The Floor Is Yours

We’re pleased to reveal the highest-rated hotels in our twenty-five year history, picked by the people who matter most: you.

Skip down to the hotels.

When Tablet launched in 2000, our founders knew we had to be more than a curated selection of hotels. They knew our clients would be more knowledgable than the average traveler, and that their feelings about hotels would be more insightful. So, like other sites, we started collecting post-stay ratings from Tablet guests.

Unlike those other sites, though, our selection only features the top 1% of hotels, and it was clear the typical 10-point rating scale wouldn’t suffice. We needed something more compatible with our standards and the standards of our users. One of our founders was Parisian, and for inspiration, he turned to the 20-point scale used in French academic grading.

This larger scale allowed for more nuance, giving us room to ensure elite hotels are graded on the proper curve. It also acted as an early warning system. In the French scale, scores over 15 are rare. In ours, if a hotel’s guest score dips below 15, we reevaluate whether it should even remain in the selection. The 20-point feedback scale has served us well over the past quarter century. Which brings us to this: your top-rated hotels over that time.

For those who enjoy the inner workings of things, here’s how we compiled this list:

— First, we isolated the hotels that had guest feedback scores of 19.5 or above (out of 20).
— Then, we identified which of those were booked and reviewed the most (yes, that means hotels that are incredibly far afield or incredibly expensive are at a disadvantage).
— Next, we applied a little recency bias: even though this list is meant to encompass our entire history, the hotels can’t coast through on former glories.
— Finally, when tiebreaks were needed, bigger personalities got preference.

And now, a list twenty-five years in the making. The floor is yours.

#15. Tourists

North Adams, MA, USA

The Berkshires revival is well underway. Thanks in part to the redevelopment that’s accompanied MASS MoCA, the contemporary art museum, the formerly industrial town of North Adams is living a second life as a booming cultural destination. Outside the town center you’ll find another piece of reclaimed Berkshires heritage: TOURISTS, a Sixties motor lodge reborn as a very modern, very hip little country boutique hotel.

#14. Alma Barcelona

Barcelona, Spain

All that Gaudí architecture has set the bar rather high for Barcelona’s builders, and the Alma Barcelona proves it’s very much up to the challenge. It’s no cathedral, but its interiors, all minimalist subtlety, epitomize the quieter side of Barcelona’s visual style, which is at its best in the largely residential Eixample. It’s the next best thing to keeping your own pied à terre.

#13. Sparrows Lodge

Palm Springs, CA, USA

Sparrows Lodge is not aiming for the mainstream. Recycled from the Fifties and refreshed for a style-conscious clientele, this woodsy hideaway is the kind of place where people play horseshoes, swing wooden tennis rackets and read books by their private campfires. It’s like a dreamy hipster version of the summer camp of your childhood — and it proves there’s certainly a place for a rustic-chic ranch in this corner of the desert.

#12. Soprarno Suites

Florence, Italy

The eclectic, bohemian, vintage-inspired style that’s currently all the rage in the United States is also, you’ll find, all the rage in Europe — and in Italy, where the word “vintage” covers several hundred more years of history, the resulting style is rich indeed. For an illustration, you could hardly do better than Soprarno Suites, a small, quiet, intimate little ten-suite hotel right in the heart of Florence.

#11. Saint James Paris

Paris, France

Suffice it to say that the Saint James is anything but typical. In Paris an hôtel particulier, a freestanding house, is unusual enough — something like the Saint James, almost a country-style château, surrounded by a wall and garden, is vanishingly rare. It’s fresh off a thorough renovation by Laura Gonzalez, who has updated its unique interiors for a new decade.

#10. The Hotel Chelsea

New York City, NY, USA

The Hotel Chelsea is where just about every artist of any significance lived, stayed, or at least hung out; from Mark Twain to Madonna. Its walls are still adorned with artworks donated by generations of well-known visual artists. And what’s perhaps most impressive about the freshly renovated Chelsea is how much of this romance remains intact, even as it’s been updated for 21st-century boutique-hotel travelers.

