Varanasi isn’t just another holiday destination. This city, on the banks of the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh, is a pilgrimage site, one of the spiritual centers of India, and is worthy of a certain amount of reverence, even from secular travelers. To that end, Varanasi’s most extraordinary hotel makes a few demands on its guests: there’s no alcohol served here, and all meals are strictly vegetarian. Deal-breakers for some, perhaps, but an experience like the one you’ll have at Brij Rama Palace is worth a bit of sacrifice.

We spend a lot of time in these virtual pages wrestling with the pros and cons of India’s two main hotel genres. On the one hand you’ve got the historic palace hotels, which make a virtue out of traditional architecture and traditional service. And on the other you’ve got the stylish, design-conscious boutique hotels. Rarely can you stay in a hotel with one foot in each world — but that’s exactly what RAAS Jodhpur is. Thoroughly modern within, thoroughly ancient without, it’s something special indeed: a chic luxury boutique that blends seamlessly into the old walled city of Jodphur.

Frankly it’s astonishing that there aren’t more hotels like RAAS Devigarh. Not because 18th-century palace hotels are a dime a dozen in India — certainly they aren’t — but because the contrast between the faded majesty of the exterior and the sparkling modernity of the interiors is so striking. Of course a part of the impact depends upon the novelty of looking out from your all-white marble-floored minimalist fantasy of a suite through traditional jharoka windows over the rugged Rajasthani countryside.

If you’re skeptical of a sparkling new hotel that’s being billed as an “urban village,” try to reserve your judgment for just a moment. It’s true that the hoteliers behind the Rosewood Beijing get a bit high-concept at times — what we’d call a concierge, the hotel refers to as “Rosewood curators.” But look past the branding exercises and you’ll find an exceedingly professional, exceptionally well-executed hotel, and one that’s packed with local character.

Having a whole hotel floor to yourself is a luxury that’s usually reserved for the high-rollers in the penthouse suite. Not at One96 in Hong Kong. At this super-sleek boutique hotel, housed in an eye-catching modernist building that’s midway between the Central and Sheung Wan districts, the glass exterior mimics the texture of undulating waves – every suite occupies a whole level. So you don’t have to share those panoramic city skyline views with the adjacent room. And you won’t have to hear the neighbor’s sound system through the bedroom wall. And you don’t have to endure that awkward wait for the elevator with perfect strangers — no, you’ll summon the lift from your private “lift lobby.”

While “funky” and “bohemian” might have become the new hospitality watchwords, the dream of glossy, clean-lined modernism is alive in Hong Kong. You know Christian Liaigre for his work in Europe, especially Paris, but his elegant, focused interiors work is on display at the Jervois, a high-end, high-rise, high-design boutique hotel in Sheung Wan, one of the island’s most desirable districts — seemingly hidden in plain sight, surrounded by many of the city’s finest shops and restaurants.

It’s rare that a brand new hotel rockets straight to the top of Hong Kong’s hospitality scene, and rarer still, for obvious reasons, that it’s converted from a late-Sixties landmark government building by the eminent London-based architects Foster + Partners. But, as is by now clear, the Murray is no ordinary hotel. The original structure is oddly well-suited to luxury-hotel use — its recessed, angled windows keep direct sunlight to a minimum, which helps to cool the rooms. And Foster + Partners made significant improvements as well, and not just in interior design — they opened up the ground level to street life, for one thing, a concern that the original government ministry didn’t share.

Originally intended as a private estate, this parcel of land in the Indian Himalayas would have been quite simply too stunning not to share. Sri Lankan architects Pradeep Kodikara and Jineshi Samaraweera, disciples of the modernist master Geoffrey Bawa, have built something absolutely extraordinary — and while a high-end ten-suite mountain retreat isn’t exactly mass tourism, the fact is that it’s open to many more visitors than it would have been as a private house.

Travelers from all over the world come to Uttar Pradesh with one goal in mind: passing through the grand marble gates of the Taj Mahal. Far from the camera-snapping crowds of Agra, however, another destination awaits, one that’s relatively undiscovered by tourists. Lucknow, the capital, doesn’t have one must-see landmark. What it offers is the chance to step into the past — to wander through glittering sultan’s palaces, to view the faded grandeur of the British Raj, to live out their Passage to India-style fantasy in relative solitude.

When some hotels profess minimalism, you get the impression that they’re striving for an aloof, inhuman emptiness rather than simplicity, clarity and thoughtfulness. Not so with Noku, a medium-sized number at the southwest corner of Kyoto’s imperial palace complex. Simplicity rules the day here — as it should, to distance the neighborhood from the city’s hectic retail sectors — but it’s a warm, breathing simplicity built on acknowledging and fulfilling travelers’ needs.

Tokyo doesn’t really have a single central downtown district, but if you’re in the business of banking and finance, you’ll find you’re spending an awful lot of time in Marunouchi. (And with easy access to the Imperial Palace and to Ginza, it’s not a bad spot for sightseers or shoppers, either.) Some of the world’s most impressive high-end hotels are located here — and they’re joined by Ascott Marunouchi Tokyo, whose serviced apartments give the luxury chains a run for their money.

Foreigners traveling to Tokyo face a set of obstacles they’re unlikely to encounter elsewhere — just getting around can be a struggle, given the sheer size and complexity of the city, and the fact that many streets seem to be unnamed. Selecting a hotel, one soon finds, is also not without its challenges.

Like many Tokyo hotels, the Park Hotel occupies part of a mixed-use skyscraper; in this case, ten uppermost floors of the Shiodome Media Tower, right in the heart of downtown. Architecturally, the Park Hotel is rather unique — the core of the building has been hollowed out, so that its 273 rooms all face outward.

