The 42 Best Resorts in China

Eighty-seven villas folded into the hills of Jiuzhaigou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, each angled toward the Minshan mountains as if the views were part of the room service. This Ritz-Carlton Reserve leans hard into its setting, with Tibetan art and design throughout, a spa drawing on local tradition, and three restaurants cycling through Sichuan, Chinese, and Mediterranean menus. The Michelin Guide awarded it 3 Keys.

Seventy-two ivory-walled villas arranged like a private village along canals and ponds, this all-villa resort sits in a misty wetlands preserve outside the city proper. Dark lacquered furniture and silk brocades share space with fireplaces, enormous bathrooms, and the Banyan Tree's signature spa, here set against bamboo groves. A hand-rowed boat through the wetlands, stopping at pagodas and a teahouse for Longjin tea, is a reasonable way to spend a morning.

Sipping green tea in a rain shower while a sacred Taoist mountain fills the window is more or less the baseline here. This resort outside Chengdu sits near the birthplace of Taoism and a UNESCO-listed irrigation system that's been around forever, and the property looks like a watercolor of lily ponds and wooden pavilions made real. Suites run large, decor leans classical Chinese, and the spa updates ancient treatments for guests who need a reason. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Eleven rooms, each opening onto a lake via a private terrace, in a rural flower-growing enclave about 11 kilometers from central Chengdu. YueLore Retreat is a small boutique stay with exposed timber ceilings, four-poster beds, and freestanding tubs, plus a stargazing rooftop for when pine-scented common spaces start to feel too indoorsy. A garden restaurant makes the logic of leaving hard to reconstruct. Wuhou Memorial Temple and Kuanzhai Ancient Street are close enough to feel virtuous about visiting.

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain fills the windows of every suite here, which is either a coincidence or the whole point, and almost certainly the whole point. Amandayan is an all-suite Aman resort overlooking Lijiang's ancient Old Town, where the interiors lean into Nakhi tradition: pagoda roofs, carved elm screens, and courtyard layouts that make the luxury feel earned rather than imported. A Michelin Key. The spa runs on Chinese medicinal herbs; the tea house has the views.

Hot springs fed by the mountains of Chongqing's northern outskirts anchor this Banyan Tree resort, and they're the reason to come. Rooms are generous and built in a style drawn from local traditional architecture, residential in scale and feel, with modern luxury comforts underneath. The spa leans into the spring-fed baths, and three restaurants cover Sichuan, Cantonese, and international ground. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Sitting at ten thousand feet in the Tibetan corner of Yunnan, this Banyan Tree resort trades the group's usual Balinese blueprint for something that actually fits its surroundings: timber beams salvaged from old farmhouses, high ceilings, and 32 sprawling two-level suites with mountain views that do the decorating. The spa earns its keep especially in winter. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

The circular lobby with its ornamental pool is the size of a minor cathedral, which sets the tone for what follows at this Hainan Island resort. Jean-Michel Gathy and Bill Bensley designed the public spaces and rooms, both heavy hitters in hospitality design. Villas run large enough that "cozy" isn't the word, though they manage warmth despite the scale. A spa with a hammam and snow cabin, poolside bar, and proper Chinese dining round things out. Capella holds a Michelin Key.

Rooms here open onto private courtyards rather than shared corridors, which sets the tone for this resort at the foot of Shishan Mountain. Bai Yun serves Cantonese and Huaiyang cuisine across all three meals, including a health-focused menu, and the Lobby Lounge marks sunset with Banyan Tree's own evening ritual. Suzhou's classical gardens and water towns are a short drive away, making the mountain views feel almost too easy to come by.

A curvaceous modern tower sitting where the mountains of Yantian meet the South China Sea, this is a big resort, the full 432-rooms-and-five-pools kind. Shenzhen's reputation for tech and commerce has buried the lede on its coastline, and the setting here is genuinely lovely. Rooms start spacious, many have balconies, and the sea-facing suites make a solid case for never drawing the curtains. Six restaurants mean you can stay put all week without repeating yourself.

