Best Luxury Hotels in Thailand
Seven properties dividing cleanly between Bangkok's design-forward city hotels and a southern beach and island geography, from Phuket's founding resorts to Krabi's karst coastline and the mountain country around Chiang Mai. Chosen against the same four criteria throughout, not ranked by price.
Thailand’s luxury hotel geography splits between capital and coast, and this collection is organised the same way: a Bangkok base, then a choice of southern beach and island properties, with one mountain outlier in the north.
For Bangkok
The Siam and Capella Bangkok both sit on the Chao Phraya River but read very differently: The Siam’s Art Deco-influenced antique collection against Capella’s more contemporary riverfront villas and Michelin-starred Côte. Either works as a city base before heading south.
For Phuket
Amanpuri, the property that launched the entire Aman brand in 1988, and Rosewood Phuket, a newer hillside village descending to Emerald Bay, sit at opposite ends of the island’s development history but the same stretch of coast.
For Krabi and Phang Nga Bay
Phulay Bay, one of the world’s small number of Ritz-Carlton Reserve properties, and Six Senses Yao Noi, an all-pool-villa hillside resort on its own island, both look out over the same dramatic limestone karst scenery, reached by boat or a short flight rather than a direct road.
For the north
Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai, set among working rice terraces in the Mae Rim valley, is the collection’s clear choice for a cooler, mountain-country contrast to the southern coast.
The list
7 hotels in this collection
Pansea Beach, Phuket, Thailand
Amanpuri
Opened in 1988 on a former coconut plantation on Phuket's Pansea Beach, Amanpuri is the founding property of the entire Aman brand, a village of temple-inspired teak pavilions that set the template every Aman since has followed.
From $1,200 per night
Emerald Bay, Phuket, Thailand
Rosewood Phuket
A tiered village of 71 pavilions, villas and houses cascading down a forested hillside to a private stretch of Emerald Bay, built as Rosewood's first foothold in Southeast Asia.
From $850 per night
Dusit, Chao Phraya riverside, Bangkok, Thailand
The Siam
A 39-key riverside retreat in royal Dusit, built by a rock-star hotelier to look, deliberately, a century older than it actually is.
From $750 per night
Charoen Krung, Chao Phraya riverside, Bangkok, Thailand
Capella Bangkok
A low-rise riverside sanctuary on the Chao Phraya, where Thai pavilion architecture, a two-Michelin-starred Riviera table and only 101 keys have made a decade-old promenade site into the hotel the rest of Bangkok is measured against.
From $850 per night
Koh Yao Noi, Phang Nga Bay, Thailand
Six Senses Yao Noi
Fifty-six hillside pool villas built to disappear into the jungle above Phang Nga Bay's limestone karsts.
From $700 per night
Tab Kaek Beach, Krabi, Thailand
Phulay Bay, A Ritz-Carlton Reserve
The resort that launched the Ritz-Carlton Reserve brand in 2009, a cluster of Thai-pavilion villas set against Krabi's limestone karsts on the Andaman Sea.
From $650 per night
Mae Rim Valley, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai
A working rice valley reimagined as a resort, where teak pavilions and a Michelin-starred kitchen sit inside paddies still farmed by hand.
From $850 per night