The Best Places in the United States

A rooftop pool in the Meatpacking District has a way of announcing itself, and this boutique hotel has been making that announcement since the neighborhood was still figuring out what it wanted to be. The surroundings have since settled into high-end retail and the Whitney, and the hotel has kept pace with a refreshed interior and a contemporary art collection that gives the common areas something worth slowing down for.

A living wall of air plants greets you in the lobby, which still manages to feel less like a hotel check-in and more like a very tasteful friend's house in Yountville. Bardessono is a wine country resort built around serious green credentials, all low wood-and-steel buildings, olive trees, water features, and the kind of air that smells faintly of rosemary whether you want it to or not. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

A Victorian-era mansion built in Aesthetic Movement style anchors this boutique hotel on Healdsburg's west side, a pointed rebuke to the region's endless Tuscan fantasies. The interiors, by co-owner and designer Jay Jeffers, layer period details against modern interventions, a serious art collection, and decades of accumulated antiques and curios. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler, one of Portland's bartending legends, helped set up this cocktail bar in the lobby of the Kex Hotel as an unabashed love letter to the Pacific Northwest. The space feels like a well-appointed living room, and the menu lists alcohol percentages alongside each drink, which sounds nerdy until you're grateful for it. The range runs from zero-proof options to a 39% Old Fashioned over a single oversized ice cube.

The lobby ceiling drips with Murano glass, modeled after a Renaissance castle in Genoa, which is exactly the kind of sentence that prepares you for The Breakers. This grand oceanfront resort covers 140 acres and runs to two golf courses, a tennis complex, a sprawling spa, and a beach club where uniformed concierges deliver cold drinks to guests in private poolside bungalows. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

A fireside butler will light your cottage fire pit on request, which sets the tone for this sprawling Wine Country resort on the Napa-Sonoma border. The location is its quiet trick: both valleys are under twenty minutes away, so you can do Scribe one afternoon and Trefethen the next without committing to a county. The spa sees hotel guests only. Forbes Four Star.

Three restored 19th-century buildings sit steps from Lexington Green, where the Revolutionary War opened for business. The Inn at Hastings Park is a Relais & Châteaux property with 22 rooms spread across a former private home, a politician's residence, and a carpentry barn, which is either atmospheric or a trivia question depending on your mood. Walden Pond is nearby for the philosophically inclined. It holds a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

A boutique hotel planted in the middle of Charleston's historic district, steps from Waterfront Park and a short walk from the South of Broad townhouses that look like they were painted for a calendar. Rooms, the atrium, and the roof terrace all catch harbor views, though the Michelin Key it holds suggests the location is doing the real heavy lifting. The galleries, antique shops, and Southern restaurants nearby are the actual argument for staying here.

The name is a portmanteau of Swiss and Texan, which tells you almost everything about the mood here. This Harwood District hotel plays continental service standards against big-hat Texan swagger, and the combination reads less like a theme than a personality. Spacious rooms with commanding views, decor with a freewheeling sense of humor, and a rooftop worth returning to every night. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

MOLLIE Aspen earns a Michelin Key for doing what almost no Aspen ski hotel bothers to attempt: taking design seriously. The look is somewhere between Bauhaus and Japanese-Scandinavian minimalism, which sounds like a grad-school thesis but reads as calm and cool in person. It sits just off Main Street, a short shuttle from the mountain, and the on-site bar and restaurant keep things lively once the lifts close. Not a log in sight.

Fifty-nine suites and villas clad in weathered cedar sit on 160 acres above the crashing Pacific, with redwoods behind and rugged cliffs in front. This is a luxury resort in the genuinely inconvenient, genuinely spectacular stretch of Highway One, and the mild disorder of the scenery is rather the point. Safari-style tents handle overnight camping for guests who find the suites insufficiently outdoorsy. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

Floors 22 to 26 of a 54-story tower above L.A. Live, which means you wake up with the Staples Center in your sightline and a surprisingly quiet room for being that deep in the downtown buzz. The Ritz-Carlton here is a full-service luxury hotel, with a spa, club lounge, and meeting spaces that draw the corporate retreat crowd as readily as weekending couples looking for a staycation with valet parking.

The Rockwell Group redesigned every room and public space here, steering the W Hollywood from hot-pink maximalism into moody mid-century gold and emerald, with an oculus motif running through the whole thing. It's a full-service hotel sitting on Hollywood and Vine, above the Walk of Fame, with 319 rooms, suites, a rooftop pool bar, and weekly DJ sets and live music keeping the lobby from feeling too grown-up about itself.