It’s a rare Tokyo hotel where you’re in touch with nature, aside from a distant view of Mount Fuji — 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.

From American blue jeans to French pastry to Italian coffee — increasingly, Tokyo is where other countries go to see their local arts and crafts practiced at the highest possible level. The youth-oriented, high-design, hyper-social boutique hotel certainly didn’t originate in Japan, but again, it just might be in Tokyo that it finds its most perfect expression. TRUNK Hotel is the local version of something like the Ace Hotel Shoreditch or the Wythe in Williamsburg, but it’s no mere copy — as is so often the case in Japan, what sets it apart is the sheer quality of its execution, which is in turn the product of a fanatical attention to detail.

Much of the buzz around Sri Lanka has centered on the seaside colonial town of Galle Fort, and the beach in general. Perfectly reasonable, and all very well — but there’s more to it than that. For example, a few miles inland from Galle there’s Kahanda Kanda, formerly a private residence and still a working tea plantation, but one whose owner has turned it, to everyone’s benefit, into a small and contemporary boutique-style hotel.

We’ve been singing the praises of Sri Lanka’s boutique hotels for some time now, but we’ve got to admit, this one took our breath away. Santani Wellness Resort and Spa puts together so many of the things we love about this island — the unbearably scenic landscapes of the interior, the homegrown tradition of tropical-modernist concrete architecture, and the legendarily welcoming Sri Lankan hospitality — that it might be worth a return trip all on its own.

If views are your thing, you can’t do any better in South Korea than Signiel Seoul. It occupies the 76th to 101st floors of the Lotte World Tower, which is one of the world’s tallest buildings. This means it’s by far the tallest in town, affording an unparalleled vantage point from which to observe the endless sprawl of the city and the mountains beyond – even from the lowest floor of the hotel you’re above the top of Seoul’s next-tallest tower.

The Standard, Bangkok is a return to roots, in a sense, for the now-venerable boutique hospitality brand — the second Standard hotel, in downtown Los Angeles, was a skyscraper hotel (albeit one of a more modest height) complete with a vibrant and vertiginous rooftop bar. This one, occupying the lower floors of an eye-catching 78-story tower, is far from modest, and its home, the mixed-use King Power Mahanakhon Building, is a unique one, with a spiraling, pixelated cutaway stretching the full height of the building.

The Standard Hotels are known for two things: hip urban skyscraper hotels, and glamorous coastal resort hotels — and their first steps in Thailand include one of each. Opening just before the Standard Bangkok, the Standard Hua Hin finds itself not in Phuket or Koh Samui but in Hua Hin, the former fishing village that’s now the heart of what’s sometimes called the Thai Riviera, along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand.

Named for its location on Little India’s Serangoon Road, Serangoon House Singapore is as pure an Indian colonial fantasy as you’re likely to find outside of the subcontinent itself. The lobby is dazzlingly opulent, decked out in custom-made antique-style furniture and bold, brash colors; the 90 rooms and suites are a touch more modern, but absolutely no less lavish in style.

The smart move on Koh Samui has long been to retreat to as private a corner of the island as you can find — and it would be difficult to come up with something more private than Kerem Luxury Beachfront Villas. Here in Plai Laem you’re only a few minutes’ drive from such busy locales as Chaweng Beach, but on this hillside, at the end of the peninsula, overlooking a private beach, life is as tranquil as can be.

Tokyo’s luxury hotels are already in a class of their own, but Ian Schrager’s Edition brand is a welcome addition all the same. It’s a natural next step, and not just a business decision: Schrager’s hotels and nightclubs have long borne a seldom-noticed Japanese influence. More upscale than his original Schrager-branded boutique hotels, and more stylish than its staid luxury-hotel competition, the Tokyo Edition, Toranomon occupies a place all its own in the Japanese capital’s hotel scene.

The previous generation of Bangkok luxury hotels produced examples on a level with the best in the world. They’re still fantastic hotels, but a lot has changed in hospitality — not only has the explosion of boutique hotels introduced a wealth of new styles, but the advent of apartment-sharing has breathed new life into extended-stay and apartment-style hotels. 137 Pillars Suites & Residences is a luxury hotel of the new breed, which has taken all of these lessons on board. In fact 137 Pillars is, in some ways, two hotels in one — this listing is for 137 Pillars Suites alone. (The Residences are available on this page.)

It’s increasingly rare for a brand-new hotel tower to open that’s comprised exclusively of hotel rooms and suites — in order to make the numbers add up, there’s often a residential component as well. Bangkok’s 137 Pillars Suites & Residences follows this formula, but it’s unusual in the sense that the residences, too, are available to paying guests. Think of them as the swankiest (and best-serviced) apartment-share you’ll ever have — finally a chance to see how the other half lives. (This listing is exclusive to the Residences — see this page for the Suites.)

With a name taken from a poem by the Englishman Edward Lear, the Owl and the Pussycat wears its literary inspiration on its sleeve — and if you were to imagine what a modernist Sri Lankan boutique hotel dedicated to a Victorian eccentric might look like, you’d be very much on the right track. It’s set right on the water, with a direct view onto the Indian Ocean, just down the coast from Galle, not far from Unawatuna Beach, one of the island’s finest.

A balé is a traditional Balinese pavilion, and it’s a fitting (if understated) name for this hotel, comprised as it is of twenty-six pavilions awash in sunlight and sea breezes. They’re anything but traditional, though; sharp, clean lines, sleek dark woods and Zen-inspired furnishings add up to interiors that might not look out of place in Milan — though, frankly, the sheer spaciousness of these rooms and their king-size beds might give the game away.

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