However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Below are the best hotels and resorts in the world, according to our editors; you can find our editor-selected best cruise ships here. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. View all of our coverage of the Gold List here, or use the links below to navigate this hotel list by region :.
In the exclusive Bantry Bay area, Ellerman House has 11 rooms, two suites, two villas, and one-and-a-half-acre hillside gardens, all verdant lawns, waving palm trees, and aromatic Cape fynbos beds. The staff members treat everyone like a houseguest by pressing clothes, running bubble-baths, delivering antique silver pots of just-picked mint for tea, and advising on the perfect wine. The service within its airy, light-filled spa, its amply stocked cellar, and its sunny restaurant is personalized; chefs happily whip up individual favorites, like rich Cape Malay curries and fresh lobster salads, as well as treats that are set out daily in a help-yourself pantry.
For families, two more-contemporary villas enable children to splash about in their own pool without disturbing those indulging in a formal English tea on the shaded verandas or lazing on a pool lounger while watching seagulls wheel above the Atlantic. This feels like a gracious grande dame of a hotel—a clubby space that encourages you to slow down and be spoiled. Ebony Lodge, overlooking the Sand River in a private concession in the leopard-rich Sabi Sands Game Reserve, was the one that started it all, back in The new Ebony Lodge—with the indoor-outdoor stepped central area that descends toward the river, and the glass and canvas that has replaced walls in the 12 richly textured suites—is more flowing, more immersed in nature.
The new Ebony is smarter than ever but, happily, remains a classic. All kasbahs are a kind of oasis of calm behind fortified walls, and Kasbah Tamadot is one of the very finest in Morocco. First built over a century ago as a home for a local governor, it became part of the Virgin Limited Edition Collection of lodges and resorts in Now reopening after substantial damage from the earthquake, Tamadot is a lavish yet quirky Amazigh castle with exquisite carved doors and intimate courtyards, secret passageways, and terraces of reflecting pools strewn with rose petals.
It is furnished with the extraordinary collections of the previous owner, a Venetian antiquarian named Luciano Tempo, which were included when Richard Branson purchased the place.