Rice Vice is the taproom for Proper Sake, a casual sake bar where the menu describes each pour in flavor notes so specific they border on a confession ("bubblegum funk" is a real category here). Order the citrusy nigori if you're new, or something earthier if you're not. Food means snacks, with the occasional pop-up out front. Esquire put it on its best bars in America list, and sake fans fill the room.

Vintage mirrors, cherry wood, and brass gas chandeliers give this Downtown Brooklyn steakhouse an amber glow that makes every Tuesday feel like an occasion. The kitchen draws on the legacy of Edna Lewis, who ran it in the late eighties, so fried chicken and crab cakes share the menu with dry-aged prime beef. Dessert gets taken seriously, which a baked Alaska deserves. It has a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

The 285 rooms were built partly from 75 tons of local fallen trees, which tells you immediately what kind of hotel this is. Perched at the foot of the Hollywood Hills on the Sunset Strip, the place goes all-in on sustainability without apologizing for the upscale surroundings: recycled-paper hangers, a rooftop beehive, composting. Neutrals and organic materials keep the rooms calm. Harriet's Rooftop handles the drama, with views that make the whole city feel like your screensaver.

Don't let the word "inn" fool you: this is a full Spanish Colonial resort sprawling across a couple hundred wooded acres in the Ojai Valley, with a championship golf course, a serious spa complex, and enough pools to lose track of your afternoon. Hollywood has been retreating here since forever, and the laid-back Santa Barbara-area energy keeps it from feeling stuffy. A Forbes Four Star property that earns its keep with mountain views and room to exhale.

The red-and-white striped lighthouse at Harbour Town is practically the symbol of Hilton Head, and this Forbes Four Star inn sits right underneath it. It's a resort stay built around the outdoors, with five miles of private beach, miles of bike trails, an equestrian center, and three golf courses, the most famous being Harbour Town Golf Links, which hosts the PGA Tour's RBC Heritage each April.

Dolphin pods drifting past the oceanfront balconies have a way of making evening plans negotiable. This Four Seasons resort sits on the Leeward Coast, far from Waikiki, facing a sheltered lagoon with the Wai'anae Mountains behind it. The Naupaka Spa runs fourteen treatment rooms, the kids' club is one of the stronger ones in the portfolio, and Michael Mina's seafood restaurant anchors five dining options. Forbes Four Star.

A Fishtown red brick that did time as a women's home and a retirement community before its current life as a boutique hotel. The 50 rooms mix warm minimalism with antique touches that don't feel forced, and an interior courtyard with a heated pool is a quiet surprise for the neighborhood. A Mediterranean restaurant called Bastia is on site. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Three rooms above a restaurant and café on Lower Greenville, Casa Duro is less a hotel than a very good friend's Italian apartment, assuming your friend is obsessed with Italian culture and happens to own the building. The Duro Hospitality Group runs it the same way they run the two spots downstairs: with a specificity of taste that makes the whole thing feel more like a considered stay than a booking. It holds a Michelin Key.

Stacked stone, rusted metal, and reclaimed barn wood layer up into something that feels like a mountain lodge edited by someone with actual taste. Hotel Jackson is a boutique hotel a short walk from the town square, which puts you close to everything without the parking ordeal. The lobby art runs Western, the chandeliers run Mediterranean, and the combination is less confused than it sounds. A Michelin Key and a Forbes recommendation back up the vibe.

Calvin Eng's Cantonese restaurant and bar sits on a nondescript east Williamsburg corner, close enough to the BQE that you'll feel the trucks. Inside, it reads like a retro Hong Kong diner, but the kitchen runs modern interpretations of regional Cantonese food, and the MSG Martini earned a spot on Esquire's national list. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and the James Beard Foundation named Eng an Emerging Chef nominee.

Each of the 40 rooms is a freestanding glass atrium on steel piers, so you wake up with red rock formations where the wall should be. Ambiente is an adults-only design hotel on three acres outside Sedona, built around the idea that the landscape is the amenity. A private rooftop fire pit comes with each room, which is the right call under these skies. The Velvet Spa and an on-site restaurant round things out. It holds two Michelin Keys.

Calistoga is the scruffy, more rural end of Napa, and this Auberge Collection resort leans into that with 22 acres of outdoor space, mountain and vineyard views in every direction, and spa treatments that nod to the town's old mud-bath tradition. The crowd skews wine-serious but loosens up fast around the pool. A Forbes Four Star property where the grounds themselves are the main event.

Wood-burning fireplaces, whirlpool tubs, and antique-furnished rooms spread across a cluster of restored barns and cottages on the Maine coast. This is an inn in the old sense: unhurried, a little formal, the kind of place where afternoon tea by the fire feels like the obvious plan. Bikes are available for riding along the coast, there's a stone pool, a spa, and a candlelit restaurant on the property that guests tend not to leave.

