The 56 Best Places to Drink and Stay in Shanghai

A 48-story tower cantilevered above a lovingly restored 1916 Chamber of Commerce building, all red brick and imposing columns, isn't a subtle move, but Bvlgari pulls it off. The hotel holds a Forbes Five Star and two Michelin Keys, and the rooms occupy the skyscraper's upper floors with views split between the Bund and the Pudong skyline. Bronze accents, travertine, and dark woods run throughout, and the subterranean spa is a serious operation.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

The villas here were once shikumen townhouses, the narrow-lane brick dwellings that somehow survived Shanghai's tower-block era, and Capella has turned a preserved clutch of them into a boutique luxury hotel in Xuhui. Three-story interiors mix French and Chinese influences, and Pierre Gagnaire's only mainland China restaurant sits on the grounds. The spa runs to flotation tanks and traditional Chinese medicine treatments, which is a combination that feels very Shanghai.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Huangpu River from every room at this Forbes Five Star hotel on the Pudong side of Shanghai, where the skyline is newer and the architecture doesn't do the nostalgic Bund thing. Some 4,000 works of contemporary art fill the property, curated down to the last hanging angle. The spa has a separate lounge just for foot massages, a tepidarium, and a crystal steam room, which tells you how seriously they take the whole operation.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A 17-foot ceramic tree anchors the glass-ceilinged courtyard at the center of this 186-room hotel in Jing'an, and it's the kind of statement piece that actually earns the room. Rattan and blonde wood marquetry nod to old Shanghai without cosplaying it, and the geometric bathroom tiles are lifted straight from the city's classic mansions. The heated fifth-floor pool looks over the skyline, and Taikoo Hui is directly across the street for anyone who needs retail therapy first.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Piero Lissoni's near-monochrome modernism meets Shanghai's jade greens in a lobby so theatrical it makes the chandelier work for its keep. This boutique luxury hotel in Jing'an holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star, and its crowd runs to fashion people who dress for the lobby like it's a second outfit. Café Grey Deluxe spills onto a terrace; the spa and pool keep things civilized. Rooms run large and quiet, which is rarer than it sounds.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The Long Bar's 110-foot mahogany counter is the old Shanghai Club's most famous survivor, painstakingly restored from archival photographs, and it sets the tone for this luxury hotel on the Bund. Two buildings in one, the neoclassical wing houses the suites while a modern tower holds the rest of the 260 rooms, all of them large, all of them equipped with Japanese electronic toilets and mirror-embedded TVs. Forbes Four Star. The in-house florist and personal shopper are not a joke.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The green copper roof has presided over the Bund since the Twenties, back when Noël Coward was allegedly writing plays here between drinks. This Art Deco landmark is a luxury hotel where the octagonal marble lobby, glazed dome, and original Lalique wall art do most of the talking. Rooms are elegant and genuinely comfortable, the Jazz Bar's house band holds a Guinness record, and the location, where the Bund meets Nanjing Road, is as central as Shanghai gets. A Forbes Four Star property.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The 105-foot bar running the length of the lobby sets the tone: a design hotel that takes the calm seriously. Dark wood, black stone, and muted fabrics give the place a spa-like stillness unusual for the middle of Jing'an District, and floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto the park rather than the street. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key, with a 25-meter pool and full spa downstairs for anyone who came to Shanghai to genuinely decompress.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Art deco gets a Pudong makeover here, all cream marble bathrooms with gold accents and floor-to-ceiling views of the Bund. The Ritz-Carlton Shanghai is a full-scale luxury hotel that earns its Forbes Four Star and Michelin Key without making you feel like you're staying inside a brochure. The rooftop bar, Flair, draws a crowd that's genuinely split between locals and guests, which is the clearest sign a hotel has figured something out.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Stepping off Nanjing West Road into this hotel is a mild form of culture shock, the lobby so deliberately quiet and unadorned it reads almost like a provocation. Local design duo Neri and Hu stripped out every chandelier and gold leaf flourish that usually signals luxury in Shanghai, replacing it with an organic minimalism that somehow still feels warm. Holding a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star, it has 170 rooms and suites, a Thai-style spa, and a transplanted Italian restaurant.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The Park Hyatt occupies floors 79 through 93 of the Shanghai World Financial Center, which means the infinity pool sits on the 85th floor and the views from your room are, by any measure, absurd. Inside, the palette runs to gray, cream, and dark wood, the whole thing feeling more like a very well-appointed private residence than a tower hotel. Contemporary Chinese art and the occasional patch of grass keep it from reading too serious. A Forbes Four Star property.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A curvy tower in Xintiandi that leans into contradictions, the Andaz is a boutique-feeling hotel inside a 28-story Hyatt property, where the rooms run red and rich hardwood, LED lighting shifts to suit your mood, and an iPad controls everything from the shades to room service. The French patisserie and modern Shanghainese restaurant give you reasons to stay in. Shopping and the Metro are a short walk out the door.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Floors 84 to 120 of China's tallest building, which means the Bund, the Huangpu River, and the Oriental Pearl Tower arranged below you like a scale model. This luxury hotel keeps 131 rooms and 34 suites, each angled differently by the tower's spiral form, all with full-length windows and round-the-clock butler service. Diptyque and Hermès in the bath, a spa, a pool, and seven restaurants, one of them up on the 120th floor.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The lobby announces itself with a spritz of ginger flower scent, which you can buy bottled at the gift shop if you fall hard enough. The Langham is a 357-room luxury hotel sitting directly across from Xintiandi's cobbled shikumen lanes, with a three-story chandelier that sets expectations the guest rooms wisely dial back, trading drama for lacquered wood and modern Chinese calm. Club floors come with round-the-clock butlers, and the Chuan Spa handles the rest.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The rooftop draws almost exclusively young Shanghainese, which tells you everything about how this hotel plays its hand. Ian Schrager's EDITION brand runs on glamorous public spaces over quiet rooms, and the Shanghai outpost delivers: five bars, two of them on the roof, a full nightclub, Japanese and Cantonese restaurants, and a modern British kitchen from Jason Atherton. The 145 rooms are sleek and light-toned, many facing the Bund.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Foster and Partners designed this luxury hotel on the Bund, and the 32-foot lobby ceiling with its jade-and-marble tile makes the intent clear before you've even checked in. Rooms on the upper floors look out over the historic riverfront skyline, and the afternoon tea service has developed its own following. The crowd skews toward Shanghai's fashion-forward set, which makes the whole thing feel less stuffy than the opulence might suggest.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Fifty antique Ming and Qing dynasty houses were dismantled stone by stone and reassembled here, alongside ten thousand ancient camphor trees rescued from a rising reservoir, which is an unusual origin story even for an Aman resort. The 25-acre retreat southwest of Shanghai holds Michelin's 1 Key and a Forbes Four Star, and delivers the full Aman formula: obsessive quiet, flawless service, and architecture that makes you feel vaguely unworthy of the room.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Positioned on the Suzhou River with views across to the Bund and the Lujiazui skyline, this hotel sits in Hongkou, one of the few Shanghai neighborhoods where art deco facades still stand and elderly residents haul groceries home from the wet market. Inside, the mood shifts to grand: over a thousand artworks sourced globally fill the interiors. A Forbes Four Star property, it's the first Bellagio outside the United States, with 162 rooms, dining, and a full spa.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