Twenty-four architects contributed to this 102-room hotel in Pukou District, which means the building itself is the main event. Liu Jiakun's main structure breaks into black, white, and grey concrete volumes along a hillside, public spaces tucked into the valley, guest rooms scattered in blocks above, the whole thing reading like a classical ink-wash landscape rendered in rough cement. The Sifang Contemporary Art Museum is a short walk away.

Geothermal water feeds the Wonderland Hot Spring wellness complex at the heart of this HUALUXE resort, which sits on the edge of East Taihu Lake in Suzhou's Wujiang District. The brand is designed around Chinese luxury travelers, though the instinct to help guests live like a local translates just as well for visitors from further afield. Rooms run contemporary-classic, and two restaurants cover the full range from all-day casual to properly formal.

The name promises an ocean it cannot deliver, given that Chengdu is landlocked by roughly a thousand miles in every direction, but the hot spring pools tucked into private villas go some way toward making peace with that. This MGallery resort sits twenty miles from the city center in an agricultural county, and leans into the distance: garden-view rooms, a vast shared hot spring and spa complex, and an all-day restaurant quietly showcasing the produce grown just next door.

A 12th-century Song Dynasty painting was the starting point for architect Wang Shu, and the result is a low-slung resort of concrete and wood sitting on the wooded shores of Yanqi Lake, well northeast of the city. Rooms land in modern-luxe territory, using classic Chinese design as a foundation. The lake, the woods, a pool, and a rooftop walking trail take care of the rest, with Chaosan and French dining when you come inside.

Karst peaks frame every balcony at this resort south of Guiyang, which Anantara has dropped into a corner of Guizhou better known for Miao and Dong villages than pool villas. The 218 rooms and suites lean into the surroundings with indigenous textiles and terrazzo baths, while the Siam restaurant serves Thai fine dining to a landlocked province, a pairing that sounds stranger on paper than it does at the table.

Curved white walls and circular window frames give this 24-room boutique resort on Erhai Lake the look of a Mediterranean villa that took a very long wrong turn and ended up in Yunnan. The architecture is deliberately foreign to Dali's terracotta vernacular, which is either a conceptual statement or very good marketing. Freestanding stone baths, balconies fixed on the Cangshan range, and an infinity pool complete the picture.

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain fills the window before you've even unpacked, which sets the tone for this 55-villa luxury resort in the ancient Shuhe district of Lijiang, a UNESCO World Heritage town ringed by rice fields. Villas come with sprawling bedrooms, palatial bathrooms, and their own pools, jet or plunge or full swimming. A spa and a menu of treks by foot, bike, or horse through Yunnan countryside handle whatever restlessness the pools don't cure.

A guqin sits on a low platform beside a tiered cobalt reflecting pool in the arrival court, which tells you immediately this is not another generic tropical resort. Banyan Tree Sanya is an all-villa resort on the Hainan coast where dark-fired brick courtyards meet Balinese timber pergolas and every one of the 49 villas comes with a private pool. The spa houses the brand's first hydrothermal complex in Asia.

The building is designed to look like a cruise ship, which either charms you or makes you wonder if you took a wrong turn at the pier. This is a full-scale beach resort on Haitang Bay, where the South China Sea sits outside every room terrace. All 405 rooms include outdoor space, the rooftop pool is covered, and the spa and kids' program mean the whole family can disappear in different directions.

A dragon boat ferries guests from check-in to their rooms along a kilometer-long saltwater canal threading through the property, which sets the tone for this 523-room resort on Hainan Island's south coast. The rooms lean into regional wood and stone, the views take in Wuzhizhou Island, and the dining spans Cantonese, Hainanese, and a Spanish grill, all of which gives the impression that leaving was never really part of the plan.

