The Best Places to Stay and Do in the United States

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.

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.

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.

Ivy creeps up the facade of this all-suite boutique hotel one block from the Santa Monica Pier, where every room faces the Pacific and comes stocked with Frette linens, local art, and a minibar that takes itself seriously. The courtyard pool, ringed with lemon trees and James Perse loungers, is the kind of spot that makes you cancel afternoon plans. Sandpiper, the open-air restaurant, leans into California seasonal cooking.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame views of Tampa Bay and Amalie Arena from every room in this 27-story hotel, which anchors the Water Street mixed-use development downtown. It's a full-service JW Marriott: modern and warm without tipping into excess, with a spa, resort-style pools, a rooftop bar that climbs high enough to see most of Tampa, and dining options ranging from a street-level window to a proper American bistro beside the pool.

The cocktail menu pays tribute to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, which makes sense given the museum is practically next door. This is a full-service luxury hotel in downtown Cleveland, where housekeepers note which side of the bed you sleep on and leave the water bottle there accordingly. The Club Floor runs food from breakfast through cordials and opens the bar at noon, which is a civilized policy. Pets are welcome, too.

Five minutes from Reagan National and steps from the Pentagon City mall, this Ritz-Carlton pulls off the usual trick of making a business-travel corridor feel like somewhere you'd actually want to be. Rooms come with feather beds and Egyptian cotton linens, the club level adds its own quiet remove, and the on-site restaurant, Santé, runs a Mediterranean menu with a fireside lounge good for a post-flight drink.

Perched at the base of Camelback Mountain, this Scottsdale resort is less a renovation of the old Rat Pack haunt that once stood here than a complete reinvention, the original having been nearly leveled before the reboot. The result is a sleek, contemporary desert property where the mid-century glamour gets reimagined rather than preserved. It holds a Michelin Key, which in resort terms means the vibe and the views both earn their square footage.

A mid-century chain hotel on Lady Bird Lake got the full renovation treatment, and the result is a boutique hotel that makes the retro bones look intentional. Architect Michael Hsu and designer Sean Knibb folded in industrial textures and quiet nods to Hill Country geology, so it reads as Austin rather than anywhere-with-a-lobby. The Michelin Guide selects it among its hotels, which is the kind of quiet endorsement that doesn't need a billboard.

Tangerine doors set into a 23-foot breeze block wall are your first clue that this Palm Springs resort operates on its own frequency. Jonathan Adler designed the interiors, so a suit of armor guards the lobby, groovy carpeting climbs the stairs, and eccentric glamour is the unifying theory. Lanai rooms, a pétanque court, and a hammock by the pool suggest a schedule built around doing very little with great commitment.

Belted Galloway cows still graze the pastures of this converted dairy farm turned country inn, midway between Chapel Hill and nowhere in particular. The 32 rooms are individually designed, with fresh flowers cut from the grounds and a decanter of port left at your bedside each evening. Tennessee fainting goats add an absurdist footnote to the strolls. The restaurant leans European-Southern, and afternoon tea is a thing here, taken seriously.

The Rockwell Group's renovation of this 27-story tower turned it into the most polished address on an already sprawling waterfront resort, and a Michelin Key and Forbes Four Star followed. Rooms look out over 200 acres of pools, a marina, a private beach, and enough dining options to skip the car entirely for days. It's a hotel-within-a-hotel concept, which means you get the full Boca Raton complex and then a quieter, considerably chicler retreat inside it.

The original Art Deco bones of a 1920s Coca-Cola bottling plant are still very much the point here, with exposed industrial detail running through the rooms in the old wing alongside genuinely comfortable modern furniture. The newer addition trades some of the patina for polish, which is a fair swap. The surrounding development packs in coffee, a food hall, and enough going on that you could stay a long weekend without really needing to leave. Michelin awarded it one Key.

Ten suites on a tree-lined street in downtown McMinnville, steps from boutiques and bakeries, with an organic farm supplying the kitchen. The Tributary is a Forbes Four Star boutique hotel that leans closer to an upscale inn than a grand resort, and deliberately so. The amenities list is short: a good book, a roaring fire, a deep bath. Wine-country excursions and hot air balloon rides can be arranged when the fireplace loses its pull.

The lobby reads less like a hotel and more like a country house that got very ambitious, with deep sitting areas, Regency columns, and ironwork that quietly signals this is not the Hampton Inn down the road. The Williamsburg Inn sits just across from Colonial Williamsburg's historic district, holds a Forbes Four Star, and connects via the back terrace to a full spa with indoor and outdoor pools. Comfortable, formal-ish, and unapologetically old-money in atmosphere.