An in-house craft brewery inside a luxury hotel is either a very good idea or a sign the minibar committee got out of hand, and at Kerry Hotel Pudong it reads as the former. This contemporary five-star sits beside Century Park in Pudong, with a vast sports and spa complex, a formal Cantonese restaurant, a casual steakhouse, and a brewmaster producing the IPAs. Rooms are spacious, the atmosphere a notch less stiff than the Shangri-La sibling upstairs.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The 50 #74 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars

Checkered tiles, timber walls, and green leather stools that look like a diner lost its passport and ended up in Huangpu. Pony Up is an all-day bar on Jinxian Road, open from early afternoon so the post-lunch crowd has somewhere respectable to be. The signature Cigar cocktail layers vermouth, absinthe, and a house smoke-infused spirit. Asia's 50 Best Bars has it on their Discovery list.

1. The 50 #97 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars

A cocktail bar that doubles as a scavenger hunt: find Tipsy, the secret bar hidden somewhere in the building, and you've earned bragging rights for the evening. Sober Company runs three floors of drinking and eating, but Sober Society is the heart of it, where the team behind Speak Low works through a menu of cocktails built around Chinese ingredients. It has landed on Asia's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

1. The 50 #81 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

You enter through a sliding bookshelf inside a cocktail equipment shop, which sets the tone nicely. This three-floor cocktail bar from Shingo Gokan has long since shed any real secrecy, but the ritual of getting in still earns its keep. The second floor is where the serious drinking happens; the top floor, rare whiskies and a members-only door. The crowd knows what it ordered before it sits down.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The indoor pool sits under a glass enclosure that tricks you into thinking you're outside, which is a neat trick for a luxury hotel in the middle of one of the most densely packed cities on earth. Rooms run large, the lobby runs larger, and personal space is treated less as an amenity than a guiding philosophy. Business travelers use it as a base for the Jing'an commercial district, a short walk away.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame either the Pudong skyline or the slower curve of the Huangpu River, depending on which side of this large luxury hotel you land. The atrium soars, the beds are reliably cloud-soft, and Bvlgari amenities in the bath signal where this place sits on the spectrum. An infinity pool and spa add to the case for staying in, and rooftop cocktails come with the kind of panoramas that make the city feel like a prop.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Floors 30 through 59 of the Jing An Kerry Centre, which means the lobby's wall-of-water feature is technically closer to the clouds than to the street. This is a luxury hotel in the Shangri-La mold, so more is always more: marble bathrooms with heated floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, suites with silver mosaic walls and Bulgari products. The lap pool sits under a sky dome, and the 55th-floor lounge turns Shanghai's skyline into wallpaper.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The top-floor Char Bar has views of the Pudong skyline that make the room feel like a screensaver, except you're holding a drink. This design-forward boutique hotel on the Bund pairs high-end rooms with interiors that swing hard between ancient Chinese motifs and bold contemporary color, which could easily go wrong and mostly doesn't. Many rooms look out over the Huangpu River, and the riverside café downstairs gives you the same view at breakfast.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Terra cotta bricks by Swiss-Italian architect Mario Botta give this business hotel in the old French Concession a geometric facade that feels deliberate rather than decorative. Inside, an elliptical courtyard offers an unlikely patch of green, and rooms go Art Deco with a Chinese inflection, big windows, and bathrooms that lean generous. Restaurants cover both international and Cantonese ground, and the spa has a solid reputation around town.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The name sets expectations that the address quietly overturns: this InterContinental is not a tower above the skyline but a century-old estate, gardens and all, that once served as the State Guest House. European-style buildings sit amid parkland that most Shanghai hotels would trade their infinity pools for. The rooms and spa are as polished as any in the chain; guests just happen to fall asleep somewhere that feels nothing like a hotel.