A restored Queen Anne house a few blocks north of downtown, the Blind Tiger is a 14-room guest house from Lark Hotels, the boutique group that has a habit of finding good neighborhoods and settling in quietly. Chestnut Hill keeps it residential and unhurried, which suits the whole approach. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

You reach Little Palm Island by boat, which sets the tone immediately. This private-island resort in the Keys keeps things deliberately unhurried, with thatched bungalows, canopied beds, and hammocks positioned for maximum sunset interference. There are kayaks and paddleboards if guilt demands activity, and a classic wooden boat for mainland runs. Michelin awarded it 3 Keys. The kind of place where silence costs more than the minibar.

Dark wood paneling, deep leather chairs, and a fireplace that makes every barstool feel like the reading room of someone you'd like to know: The Manor Bar is a cocktail bar inside Rosewood Miramar Beach, and it leans hard into a literary conceit, pulling drink ideas from novels, lyrics, and screenplays. The result is exactly as charming as it sounds and only slightly precious. A Spirited Awards Top 10 nominee for Best U.S. Hotel Bar.

Buckhead was never going to be the neighborhood for reclaimed-wood cocktail bars, and the InterContinental leans fully into that logic. This is classic luxury-hotel territory: marble bathrooms, a spa, an Italian steakhouse called The Americano, and staff who apparently remember how you take your coffee without being asked. Business travelers and Southern-charm seekers will find nothing surprising here, which seems to be precisely the point.

Two turn-of-the-century brick buildings joined into one hotel, with 18-foot trees growing under a vaulted glass atrium ceiling that blurs the line between indoors and the park outside. The bar in the middle of that atrium is the obvious place to settle, but the all-seasons rooftop has the city view. Guest rooms run to warm wood and deep navy. It's a thoughtful place to sleep in Cincinnati's oldest neighborhood.

The British steakhouse import near Gramercy that made New York carnivores feel slightly underdressed. The room leans into a warm, vintage-century-club atmosphere, and the menu runs from serious cuts to the kind of British comfort food that sneaks up on you. The bar program is no afterthought, landing a regional Spirited Award and a James Beard semifinalist nod for beverages. A New York Times Critic's Pick, and reliably easier to love than the places that take themselves more seriously.

The 315-foot copper-toned tower has been a Coral Gables landmark forever, and the hotel underneath it leans hard into Old World Mediterranean grandeur without apologizing for a second. Rooms are quietly elegant, the grounds are tropical and unhurried, and the pool holds 600,000 gallons, which feels like a flex until you're actually in it. A professional gym, a French restaurant, and a lobby bar round out a property that moves at a slower, more deliberate pace than Miami proper.

A subterranean New England seafood joint in the East Village where the menu runs heavily toward the ocean and the wine list follows suit, mostly whites chosen to keep pace with it. The New York Times named it among the city's best new restaurants, and the sommelier took a Next Wave Award. The celery root float has become something of a minor cult object, which tells you something about the kitchen's sense of humor.

Boynton Canyon is a Yavapai ancestral site and one of Sedona's famous energy vortexes, which gives Enchantment's setting a charge that the usual "mountain resort" framing doesn't quite cover. Adobe casitas and hacienda suites have private decks and working fireplaces, and a dedicated pool concierge keeps the chaise situation sorted against a backdrop of red rock formations reflected in aquamarine water. The Trail House outfits guests for the 300-plus miles of trail outside the door. Forbes Four Star.

Perched on the Palos Verdes Peninsula with Catalina Island sitting offshore like a postcard prop, this Forbes Four Star coastal resort sits just 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles and manages to feel like another country entirely. Eight restaurants and bars, a sprawling spa with treatment rooms facing the water, kayaking, tide pooling, and falconry keep guests occupied long enough to forget the freeway exists.

Fifty-four acres of north-shore Maui with Pacific views that reach Molokai on a clear day. This Forbes Four Star resort sits inside the larger Kapalua property, which means guests get two championship golf courses, miles of hiking trails, marine sanctuaries, and a tennis garden without ever hitting the tourist scrum down in Lahaina. The three-tier pool and its 20,000-square-foot sundeck handle the days when doing nothing is the whole point.

The cocktail menu changes every time the gallery does, which tells you most of what you need to know about Papercut. It's a minimalist East Austin cocktail bar where the drinks are keyed to whatever paintings are currently on the walls, so ordering becomes a little like picking a favorite piece. A back bar called Konbini serves Mexican-Japanese sushi when you need something to eat. The team came up from San Francisco, and the room feels it.