#9. Witt Istanbul Hotel

Istanbul, Turkey

The design of Witt Istanbul is by Autoban, the local firm that’s responsible for quite a lot of the contemporary-style interiors you’ll see around town. Their look for the Witt is modernist-inspired but also lush and luxurious, space-age lines expressed in rich textures of wood and leather. Each suite is outfitted with apartment-style comforts, including separate living rooms and kitchens.

#8. Loden Hotel

Vancouver, Canada

You can think of Coal Harbour, on the north edge of Vancouver’s downtown, as stadium seating for the breathtaking panorama that unfolds across the Burrard Inlet. It’s there, in a sleek glass tower, that you’ll find the Loden. Rooms at Loden are available in five levels of understated fabulousness, the pinnacle of which is the Halo Suite, which comes complete with wrap-around terrace for superb mountain-ogling.

#7. Hotel Unique

Sao Paulo, Brazil

The structure of Hotel Unique is by Niemeyer protegé Ruy Ohtake (himself one of Brazil’s most famous architects) and takes the form of a half-disc, flat at the top. Controversially, Ohtake was not allowed to design the interiors, but designer João Armentano’s gain is ours as well — his restrained spaces balance Ohtake’s flair for the dramatic, and the result is harmonious and relaxed.

#6. La Minervetta

Sorrento, Italy

Contemporary design on the Amalfi coast — that alone makes La Minervetta worth noting. The hotel’s twelve guest rooms are bright and sunny — literally, with views through full-length windows over Sorrento, the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, and figuratively as well, clean-lined and decked out in vivid tones, anywhere from lime green and turquoise to simple, almost Nordic primary colors.

#5. The Whitby Hotel

New York City, NY, USA

The Whitby brings the warmth and coziness of English hospitality to a neighborhood that’s already got plenty of American-style luxury hotels, and proves that Firmdale can compete with anyone in the world on comfort, while looking just that much more stylish and charming while they’re at it. Here, as usual, owner-designer Kit Kemp puts her stamp on things, with trademark bold colors tuned to complement Midtown’s slightly muted palette.

#4. Ett Hem

Stockholm, Sweden

Even if Ett Hem’s aesthetic isn’t strictly homegrown — designer Ilse Crawford is London-born, to a Danish mother — the fact is, it’s probably the finest example anywhere of the current tendency in Scandinavian boutique hotel design: away from the kind of modernism that’s synonymous with “Scandinavian” design and toward something much warmer, a luxe, eclectic, stylish sort of coziness.

#3. The Capitol Hotel Tokyu

Tokyo, Japan

It’s a rare Tokyo hotel where you’re in touch with nature, but the Capitol Hotel Tokyu is anything but typical. Here, surrounded by greenery on the edge of the Imperial Palace, guests can use the local flora as their calendar: camellias mean winter, cherry blossoms spring, and the red-orange-yellow leaves of the maple tree are a sure sign of fall. A total rebuild by master architect Kengo Kuma offers the clean lines and minimalist aesthetic that typifies a certain Japanese style.

#2. Haymarket Hotel

London, UK

Our second Firmdale hotel, the Haymarket Hotel comes with its expected share of public and semi-private places — a conservatory, a drawing room, a private dining room — as well as a fine restaurant serving brasserie-style modern English cuisine, and a full-service spa. Where it steps out ahead of its sisters, however, is an 18-meter swimming pool, complete with a poolside bar and a booming sound system.

#1. Crosby Street Hotel

New York City, NY, USA

Yes, a third Firmdale hotel. Pretty amazing. According to the data, we could’ve reasonably included three more Firmdale’s on this list. We’ll just mention them here: The Soho Hotel, The Charlotte Street Hotel, and The Covent Garden Hotel, all in London. Learn more about the whole brand in our appropriately titled feature profile: Firmdale First.

As for the Crosby Street, it was Firmdale’s first in New York. The arrival of Kit Kemp’s eclectic design eye, ultra-vivid color sense, and affinity for prints and patterns may in fact have been what put an end to the downtown Manhattan mania for minimalist, monochrome luxury-hotel spaces. Crosby Street’s warehouse-style windows are a fine fit for industrial-influenced SoHo. But behind them: the strong dose of English town-meets-country luxury New York didn’t know it needed.