The 17th-floor Red Sun Bar sits open to the sky above Sanya Bay, and that detail says most of what you need to know about this large beachfront resort on Hainan island's southern coast. The open-air lobby lounge, private beach with complimentary cabanas, water park, spa, and top-floor villas with their own pools make it function less like a hotel than a small seaside city. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

A contemporary Chinese art collection runs through this resort like a design brief that got very ambitious, setting it apart from the surrounding luxury corridor on Hainan Island. The IHG Hualuxe brand normally caters to business travel, but this one pivots hard toward families, with a kids' club that functions closer to a small theme park. Adult amenities and private beach access complete the picture for everyone else.

The slanted rooflines and Li ethnic minority artwork feel like a deliberate counterpoint to what this is: a big, dog-welcoming family resort on Hainan's southern coast, selected by the Michelin Guide. Ground-floor suites open onto private gardens with pet-friendly courtyards, two-bedroom villas have their own pools, and the lagoon out back stretches over a thousand square meters toward the rocky Tianya Haijiao cliffs. The Pool Bar has a thatched canopy, which tracks.

Sitting inside Lijiang's UNESCO-listed Old Town, this large InterContinental resort is built to echo the Naxi architecture around it without pretending to be a museum piece. The 267 rooms and suites lean into contemporary luxury, the spa has an indoor pool, and the flagship restaurant works through Yunnan and Sichuan cooking. It's a full-service resort with ancient cobblestones right outside the door, which is a rare combination even by Chinese tourism standards.

A resort on a peninsula jutting into Qiandao Lake, where the view from your room is a thousand forested islands and distant peaks doing their best ink-wash painting impression. The 264 rooms lean modern-traditional but quietly, so nothing competes with the windows. Bathrooms run to rain showers and separate tubs, and there's a nine-treatment-room spa with indoor and outdoor pools for when the scenery alone feels insufficient.

Steel and glass rising out of dense forest at the edge of Jiuzhaigou Valley, this is a large resort in one of China's most dramatic mountain landscapes. Nearly a thousand rooms fan out from a central dome that holds six restaurants, ranging from Sichuan and Tibetan to Western, plus twelve terraced pools under a glass roof. Rooms are luxurious without being showy, and the layout gives the place a quieter feel than its scale suggests.

The underwater restaurant inside a seawater aquarium is what separates this one from every other large resort on Haitang Bay. Rooms and suites look out over coastal forest to the sea from private balconies, with the building set back far enough to actually earn that view. The interior keeps things calm, contemporary with traditional touches, because the setting is doing most of the talking. About an hour east of Sanya city, on the National Coast.

A crescent beach curves below the building on Luhuitou peninsula, and the sea-facing rooms look straight out over it from their private terraces. This is a full-scale beach resort, so expect the lagoon pool, the spa, and a dining lineup that somehow runs from Hainanese to Bavarian without anyone blinking. Rooms are generous, and the terrace is less an amenity than a reason to book a sea-view room in the first place.

The former grounds of the Dai King's Palace beside the Lancang River set the stage for this 512-room resort in Yunnan's tropical south. Carved lattice screens, gold-inlaid headboards, and timber paneling carry the Dai palace aesthetic through the rooms, while nearly 400 acres of rainforest gardens surround it all. The in-house program runs to rice planting, tea making, and Buddhist thread-tying, so you'll never run out of things to feel cultured doing.

The Irtysh River just outside is the only river in China that drains to the Arctic Ocean, which sets the tone for a place that takes its setting seriously. This boutique resort hotel in the mountain town of Koktokay frames Kazakh heritage as its design language: folk art, woven pendant lights, and timber detailing alongside freestanding tubs and loft-style duplex rooms. Cold War industrial history and ancient nomadic craft, improbably, make good neighbors.

A fictional art collector's home is the conceit running through this boutique resort on Hainan island, where curated objects, unconventional architecture, and rainforest-and-wetlands surroundings make the décor feel less like staging and more like somebody's actual obsession. A barely touched beach is a short walk away. Three restaurants, a bar, and a spa round out the property, and the Lingshui River runs right past it all.