Adobe walls, lushly planted courtyards, and the Santa Catalina Mountains framing everything you look at: Hacienda del Sol is a historic guest ranch resort tucked into Tucson's foothills. The 34-acre property has been around forever, and the old-school architecture still holds the place together in a way no renovation could fake. Rooms are spread across the grounds, service runs unhurried, and the mountain views make the phone feel optional.

The restaurant is a Nobu partnership and the pool is lined with lava rock, but Sensei Lanai exists firmly in the wellness-resort category, not the beach-vacation one. Set upcountry on a quiet island, it trades ocean views for gardens, guided fitness, nutrition consultations, and the kind of sleep you forgot you could have. The rooms run spare in their design and lavish in everything else, which is more or less the whole philosophy.

Cowhide armchairs in the lobby set the tone: this is a luxury hotel that committed to being Texan rather than just landing in Texas. Part of the Auberge Collection, Bowie House brings the brand's polished design sensibility to Fort Worth's Camp Bowie corridor, pairing it with local artwork and upscale Texan cooking. Rooms, suites, and the pool terrace all lean spectacular. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

Every evening at sunset, someone opens a bottle of Champagne with a saber. That sets the tone for this bed and breakfast in two joined 19th-century Italianate houses on one of Savannah's quieter streets. The 16 rooms mix antique bones with modern comfort, and breakfast skews Indian, which is a welcome departure from the usual biscuit routine. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A Michelin Key hotel anchoring Kansas City's Crossroads arts district, set inside a converted industrial building where exposed brick and timber beams do the decorating. The 131 rooms lean into the warehouse bones rather than paper over them. Percheron, the rooftop bar, adds bocce and skyline views, while the Italian restaurant Lazia handles dinner. Coffee and casual bites live at XR Cafe, so you rarely need to leave the block.

The team behind the Sunset Tower brought this residential-style luxury boutique hotel to West Hollywood, and the neighborhood pedigree shows. It sits at the quieter, leafy edge where the Hills meet Beverly Hills, a world away from the frenzy further east. Expect the kind of considered, old-Hollywood polish that never needed to announce itself. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A handful of rooms inside a carefully restored Irving Gill house a short walk from La Jolla's water, this boutique hotel runs on the contactless end of the hospitality spectrum. The rooms are elegantly done and the courtyard, shaded by olive trees, is the communal living room nobody has to share with strangers. Borrow something from the curated book collection and pour your own coffee. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Nine pools connected by a lazy river, a grotto bar you swim up to and order a mai tai while watching sports on TV, and a separate adults-only pool for those who did not come to Maui to dodge pool noodles. This sprawling Waldorf Astoria resort on the Wailea beachfront also runs seven restaurants and bars, a 40-treatment-room spa, outrigger canoe tours, and access to nearby golf and tennis.

Tucked between Mummy and Camelback mountains on 125 sprawling acres, this Scottsdale resort has been converting desert skeptics into desert devotees for generations. The 453 casitas and suites come with private patios, because nobody actually stays inside here. Golf, a spa, seven restaurants, and a pool complex keep the days full, but the move is a morning coffee somewhere among the flowerbeds while the birds sort out their business.

A marble Thomas Jefferson presides over the Palm Court, which sets the tone for this grand Beaux Arts hotel a block from Virginia's state capitol. The rotunda's original Tiffany glass ceiling stops people mid-stride. Rooms lean residential and plush, and the whole place has a pleasantly odd streak, namely alligator motifs tucked into unexpected corners, a nod to the live ones that once shared the lobby.

Wedged between two uncrowded sandy beaches on Maui's south shore, this full-scale Marriott resort runs 22 acres of pools, restaurants, and a nearly 10,000-square-foot spa. Three championship golf courses sit next door, and the dining runs from a poke-and-shave-ice food truck to a proper fine dining room. Humpback whales pass offshore in season, which saves you the trouble of planning an excursion.

The bones of a steel mill are still visible in the exposed brick and heavy timber of this boutique hotel, which sits in a historically Black neighborhood called the Block on the south edge of downtown. Benne on Eagle, its Appalachian soul food restaurant, draws a crowd well beyond the guest list. Breweries and a Moog synthesizer museum are a short walk away, for when you need to explain the trip to someone.

Contemporary art by local artists lines the walls at this design-forward hotel in the thick of Pack Square, which makes Asheville's self-styled Paris-of-the-South reputation feel at least a little earned. Rooms run tastefully upscale, Bargello handles Mediterranean food and wood-fired pizza downstairs, and District 42 takes care of cocktails. A Michelin Selected Hotel, it's the kind of property a town this size isn't supposed to be able to pull off.

