditional African wildlife safari, Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge was ahead of its time when it debuted in the heart of Vancouver Island’s UNESCO-designated Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve in 1995. Reachable only by boat, helicopter, or floatplane, its 25 canvas tents weren’t built for Instagram likes. They were modelled after prospector camps to pay homage to the sound’s history as a gold-mining settlement. Activities were designed to help guests reconnect to nature and themselves, before most people even knew how much they needed a digital detox. And right from the start, the hotel embraced a regenerative approach to tourism, aiming not just to preserve but to improve the surrounding wilderness and livelihood of the local First Nations people.
A three-year, $1.6 million revamp overseen by Australia-based hoteliers James and Hayley Baillie of Baillie Lodges has ensured that Clayoquot remains a pioneer of nature-based tourism and sustainable and responsible hospitality. Those iconic tents have been updated with bentwood boxes commissioned from First Nations artist Moy Sutherland. Three-course meals served at the Cookhouse showcase locally foraged chanterelles and salmonberries and halibut and prawns harvested that day. Local ingredients like kelp and glacial clay also star in spa treatments. The surrounding old-growth rain forest and glacier-fed waterways provide a limitless playground, especially with the resort’s new all-inclusive pricing model, which bundles signature experiences such as hiking, horseback riding, and kayaking into one rate. And you often don’t even need to be out on an adventure to spot the sound’s resident otters, black bears, and eagles. They frequently pop up in the distance while guests soak in cedar hot tubs or flow through yoga poses on the waterfront deck. From about £2,390 per tent, per night for two guests all-inclusive. Lydia Gard
Courtesy Commodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts CollectionCommodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts Collection – Austin, Texas, USA
It’s hard to toss a lasso in Austin, Texas, without roping an entrepreneur, so it’s fitting that Commodore E.H. Perry, the man behind this 1928 estate turned Auberge Resort, was one of the city’s originals. The Commodore (a nickname he earned after his boat capsized on Lake Austin) built a cotton trading company with partners in Europe where, no doubt, he developed his taste for the landmark’s Mediterranean architecture – stucco facades, checkered tiled floors, carved stone fireplaces – all of which were preserved during the gated property’s multimillion build and restoration. Suites are individually designed with sumptuous wallpapers and antiques, and all of the 54 rooms have soaring ceilings, original art, and customised cocktail bars. Outside, rows of sycamores frame 10-plus acres of gardens as well as a pool surrounded by striped yellow umbrellas.
The estate also has a social events calendar worthy of its Roaring Twenties roots. Curated experiences, open to guests and Commodore members, range from punchbowl parties in the elegant barroom and naturalist-led hikes to panels on art and custom fittings with a local haberdasher. A day well spent will end at Lutie’s, a jewel box of a restaurant named for Perry’s wife, who goes down in history as a born hostess with a keen wit. Here, under a canopy of ferns and ivy, smartly dressed patrons dine on dishes like red snapper over Delta Blues rice and smoked trout row, or sunchoke falafel paired with roasted garlic. An antique mirrored bar faces doors that open to a patio dotted with tables under black-and-white awnings. It’s easy to envision Perry and Lutie here, toasting with French crystal, planting the seeds of their estate and city. Since then, Austin has wrestled with its growth spurt to two million and its ever evolving skyline, but this lookout, with a glowing sunset filtering through centuries-old post oaks, remains the same. From about £543. Stirling Kelso Neff
Patrick J O'BrienThe Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort – South Carolina, USA
I’m not sure my children have ever asked to go back to a hotel as often as they’ve asked to return to the Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, the stately beachfront property on Kiawah Island, just south of Charleston, South Carolina. They loved it for many reasons, including an on-site ice cream shop, a very kid-friendly pool, and most of all an extremely fun day camp, part of a nearby complex that has a water park where they played for hours after the day’s session was over. The camp gives parents time for grown-up activities, including visiting the spa, playing tennis, and utilising the multiple golf courses, including the beachside Ocean Course, a repeat site for the PGA Championships. Kiawah is a place that effortlessly facilitates a family choreography of separating and reuniting: for group rides on the beach cruisers available to reserve near the front entrance; for delicious meals at one of its dozen restaurants, like the Atlantic Room, which overlooks The Ocean Course, where local chef John Ondo lovingly prepares creative takes on lowcountry classics like she-crab soup and shrimp and grits; and for playing on the grand lawn as dusk settles over the Atlantic. From about £205. Jesse Ashlock
Courtesy Ocean House/Photo by Chip RiegelOcean House – Watch Hill, Rhode Island, USA
If you move in certain circles on the East Coast, the Ocean House will reliably drift into conversation throughout the year. Loyalists – and there are legions of them – will anxiously share notes on how to score that Atlantic-facing suite again this summer; first-timers will spend weeks recounting stories of cocktails on the resort’s enormous croquet lawn, lined by rocking chairs and with the tease of the ink-blue ocean visible down the hill; a new acquaintance may fondly reference summers spent there with grandparents. As such, this enormous yellow mansion towering like a watchman above a sand-swept Rhode Island shoreline occupied space in my mind long before I visited. When I finally did approach the check-in desk this past spring, it all felt unreasonably familiar: the 69 room keys attached to plump wooden chains, like prizes to be claimed on the shelf behind the reception desk; the antique clock ticking away the tranquil seconds before the high-season rush. It wasn’t from all the chatter that I’d absorbed over the years, but rather from a quality I’ve found increasingly elusive in a world moving inexorably toward the contactless, the modern, the new.
Since opening its big wooden doors on the remote Watch Hill in 1868, Ocean House has remained resolutely committed to a version of hospitality that simply makes people feel good. For all the resort’s plush surroundings, it is the thoughtful, personal, easy service that keeps this grande dame top of mind year-round. For me, this meant having a toy cart pull up right next to my toddler as we checked in and watching him delightedly rummage through the stash before claiming a shiny new ball. It meant being sent slices of cake in the mid-afternoon by the intuitive staff who’d been watching us chase him as he in turn chased that ball around the great lawn. When we weren’t shell-collecting on the stripe of beach below, we moved between the pool and our room, with its porthole windows, stacks of books nodding to the area’s nautical and whaling pasts, and a terrace that let us see out as far as New York State. When our son’s nap forced us to miss our lunch reservation, a trolley loaded with clam chowder, mounds of fries, club sandwiches, and warm cookies was parked outside our door. And when we mustered the will to dress up one night for dinner, a table opened inside the resort’s members club, the maître d’s wink letting us know that we’d somehow made it past an invisible red rope to a place not everyone sees. Staying at Ocean House feels special and effortless, which is a slam-dunk formula for a vacation you want to repeat year after year. Assuming you can get the room. From about £336. Erin Florio