Original Warhols and Picassos hang in the Gallery Suite, which tells you something about how this 23-story downtown hotel sees itself. The lobby reads as a working gallery, with rotating exhibitions from the Long-Sharp Gallery filling the walls while guests drift between the lobby bar and a Capital Grille. A sixth-floor indoor infinity pool and a spa give you every excuse to ignore the Indiana Repertory Theatre two blocks away.

The curving Morris Lapidus facade alone tells you this is the kind of hotel that wants you to notice it. A big, loud Collins Avenue resort with over 1,500 rooms, multiple pools, and a nightclub, LIV, that keeps the lobby moving well past midnight. Bachelorette sashes and convention lanyards coexist peacefully by the pool bar. The Lapis spa offers a quieter counterpoint, with extensive wet areas that feel genuinely removed from the spectacle outside.

The mirrored back bar, lit from behind like a stage set, makes the priorities clear before you even sit down. Midnight Rambler is a subterranean cocktail lounge under the Joule Hotel, all art deco bones and low light, with a soundtrack chosen as carefully as the drinks. The cocktail program leans neo-classic, and the bartenders are the kind who can track down whatever obscure thing you're about to describe to them.

Every cocktail on the menu comes in a spirited or spirit-free version, which sounds like a gimmick until you're sipping something smoky and elaborate at midnight with nothing to dread by morning. This plush cocktail lounge inside the Dubbel Dutch Hotel leans into big ice, smoked drinks, and deadpan drink names, "garnished with disaster" being an actual garnish note. A James Beard nominee for Best New Bar in 2025.

This is a bowling alley that got turned into a cocktail bar, which means the lanes, pin setters, and ball returns all stayed, and you can still keep score by hand. The green walls came from the one patch of paint nobody touched, and a skylight now floods the room above a curved mahogany rail. The menu is frozen White Russians and 80s throwbacks, and North America's 50 Best Bars gave it the Bareksten Best Bar Design Award.

A former church in Downtown LA, now a contemporary restaurant with an open ceiling that lets the room breathe and the people-watching practically do itself. The crowd comes for small plates and cocktails at the two circular bars or settles into the sofa-stuffed lounge like they own the place. The menu roams globally, though the kitchen keeps one foot planted in the familiar. Loud, beautiful, and a little theatrical.

A boutique hotel in a downtown Phoenix high-rise, which tells you something about how much the city center has changed lately. Rooms feel pulled together rather than chain-generic, and the location drops you into a neighborhood that has sprouted college campuses and light rail where there used to be very little reason to linger. A good base if you want Phoenix proper rather than a resort bubble somewhere out in the sprawl.

A 32-story tower designed by Chicago firm bKL, Thompson Austin cuts a noticeable line into the downtown skyline just off the East Sixth Street strip. The hotel occupies the lower floors, so you get the address without the altitude, which is fine given what's walkable. Sleek without being cold, it's the kind of place that suits Austin's current chapter better than its old "keep it weird" bumper sticker ever did.

The Art Deco bones of this West Hollywood hotel go back to the golden age, when the apartment tower housed the kind of tenants whose names still sell magazines. The renovation kept the earth-toned, mid-century atmosphere without turning it into a theme park, which is harder than it sounds on the Sunset Strip. Michelin has given it a Key. The guests leaning into the bar look like they have meetings, not autograph books.

The resort is poured into a canyon floor in the Four Corners desert, its low concrete pavilions shaped around a natural rock outcropping so the land stays the main event. Amangiri is a remote luxury resort on 600 acres of Utah scrubland, the kind of place where the silence is the amenity. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels list. Slot canyons and mesa views come standard; crowds do not.

Views of the Gateway Arch from a good chunk of the rooms set the tone at this luxury hotel sitting right on the Mississippi. The modern building and contemporary interiors read less "chain hotel sameness" than you might expect from a Four Seasons, and the spa and fitness center are suitably extensive. Gerard Craft, a James Beard Award winner, runs Cinder House downstairs, which keeps guests from having to venture far for a serious meal.

The room tiers at this 28-room boutique hotel in downtown Palm Springs are simply Good, Better, and Best, which either signals confidence or a refreshing allergy to hospitality jargon. All rooms come with original artwork and Waterworks bath hardware; Better adds a wet bar, and Best earns mountain views with a private balcony. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Midcentury Palm Springs, so pack accordingly: linen and sunscreen.

Nine rooms, suites, and cottages tucked into a Mediterranean Revival estate in Silver Lake that has, over the years, been a silent-film star's mansion, a girls' school, and a Franciscan convent. The interior designer who eventually bought it had a conventional boutique hotel in mind; the building had other plans. It holds a Michelin Key, and the rooms feel less like accommodations than borrowed sets from a film that never got made.