Thirty acres of gardens wrap around the low-rise buildings at this sprawling beach resort on Hainan's southeastern coast, about an hour from Sanya. Rooms sit tucked among the greenery, while pool villas look out over either the gardens or the beach itself. The spa is built for people with nowhere to be, and the restaurant lineup covers Korean, Mediterranean, and Cantonese alongside Hainanese specialties, which feels right for the island.

Arranged like a village along the lakeshore, this Park Hyatt sprawls across Dong Qian Lake in pavilions and villas built in a contemporary Chinese style that manages to feel neither pastiche nor corporate. Rooms are straightforwardly categorized, which is refreshing when every other luxury hotel insists yours is "superior" at minimum. The spa leans into traditional Chinese medicine, and a restaurant focuses on local seafood and regional Zhejiang flavors.

Outside, the Pullman reads as a traditional Naxi village, pagoda angles mirrored in a central pond. Step inside and it flips to cool minimalism, all floor-to-ceiling glass and immaculate white. This is a resort in the foothills near Lijiang, with the snowcapped Jade Dragon Snow Mountain visible from the grounds and upscale villas offering outdoor soaking tubs pointed straight at it. The Mandara spa runs regional treatments, pu-erh tea scrubs among them. A fine place to anchor a Yunnan trip.

The Bohai Sea has been a power destination for long enough that the Qing court, the Communist Party, and now the Marriott have all claimed their slice of this coastline. The resort runs 283 rooms split between oceanview and oceanfront categories, with a Cantonese restaurant high enough to see the water and a bar that turns an interesting shade of blue after dark.

A large resort spread along Yalong Bay's white sand crescent, with rooms looking out over the bay, the mountains, or tropical gardens depending on how optimistic you're feeling at booking. Three restaurants cover Cantonese, Hainan, and Teochew cooking, a Japanese dining room with shogunate-era seating, and fresh local catch on an open-air deck. An oceanfront wedding chapel handles the bigger occasions.

Four fashion capitals organize the room categories here, Bangkok's P49 Design dividing 216 rooms across Italian Elegance, French Chic, British Fabulous, and American Classic, each with its own palette. It's an unusual premise for a beach resort on Hainan, and as the first Autograph Collection property in China it skews glossier than its neighbors. The rooftop Pod bar pours cocktails against the Dadonghai Bay coastline, which softens any temptation to overthink the concept.

Floodlit in umber with candle-warm windows stacked against the Himalayas, this St. Regis is the kind of luxury hotel that earns its audacity from its backdrop alone. Three dining venues, a tearoom, a wine bar, and an acid-yellow pool with cabana seating round things out. Rooms lean toward calm minimalism, rescued by warm wood and wool underfoot. Altitude sickness is, as locals will tell you, Tibet's least glamorous amenity, so plan accordingly before the spa day.

The corridors of this 343-room Haitang Bay resort have almost no glass, which is a deliberate choice: the architects, Shanghai firm Neri&Hu, designed the buildings to breathe, letting tropical air and shifting light stand in for walls. Two clay-brick L-shaped wings wrap a central water courtyard, the layout loosely modeled on a Chinese walled city. Fabrics and rugs nod to Li textile traditions. Four restaurants and a sixth-floor cocktail bar with sea views round it out.

A private walkway links this 453-room beach resort directly to one of China's largest duty-free shopping complexes, which tells you something about who comes here and what they're planning to do. The water park is a genuine counterargument, with a river pool, an infinity edge, and tropical gardens covering the kind of acreage that makes a lounger feel far away. Three restaurants cover Cantonese, Sichuan, Hainan, kaiseki, and rooftop hotpot with live music.

Six kilometers of beachfront along Hainan's southeast coast, with Vatica Mangachapoi Forest at the resort's back and Jiajing Island floating just offshore, sets the scene here. The Westin Shimei Bay is a full-scale beach resort with nearly 400 rooms and villas, four restaurants including Cantonese and Hainan cooking and a teppanyaki grill, and a spa for when the surf at nearby Riyue Bay has done its worst.