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Kempinski The One Suites skips hotel rooms entirely, offering only suites, some with kitchenettes, others with full kitchens for something closer to a residential stay. The Deco-influenced décor and generous bathrooms lean polished without tipping into cold, and the building sits above Jing'an within easy range of decent retail and nightlife. A Noevir spa, pool, gym, and a terrace cocktail bar fill out the hours between checkout and the inevitable rescheduling of checkout.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The lobby's floating crystal centerpiece is built around Shanghai's official flower, the magnolia, and that single decision tells you everything about how this luxury hotel thinks. Rooms face either the historic Bund embankment or the Pudong skyline, and the dining options run from a glass-bloomed Chinese restaurant to an all-day room styled, apparently without irony, after The Wizard of Oz.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Full-length windows in every room frame the Pudong skyline from inside the Lujiazui business district, which is either the view or the commute, depending on why you're here. This is a luxury hotel pitched squarely at business travelers, with Art Deco rooms that manage to feel considered rather than corporate. The spa sits on the top floor, the indoor pool shares that same skyline, and the restaurant options run from Italian to teppanyaki to an extravagant Cantonese spread across five private dining rooms.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A giant thumb sculpture anchors the lobby lounge, which is either a provocation or a perfect metaphor for Pudong, depending on your mood. This full-service hotel sits in one of Shanghai's most architecturally restless neighborhoods, and the building commits: bold common spaces give way to cloud-white guest rooms that feel like a deliberate exhale. Four restaurants, a pool, tennis, and meeting facilities round out a property that runs on energy rather than hush.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The public spaces lean into chiaroscuro drama, all shadow and contrast, while the rooms pull back toward something calmer and more textured, with metal and stone and fabric sharing the same walls. A rooftop infinity pool floats above Pudong in case you need reminding you're not in Paris, though Le Chloé downstairs does its level best to keep that particular illusion going. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and one of the more theatrically designed boutique options in Shanghai.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A cocktail bar on Nanchang Road where the design philosophy comes from Virgil Abloh's 3% rule: change an existing thing by just that much and it becomes something new. The shelves hold a select few bottles, the lighting is considered, and nothing extra survives the edit. The drinks menu is equally spare, which either feels like restraint or curation depending on your mood, but the room makes a strong argument for less.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Rooms here are laid out more like apartments than hotel suites, with kitchenettes, separate living and sleeping zones, and floor-to-ceiling windows over the Shanghai skyline. Tucked into the MixC complex near Ziteng Road Metro, it sits close to the airport, rail, and convention center, which explains the clientele. The 24-hour gym sits next to the laundry room, a pairing that tells you everything about who stays here and for how long.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A neon-lit cube perched atop the Himalayas Center, this Pudong hotel looks like a Blade Runner set that got a little too into itself. The Burj Al Arab people built it, so the public spaces lean hard into spectacle, but the rooms pull back into calm, contemporary Chinese classicism. A 14-story interior atrium handles the drama from inside. Shopping, an art museum, and a maglev link are all on the doorstep.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Seven rooms, a garden yoga class, and a lobby that feels borrowed from someone's very tasteful apartment: this boutique hotel in Minhang runs more like a neighborhood guesthouse than a Shanghai address. Pale wood, white walls, and potted greenery keep things calm, while the restaurant handles both Chinese and British dishes without committing to either identity. Free shuttle to Hongqiao Airport, which the couples who fill this place seem to find very convenient.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Check-in happens at Bar Moxy, which sets the tone: this is a hotel that skips the marble lobby in favor of a drink and a barstool. Rooms are compact and unapologetically functional, with floor-to-ceiling windows, walk-in rain showers, and enough USB ports to charge a small film crew. It sits close to the convention center, Hongqiao rail, and the airport, which explains the guests. The front desk doubles as a local guide, so ask.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