Anchored in Fashion Island with floor-to-ceiling windows pulling California sunshine into every room, this hotel earns its Michelin Key for putting SoCal polish ahead of resort cliche. Art deco interiors run through 295 guest rooms, a sleek steakhouse, and a pool bar pouring Baja-flavored bites alongside cocktails. Ocean views are easy to come by here, which is either the point or the whole thing, depending how long you plan to stay.

The cottages and villas here sit behind a private entrance with dedicated valet, effectively a separate resort tucked inside the famous Victorian landmark on Coronado. Hosts meet you with a welcome drink before you've found your room key, and the staff leans hard into wish fulfillment: fully stocked kitchens, surfboards at the door, candlelit dinners on the sand. The kind of place where asking for a vintage convertible is apparently a reasonable request.

Seventy-two suites spread across fifteen oceanfront acres on a cliff above the Maui coastline, with three islands visible on a clear day. Hotel Wailea is an adults-only resort with the scale of a private retreat, all winding paths, waterfalls, and tropical gardens keeping the outside world at arm's length. The architecture leans into indigenous Hawaiian design rather than generic resort polish, and the staff make the distinction feel earned.

The plasterwork and fountain-dotted streetscape of Country Club Plaza sits just outside the door, which sets the tone: this is a boutique hotel that leans hard into Old World atmosphere without apologizing for it. Preserved original details from the 1920s share space with modern conveniences, and the in-house restaurant, Chaz on the Plaza, handles the contemporary American side of things for guests who'd rather not wander far.

A 21-story boutique hotel on Cooper Square where no two rooms share the same layout, so a skyline view is a conversation you have at booking, not a guarantee. The interiors lean into East Village energy, all Bluetooth speakers, stocked minibars, and oversized towels, but the social spaces and rotating cultural programming are the real draw for guests who treat the lobby as part of the itinerary.

Retro doorknob tassels stand in for standard "do not disturb" signs, which tells you pretty much everything about the vibe here. The REMI. is a hotel in North Scottsdale built for the kind of people who consider the pool deck a social obligation. Rockwell Group did the interiors, all leather headboards and powder-blue velvet, and the Allegra rooftop bar pulls sunset crowds on the 12th floor. Kauboi's yakitori-meets-sushi terrace and the F-16 diner round out a property that locals treat like a neighborhood.

A 20-room boutique hotel wrapped around a courtyard in the heart of Carmel-by-the-Sea, L'Auberge Carmel occupies a white stucco building that has been collecting interesting neighbors since the 1920s. The Relais & Châteaux membership sets the tone: evening turndown, valet, a chauffeured house car, and the quiet attentiveness of a place that knows exactly how small it is and considers that the point.

The curved white tower was designed to echo the superyachts that idle offshore, which sets the tone for what you're getting: a sleek beachfront Four Seasons where the nautical theme runs from the navy-striped rugs to the spa's water-based treatments. Rooms face either the Atlantic or the Intracoastal. The beach concierge handles loungers, umbrellas, and watersports, and complimentary bikes are there for when the sand loses you.

Every one of the 226 rooms has a private terrace facing the Atlantic, which makes the clifftop setting feel less like a amenity and more like the whole point. This is a sprawling luxury resort on 70 acres of rough Maine shoreline, with an ocean-facing spa, outdoor pools, and a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key to its name. The crowd skews well-heeled road-tripper; the vibe is coastal grandeur with enough square footage that it never feels crowded.

The Beaux-Arts bones alone justify a slow lap through the lobby. The Ned NoMad is a hotel that takes socializing as seriously as sleep, with guests getting access to members-only spaces including a whimsically muraled downstairs club. NoMad puts the Empire State Building and Madison Square Park in easy walking range while Downtown stays close enough for a late night. The kind of place where you feel like you're in on something, even as a tourist.

Five rooms above the restaurant, each with picture windows over Healdsburg's low-key downtown, and the kind of locally made snacks and luxurious bath amenities that make you wonder whether anyone actually checks out. The inn runs on the same Japanese hospitality philosophy as the dining room below, so the attention to detail borders on the uncanny. Gracefully minimalist, high-ceilinged, and more like a very tasteful friend's guest room than a hotel.

A family of dolphins lives in the resort's lagoon, which tells you something about the ambition level here. This is a classic luxury resort on the quiet side of Diamond Head, well away from Waikiki's chaos, with a calm private beach and the kind of unhurried, personal service that boutique hotels keep promising and rarely delivering. Every American president since LBJ has stayed, and the place carries that history without being stiff about it.

