The Best Hotels in Veracruz

Thatched-roof bungalows on the outside, crisp all-white rooms within: Hotel Azúcar is an eco-resort near San Rafael, a beach town that makes Playa del Carmen look like a metropolis. The Habita group keeps the choices simple, twenty bungalows with private terraces and hammocks, which tells you everything. A seafood restaurant, an open-air library, beanbags by the pool, and beach huts round it out. Bikes, horses, and pre-Columbian ruins are nearby for anyone who tires of the hammock.

A nineteenth-century French estate tucked into the banana plantations of coastal Veracruz is already doing more than most boutique hotels ask of themselves. Maison Couturier runs nine rooms across eight bungalows and a main-house suite, kept just modern enough to be comfortable without breaking the spell of its countrified elegance. It's a Grupo Habita property, which is shorthand for taste over flash, and the French restaurant and pool carry that same unhurried register.