Best Luxury Hotels in the United States
Eight properties spanning a country too large for one hotel identity: a Manhattan tower, California's Big Sur cliffs and Napa vineyards, Tennessee's working farm, Los Angeles's canyon estate, Vermont's converted farmhouse, and Hawaii and the Florida Keys' island resorts. Chosen against the same four criteria throughout, not ranked by price.
The United States covers too much ground for a single trip, let alone a single hotel style. This collection is organised by the country’s distinct regional traditions rather than a coast-to-coast itinerary no one would actually take.
For city stays
Aman New York and Hotel Bel-Air anchor opposite coasts and opposite hotel traditions: Aman’s vertical Fifth Avenue tower against Hotel Bel-Air’s eleven-acre Los Angeles garden estate. Both suit a shorter, city-focused stay either side of a longer trip elsewhere.
For California’s coast and wine country
Post Ranch Inn’s cliffside Big Sur lodges and Auberge du Soleil’s hillside Napa Valley estate sit roughly three hours apart by road, and pairing them is one of the more natural routes on this list: dramatic coastline followed by working vineyards.
For a working farm
Blackberry Farm, in the Great Smoky Mountains foothills, and Twin Farms, on a former Vermont dairy farm, both build their identity around real agriculture rather than an imported luxury template, one in Appalachian foothills cuisine, the other in an all-inclusive New England format.
For islands
Little Palm Island in the Florida Keys and Kona Village on Hawaii’s Big Island both commit to a barefoot, low-tech format, no in-room televisions at either, reached only by boat, seaplane, or a private arrival, and both suit a slower, fully disconnected stay.
The list
8 hotels in this collection
Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States
Aman New York
Eighty-three suites folded into a landmarked 1921 Beaux-Arts tower on Fifth Avenue, with a three-floor spa larger than any other Aman on earth.
From $2,300 per night
Bel Air, Los Angeles, United States
Hotel Bel-Air
Twelve acres of Mission-style bungalows and a private swan lake have kept Hollywood's most discreet address quietly out of sight since 1946.
From $1,250 per night
Big Sur, United States
Post Ranch Inn
Forty organic structures balanced on a Big Sur ridgeline, 1,200 feet above the Pacific, with almost nothing between the guest and the drop.
From $2,150 per night
Rutherford, Napa Valley, United States
Auberge du Soleil
The Provence-inspired hillside inn that gave an entire hotel group its name, its philosophy, and one of Napa Valley's longest-running Michelin stars.
From $1,200 per night
Walland, Great Smoky Mountains foothills, United States
Blackberry Farm
A 4,200-acre working farm at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains where the Beall family built an entire school of American cooking around cheese, garden and pasture.
From $1,145 per night
Barnard, United States
Twin Farms
A Nobel laureate's wedding-gift farm turned into New England's most complete all-inclusive estate, 28 individually designed cottages scattered across 300 private acres.
From $2,200 per night, all-inclusive (double occupancy)
Little Torch Key, Florida Keys, United States
Little Palm Island Resort & Spa
America's only private island resort, reachable solely by boat or seaplane, where thirty thatched-roof bungalows keep televisions and telephones deliberately out of reach.
From $2,150 per night
Kona-Kohala Coast, Big Island, United States
Kona Village, A Rosewood Resort
A 1960s Hawaiian hideaway erased by the 2011 tsunami and rebuilt over a decade, reopened as 150 freestanding hale on the same lava-lined bay, with no televisions by design.
From $1,700 per night