Wetsuits and surfboards pass through the lobby with enough regularity that nobody looks twice, which tells you most of what you need to know about the Seabird. This Destination by Hyatt resort sits across from Oceanside's main beach, with a third-floor pool deck and many rooms facing the Pacific. The design leans into the setting without overdoing the coastal theming, and the salt air tends to do the decorating anyway.

A Havana-via-Hemingway resort sitting just off Scottsdale's main drag, where the whole premise is that you're not in the Arizona desert, even when the Arizona desert is right there. Eight acres of hammocks and two pools, one with a sandy beach, do a lot of convincing. Rooms run Art Deco and mid-century, heavy on walnut and brass. The on-site restaurant serves Cuban-American food, and yes, craft cocktails arrive in pineapples.

Ski-in/ski-out access mid-mountain at Northstar Resort means you can theoretically go straight from bed to chairlift without touching a parking lot. This Forbes Four Star resort leans into the alpine lodge fantasy hard: a great room instead of a lobby, fireplaces in every room, and balconies facing Martis Valley. The heated outdoor pool keeps going through winter, and a spa handles whatever the mountain did to your legs.

The Fidelity Hotel Cleveland sits in a restored 1920s mortgage building on what was Short Vincent, the old strip of jazz joints and whiskey bars that once made this city feel briefly like Manhattan. Ninety-seven rooms with Bellino linens, sculptural lighting, and deep, considered color throughout. The Club Room downstairs earns its keep with low light and strong drinks. A Michelin Key hotel, for those keeping score.

Every room at Hotel ZaZa Memorial City has its own distinct decor, and the overall look lands somewhere between gallery and fever dream, in the best possible, most deliberate way. This boutique hotel on the west side brings the brand's signature mix of maximalist design and genuine comfort to a city that doesn't get enough of either. Michelin recognized it with one Key. Pack something that photographs well.

A seven-story resort parked directly in front of Oceanside's historic wooden pier, with rolling surf visible from most rooms. The rooftop pool and bar, dressed in palm trees and retro daybeds, is where the whole hotel seems to migrate at golden hour for the panoramic Pacific sunset. The Baja-influenced restaurant Valle draws its own crowd. Oceanside is having a moment, and this resort arrived right on cue.

The Greek Revival mansion a short walk from UT Austin has been a boutique hotel for a while now, but it has been many things longer. The original lady of the house, Ella Wooten, spent decades turning what was an ordinary estate into something considerably less ordinary, and the place has been coasting on her taste ever since. A calm, handsome stay in a neighborhood that doesn't always offer either.

Marriott's Autograph Collection landed in Austin not downtown but beside the UT campus, which tells you something about its vibe. The Otis leans hard into the city's live-music identity, weaving that thread through the room design and the details rather than just hanging a guitar on a wall. Rooms run luxe without going cold, and four on-site restaurants and bars cover everything from New American to tapas to a rooftop lounge.

Floor-to-ceiling windows face the Manhattan skyline across the Hudson, which is about as pointed a statement as a hotel can make without saying a word. The W Hoboken is a full-service hotel with the brand's signature bold graphics, loud color, and buzzy public spaces, plus a spa and fitness center for the morning after. Halifax handles the seafood side, and the Living Room bar runs craft cocktails with live music.

While the rest of Palm Springs does mid-century California, this 11-room adults-only hideaway is cosplaying 1960s St. Tropez, and somehow it works. Sunny colors, bohemian interiors, a pool built for lingering, and an orchard that makes you forget the desert is right there. Breakfast is included; dinner you'll find nearby with a little help from the staff. A Michelin Key property.

A converted motor lodge on Sunset Boulevard, Le Petit Pali Brentwood is a 25-room boutique hotel tucked into one of LA's quieter, leafier neighborhoods. Four bungalow buildings wrap around patios with stone fountains and string lights strung over Adirondack chairs, giving it the feel of a private garden compound. Brentwood runs short on hotels by design, so staying here is about as close as you get to the residential calm the locals guard so carefully. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Sitting inside an open-air shopping village just across the river from downtown Tampa, this Palisociety boutique hotel brings the brand's California-by-way-of-Europe sensibility to the Gulf Coast without it feeling out of place. Hyde Park is a quietly upscale residential pocket, and the hotel fits the neighborhood, colorful and eclectic without trying too hard. It holds a Michelin Key.

Bathtubs carved from old horse troughs are the giveaway that Sparrows Lodge has a point of view. This Michelin Key boutique hotel wears its ranch bones lightly: recycled mid-century wood, a red barn that opens for dinner and drinks at night, and a pool ringed by guests in retro swimwear who look like they read actual books. Horseshoes, wooden tennis rackets, private campfires. Summer camp, basically, for people with good taste in cocktails.