Leading Hotels Of The World includes some of the best luxury hotels in Europe, Asia, and America. These hotels tend to be individually owned hotels rather than big brand hotels like the best Four Seasons, the best Park Hyatt, or the best Ritz-Carlton hotels.
There are more than 400 Leading Hotels of the World and resorts in over 80 countries. Some of our favorite hotels are part of Leading Hotels of the World, and we outline the best Leading Hotels of the World in Europe below.
Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) have their own loyalty club, so if you book a Leading hotel on their website, you will collect points. We have reviewed how much a leaders club point is worth in detail, but as a rule of thumb, each point is worth around $0.08 USD.
This sounds great, but bear in mind that the benefits you get if you book via LHW, do not include a $100 USD resort credit anymore. This perk was recently removed. If you book via our luxury travel concierge, you will get $100 USD hotel credit on top of virtually the same benefits that you would get by booking on Leading Hotels of the World.
The benefits we can share at Leading Hotels of the World hotels include a $100 USD hotel credit, breakfast for two, welcome amenity, and prioritized room upgrade. Contact our luxury travel concierge for an even better deal.
1. Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo – Best In Europe
Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo is definitely one of the best Leading Hotels of the World in Europe. We stay there every Christmas. This hotel is a Belle Epoque beauty with a sparkling double height, mosaic-floored reception and foyer, and a foyer adorned with glittering chandeliers.
The staff here are superb. They care and are efficient and quick to check you in and bring your bags to your room. At breakfast, the staff will remember your order. In the bars and restaurants, if you become a regular, the staff will become part of the family and will recognize you and greet you when you return.
The communal areas are just exquisite here. Breakfast is served on a mezzanine balcony area with a vast stained glass ceiling. There’s an outdoor area for those who want to enjoy some sunshine, and the buffet is glorious with all the fruit, yogurt, honey, salad, and hot choices (both European and Asian) you could wish for. The array of patisseries is vast, and around Christmas and New Year’s, you can enjoy a glass of champagne with your breakfast.
There’s an intimate restaurant at Hôtel Hermitage called Le Limùn, which has a terrace that looks over the whole of Monaco. Next door, a petit bar with an outdoor terrace decked in fairy lights tempts. The glorious Salle Belle Epoque is in the center of the hotel. This grand dining room with ornate ceilings is where the hotel holds celebratory events, including an afternoon with Santa before Christmas. For my son, this is the real and only Santa.
The rooms at Hôtel Hermitage are beautifully refurbished and have lots of historic cornices and detailing mixed with more modern bathrooms. The rooms with a view across Monaco harbor are the ones to pick.
The location of the hotel is the star here, too. You will find Hôtel Hermitage just behind Hotel de Paris Monte-Carlo, which borders Casino Square in the center of Monaco. The location couldn’t be more perfect for getting to the Metropole Mall or enjoying a cocktail or fine dining at the numerous restaurants and bars that are located here. Because everything is so close, you can wear your finery, including super high heels, as you don’t have to walk far.
Hotel de Paris Monte-Carlo next door is also a member of Leading Hotels of the World and is most definitely an Instagrammable “strike a pose” hotel, but it tends to be double the price of Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo. While Hotel de Paris is undoubtedly a stunning hotel, we don’t feel the price difference is worth paying to stay here when the heavenly Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo is across the road.
2. Hotel Royal-Riviera
Hotel Royal-Riviera is a whymsical dream on the French Cote D’Azur. If you imagine the perfect French beach hotel, this is it.
Hotel Royal-Riviera is bathed in sunshine with an outdoor terrace for breakfast, glorious gardens, an azure blue pool, and a beach just steps away.
We visit this hotel at least twice a year. There’s nothing like leaving the grey gloom of London Heathrow and arriving at this sun-kissed hotel. Being just 30 minutes from Nice airport, this hotel also makes an ideal weekend break.
The vivid colors of the lush greenery and blue sky seem brighter here. It’s almost as if life under the grey British drizzle is delivered in black and white, while the Royal Riviera delivers life in glossy technicolor.
Highlights here include the generous breakfast delivered on the magnificent outdoor terrace, which overlooks the pool and the sea beyond. There’s nothing like enjoying an omelet, some fruit, and a cup of tea or coffee in the morning in the fresh air and warmth.