You walk into Barules through a scarlet London phone box, which sets the tone nicely. Inside, this cocktail bar pays quiet tribute to the craft, with portraits of bartending legends lining the walls and glass cabinets full of cocktail kit. The menu leans fresh and fruit-forward rather than classical, which surprises you given all the reverence on display. A bar for people who know the names on those portraits and enjoy the slight irony of ordering something bright and tropical beneath them.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A retro Coca-Cola vending machine in what looks like an abandoned sandwich shop turns out to be the door, which is exactly the kind of entrance Flask deserves. The bar sits behind it down a narrow brick passage that fire marshals would probably prefer not to know about. It's the sort of cocktail bar that makes you feel briefly like a genius for finding it, then immediately guilty for telling anyone.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Dial zero on the retro telephone tucked inside El Ocho and a door opens into a 17-seat cocktail bar where there is no menu, only a conversation. The bartender listens, then builds something to order, while hot towels and crystal water glasses set a register closer to Tokyo than Shanghai. The passion here is personal in a way a larger room could never sustain.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A warren of mirror-lined rooms on the third floor of Zhang Yuan, this cocktail bar runs on velvet seats, low light, and a sunken bar that makes the whole place feel like a speakeasy someone actually finished decorating. The menu skews classical, organized by Old-Fashioneds, Flips, Tiki, and the rest, with dark spirits leading the charge. The name is Spanish for eight, which is lucky, which the Chinese know, which means the odds are already in your favor.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked into the first floor of an apartment block on Wukang Lu, this cocktail bar commits to a decorating scheme where Qing dynasty meets Louis XVI, with gilt, lacquer, velvet in purple and scarlet, lion heads, and birdcages all arriving at once. The menu balances house originals against classics like the Bramble and Sidecar, though the room has already done most of the theatrical heavy lifting before your drink arrives.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide