Honor Roll #2

Award season is here. Our editors have selected their favorite designs from hotels added to the Tablet selection in the past year. Here are the winners for North America.

We’ve sifted through every hotel added to our selection over the previous year and picked those we think have the best overall designs. This is a subjective list, as all such lists are, but we were guided by a set of five objective criteria.

We looked for creativity: Hotels that put on clear display the personality, originality, and ingenuity of their creators.
We looked for novelty: Hotels with unique themes, one-of-a-kind arrangements, and idiosyncratic interpretations of hospitality.
We looked for dedication: Hotels with a complete and thorough commitment to their narrative, down to the door handles and deck chairs.
We looked for compatibility: Hotels that complement, improve, reflect, and protect the surrounding cultures and landscapes.
We looked for emotion: As in, places that stirred within this grizzled group of hotel veterans the most awe or delight or satisfaction at having seen something we’d never seen done quite the same way before.

We looked and we looked and we were left with the hotels below, which represent the best new designs from North America (here are the winners for Europe). We hope you enjoy.

Le Petit Pali at 8th Ave

Carmel, CA, USA

It shares the unpretentious, vintage-inspired warmth of all the Palisociety hotels, but Le Petit Pali at 8th Ave is a 24-room inn that’s closer in its scale and concept to a seaside bed-and-breakfast than an urban boutique hotel. It occupies a charming and thoroughly Californian Craftsman-style building, which is aesthetically a perfect match for Palisociety’s eclectic interiors.

Nomade Holbox

Holbox, Mexico

The focus at Nomade Holbox is on wellness: Mayan-inspired sound healing, breathwork, and yoga are offered inside a structure that’s unironically called the Gratitude Tent. And even outside the tent there’s plenty to be grateful for, starting with the hotel’s series of modern treehouses, each with a queen-sized bed facing the water, an indoor-outdoor shower, and a rooftop terrace offering 360-degree views over the island scenery.

The Lafayette Hotel and Club

San Diego, CA, USA

San Diego’s iconic Lafayette Hotel hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner during its mid-century heyday, and was the setting for a memorable scene from Top Gun. The property was renovated by a local hospitality group that runs some of the city’s most stylish bars and restaurants, and reopened its doors in 2023 as the Lafayette Hotel & Club, an urban resort steeped in retro glamour and celebrated for its gourmet food and drinks.

The Manner

New York City, NY, USA

This address on Thompson Street has long been part of boutique-hotel history, but The Manner is a fresh start. There’s no trace of the minimalist look that used to rule Downtown hotels, instead you’ll find colorful and richly textured interiors, and an atmosphere that calls to mind a particularly glamorous residence. It’s more discreet than opulent, though its restaurant and swanky cocktail bar are bound to attract attention.

Casa Hoyos

San Miguel De Allende, Mexico

It’s not the only boutique hotel in Mexico that’s fashioned out of a Spanish colonial mansion, complete with an Andalusian-style patio and colorful tilework. But San Miguel de Allende’s Casa Hoyos is delightfully one-of-a-kind. Inspired by Julián Hoyos, a Spaniard who snapped up the property in 1938, the décor is colorful, vibrant, and filled with cheerful greenery and eclectic design pieces.

Little Palm Island

Little Torch Key, FL, USA

This four-acre private-island resort is home to a mere 30 suites, and a couple of rules — no guests under 18, no audible cell phones — serve to keep the atmosphere properly tranquil. The suites at Little Palm Island are divided among a number of thatched-roof bungalows, some more secluded than others, but all more than private enough. The look is thoroughly classic, in the British West Indies mode, while the comforts are delightfully low-tech.

Camptown Catskills

Leeds, NY, USA

Not every modern-day Catskills escape begins with raw material as promising as the 1930s motel that now serves as Camptown’s main lodge — this building is full of character. The nearly century-old bones of the place have been preserved, but it’s been refinished in a style that’s not excessively true to any one era — there’s a bit of modernism, a healthy dose of Shaker simplicity, and plenty of rustic rough edge.

Villa Santa Cruz

Todos Santos, Mexico

The primary aim of Villa Santa Cruz is to provide guests with an opportunity to unwind in a style that’s both luxurious and as casual as can be. Its owners, two Calfornia-born couples, started with a single villa, and slowly expanded the hotel’s offerings into what you see today: a second villa, a handful of bungalows and poolside mini-villas, and four tented suites, for maximum communion with the beachfront setting.

Green Gables Inn

Pacific Grove, CA, USA

Green Gables Inn is the flagship location of Four Sisters Inns, a collection of sophisticated boutique hotels. It’s long been an incredibly quaint place to stay, but recent renovations have made it more inviting than ever. Common spaces and guest rooms have been brightened and refreshed, the interiors modern but cozy with rustic wood flooring, linen sofas, earth tones, and dreamy watercolor paintings capturing scenes of the sky and the sea.

Boca de Agua Bacalar

Bacalar, Mexico

There’s visiting the Yucatán, and then there’s fully immersing yourself in it. Boca de Agua Bacalar offers an experience that falls firmly in the latter camp, plopping you right on the banks of the Bacalar lagoon and its outrageously clear turquoise waters. Rooms come treehouse style, lifted on stilts to minimize their footprint while also affording sweeping vistas of the jungle — and, if you’re lucky, a spider monkey or an iguana.

Casona los Cedros

Espita, Mexico

The main building at Casona los Cedros, an old colonial villa framed by tropical foliage, was abandoned for decades before a French architect snapped up the property and transformed it into a modern boutique hotel. The original structure now houses the reception and bar, while the new addition, built by local craftspeople using traditional materials like stone and wood, features nine minimalist guest rooms.

Hotel Bardo

Savannah, GA, USA

Quite a lot of the appeal of the American South lies in its attachment to history and tradition. But there’s room for a little creativity. While other Southern mansion hotels feel dry and airless, preserved in amber, Hotel Bardo Savannah is a fantasy — behind the walls of this treasured 19th-century Victorian mansion is a hotel that’s caught between two worlds: the tranquil seclusion of a resort and the convivial bustle of a private members’ club.

Blind Tiger Carleton Street

Portland, ME, USA

A few blocks from its sister on Danforth Street, Blind Tiger Carleton Street carries on in the same style: a six-room guest house in a charming residential neighborhood, decorated with a carefully curated selection of vintage furnishings and local artworks, all within easy walking distance of the best this city has to offer. In spite of their small size and their private nature, the Blind Tiger houses manage to be such friendly and sociable places.

Hotel Henrietta

New Orleans, LA, USA

New Orleans might just have more character than any other city in the United States. Not every hotel in town lives up to the city’s legendary reputation, but the Henrietta has personality to spare. It’s a new build, and a strikingly modern one at that, at least from the outside — but look closer and you’ll see it’s packed with references to classic NOLA architecture, from the arched colonnade on the ground floor to the galleries on the upper floors.