The pool and pool area here are gorgeous and manned by extremely kind and helpful pool staff. There’s a restaurant on the edge of the sea that delivers very reasonably priced and delicious curries or fish dishes on tables that gaze out to sea.
Hotel Royal-Riviera imports golden sand for its own perfect beach so that you can spend the day away on comfy loungers and tip your toes into the Meditteranean. If you like to walk, a gorgeous pathway takes you right around the edge of the Cap Ferrat Peninsula and past lots of beautiful gated properties that are lucky enough to be situated in this little slice of paradise.
3. Kulm Hotel St. Moritz
Kulm Hotel St. Moritz is a historic ski hotel right in the heart of St. Moritz and conveniently located up the mountain from the main St. Moritz railway station. This classy hotel has a huge and exclusive spa with a gorgeous indoor and outdoor pool perched on the side of the mountain, numerous restaurants, and wonderful rooms.
The hotel celebrates its heritage at every corner with historic pictures of the old British Aristocracy who used to ski there 100 years ago and who put St. Moritz on the map.
The views here are astonishing, particularly from the rooms, where they span the breadth of the valley and look out over the lake and across to the mountain on the other side. Weather travels down the valley, so you can watch clouds form below your room, further down the valley, as if you were in an airplane.
For anyone who is a weather nerd, watching the weather patterns travel down the valley and across the lake is such fun. While we were there, we had snow, rain, thunder, and brilliant sunshine.
The rooms here are stunning and beautifully decorated with modern furnishings and stunning five-star bathrooms. The beds combined with the mountain air give a brilliant night’s sleep, and you’re right on the doorstep of the main ski lifts, the pretty village center, toboggan runs, and gold and tennis.
4. Marbella Club Hotel
The Marbella Club Hotel is one of the best luxury hotels in Spain and sits right on the beach. This hotel basks in more than 300 days of sunshine a year and enjoys the rare European micro-climate that enables short sleeves in the winter and outdoor swimming and sunbathing around the pool from March to November.
Drive through the pantheon-style arch at the entrance to this iconic hotel, and you drive into a slice of tropical beach-side paradise on the Marbella coastline.
The first thing that strikes you when you arrive is how perfectly manicured the beautiful grounds are. The tropical trees and flourishing Bougainvillea-clad whitewashed Spanish-style buildings are almost LEGO-perfect.
Many of the Marbella club rooms sit in outbuildings, reached via a short golf cart drive and then winding paths that intertwine between the buildings right down to the sea. The rooms are so spread out that each block has its own garden area and is beautifully secluded beneath the trees. Styled by Jean-Pierre Martel and Kamini Ezralow, the rooms are chic.
But it is the pools, the beach, and the extensive tropical grounds that you come here for, and they offer the perfect refuge for anyone who wants to escape to the sunshine.
5. Puente Romano Beach Resort
Puente Romano Beach Resort in Marbella is designed like a Spanish village with whitewashed houses and gardens that resemble a tropical jungle with a river running through them. The beachfront pools come complete with a little bridge, and there are decked areas with loungers. The setting is absolutely beautiful, and palms sway above the pools, offering dots of shade, and beyond this, the hotel has a beach, too.
You can’t go wrong with the rooms at the Puente Romano as they are all suites (the smallest is a large 55 m²) with their own terrace, their own front door, and reached via alfresco pathways and stairs.
It is the big rooms and the beautiful beachfront club with bar, restaurant, and pool that make this hotel special. If you walk through the gardens at night, you can imagine you are in the middle of a tropical jungle rather than Spain. This tropical oasis is a lovely destination.
6. San Clemente Palace Kempinski
San Clemente Palace Kempinski has one of the best hotel pools in Venice and is definitely one of the best Kempinski hotels in the world. This Kempinski is also a member of Leading Hotels of the World, even though most Kempinski hotels aren’t.
This is a really special hotel set on its own private island with wonderful gardens that you can stroll around and its own teak shuttle boat. The bar here spills out onto a historic cobblestone square that is perfectly positioned for the Venice sunset.
The pool here is large and surrounded by lawns and loungers. There is also a fun poolside bar and restaurant hidden in the greenery on this island. While the San Clemente Palace Kempinski is the best Leading Hotel in Venice, we think the Aman Venice and Belmond Hotel Cipriani are the two best hotels in Venice.
7. Palazzo Parigi Hotel & Grand Spa
Palazzo Parigi Hotel & Grand Spa in Milan is an amazing Leading Hotel of the World and has one of the best hotel pools in Milan. I would argue the outstanding, spacious, and green spa here is the best in Milan and is wonderfully airy.
The same goes for the rooms and communal areas here. The foyer is marble-clad and wonderfully airy. It leads through to a bar and restaurant that spill out into the hotel’s private garden, and there is an intermediary orangery area where you can sit outside, inside, and enjoy the greenery when the weather is cooler.
The rooms here are gorgeously modern, and the suites at the top of the building have wonderful terraces and balconies. The bathrooms are cream and ultra-modern, and this hotel is a fabulous choice in Milan.
8. Grand Resort Bad Ragaz
Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is a prestigious and world-class thermal resort. We visited the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz as part of a grand tour around this part of Switzerland where we also visited the Grand Hotel Des Bains Kempinski St. Moritz and Grand Hotel Kronenhof in Pontresina which are also both wonderful hotels.
Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is set in the famous spa town of Bad Ragaz and around a 5-minute shuttle from the station, which has brilliant connections to just about anywhere in Switzerland, including a direct train service to Zurich’s main station, so it is easy to get to if you fly into Zurich airport for a weekend break, or you could combine a stay here with one of the best luxury hotels in Zurich.
The hotel offers complimentary pickups from the train station, and our driver couldn’t have been more welcoming and enthusiastic about picking us up.
The hotel is located in a beautiful park that sits next to the pine-clad walls of a picturesque Swiss valley. The park is beautifully manicured and is packed with charismatic and uplifting artwork.
Set in a very grand building, you’re welcomed into an enormous marble-clad foyer with reception desks in the middle, a concierge desk to one side, and the stylish restaurant Verve by Sven to the other.
Marble hallways grace extravagant stairwells throughout the hotel, and these vast hallways seem to go on for miles, joining the various bits of the hotel to the spa, gym, restaurants, and so forth.
Upstairs, the corridors are easier to navigate and lead to numerous large rooms overlooking the front driveway and the extensive and well-kept park beyond. Our room has a small but perfect balcony, lovely large windows overlooking the front of the building, and incredible beds.
I can’t think of a hotel with more facilities than Grand Resort Bad Ragaz AG. There are so many it is slightly overwhelming.
The spa here is a Narnia of pools. The main child-free mineral-enriched spa pool is gorgeously warm and palatial, with pillars encircling this relaxing pool. There is a relatively shallow lap pool behind this pool, and beyond these two pools, there are two kids’ pools hidden in a cave-like area with a particularly good infant play area complete with a little ones slide. There is a beautiful outdoor pool surrounded by loungers and set in the lawns that offers a great place to relax if you’re blessed with good weather.
Beyond the pools, you can walk around the park, play on the two golf courses or in the Casino, shop in the luxury mall that can be found above the kid’s spa pool, or play tennis. The main challenge here is to choose what to do.
The restaurant choice is outstanding and well deserved. The hotel houses seven restaurants, 6 Michelin stars & a green star, which is the most of any hotel in Europe under one roof. We tried the one-star Verve by Sven, and the two-star IGNIV by Andreas Caminada, which is a sharing experience and completely blew our minds.
9. Althoff Villa Belrose
Althoff Villa Belrose has some of the best views you will find on the Cote D’Azur. The hotel, pool, and rooms are set up on the side of a hill, so when you sit out on the terrace, you have views from one edge of the bay to the other.
The superyachts twinkle through the night, as do the stars, and food is served on the terrace, as are the drinks. The pool here is large, but some of the rooms are set back into the hillside, so they lack views, so be aware of this when you book.
10. Widder Hotel Zurich
Widder Hotel Zurich is a lovely and rather unusual hotel situated in the center of the old town of Zurich. The rooms here are so deeply historic and unique that you might end up with a side cellar or terrace in your room, and you will certainly enjoy a memorable room due to their unusual designs.
Our room here had terracotta stone floors and must have been in one of the oldest buildings that make up this hotel. The partially painted walls revealed old murals from the past, and there was a separate, smaller room to the side for our boy to sleep in. An attic hideaway overlooking the rooftops.
We love the Widder Hotel for its perfect location in the center of Old Town, where you can follow the cobbled streets down to the lake. A great feature of this hotel is that their bistro restaurant and bar look out and spill out onto the street, so you can people-watch to your heart’s content while sitting out on or next to these largely pedestrianized streets.
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