Loading page
Preview data: all rankings, scores, votes, refresh labels, methodology, testing and editorial-process statements in Top 49 are illustrative demo content, not live measurements or documented reviews.
Rank 172Up 2
#17 in World’s Best Hotels
of 20 ranked entries
The Plaza Hotel
New York City, USA · est. 1907
Overlooking Central Park since before the Titanic sailed, and the setting for enough films and books — Eloise, The Great Gatsby, Home Alone 2 — that most first-time guests recognise the lobby before they have ever checked in. A 2018 renovation modernised rooms without touching the exterior landmark status. Recorded specifics: city New York, opened 1907, nightly rate 900. Panel highlighted central Park views from a meaningful share of rooms, cultural recognition is genuine, built over more than a century of film and literature and 2018 renovation modernised infrastructure while preserving landmark exterior status. The reservation on record is high tourist foot traffic through public spaces affects the sense of exclusivity.
City hotelHistoric
Score breakdown
How The Plaza Hotel earned 76.6
Each criterion is scored independently, then combined using the weights published on World’s Best Hotels.
- Room & sleep qualityweight 30%
- 77.1
- Service consistencyweight 25%
- 78.6
- Design & atmosphereweight 20%
- 74.3
- Value at rateweight 25%
- 75.7
On the record
Recorded detail
| City | New York |
|---|---|
| Opened | 1907 |
| Nightly rate | $900 |
| Rooms | 282 |
| Rating | 8.7 |
Panel verdict
Strengths and reservations
What it gets right
- Central Park views from a meaningful share of rooms
- Cultural recognition is genuine, built over more than a century of film and literature
- 2018 renovation modernised infrastructure while preserving landmark exterior status
Where it gives ground
- High tourist foot traffic through public spaces affects the sense of exclusivity
1 appearance
Where this entry ranks
From the same list
Ranked alongside it
Rank 01Editor’s pickThe Oberoi Udaivilas
Udaipur, India · est. 2002
Built to resemble a maharaja’s palace on the shore of Lake Pichola, with domestic staff-to-guest ratios high enough that requests are frequently anticipated before they are made. Consistently rated the best hotel in the world by multiple independent guest-survey rankings, and the operational polish backs it up.
97.2/100 Top 49 score4Up 4
Rank 02Editor’s pickAmangiri
Canyon Point, Utah, USA · est. 2009
A concrete structure built directly into a sandstone mesa in a remote stretch of southern Utah, with a design philosophy that treats the desert as the primary luxury and the architecture as deliberately secondary to it. Thirty-four rooms and no visible neighbours for miles in any direction.
95.7/100 Top 49 score3Up 3
Rank 03Editor’s pickHôtel Ritz Paris
Paris, France · est. 1898
Coco Chanel lived here for over three decades, Hemingway drank in the bar that now bears his name, and a multi-year renovation in the 2010s modernised the infrastructure without stripping out what made the building famous in the first place. Still arguably the reference point for what a grand European hotel is supposed to be.
94.6/100 Top 49 score2Up 2
Rank 04Singita Sabi Sand
Sabi Sand Reserve, South Africa · est. 1993
A collection of safari lodges inside an unfenced reserve bordering Kruger National Park, where the absence of fencing means genuine, unpredictable wildlife movement rather than a managed enclosure. Conservation funding is built directly into the rate, not treated as an optional add-on.
93.6/100 Top 49 score1Down 1
Rank 05Aman Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan · est. 2014
Occupies the top six floors of a Otemachi tower, with a lobby built around a washi-paper lantern ceiling that filters daylight the way traditional Japanese architecture has for centuries, reinterpreted at skyscraper scale. Rooms use a restrained material palette that photographs as minimalist and lives as genuinely calming.
92.7/100 Top 49 score—No change
Rank 06Editor’s pickBurj Al Arab Jumeirah
Dubai, UAE · est. 1999
Built on its own artificial island in a sail silhouette specifically so it would be visible from the coastline, and every one of its 202 rooms is a duplex suite, several finished in enough gold leaf that restraint was clearly never the design brief. The helicopter pad doubling as a tennis court and pop-up restaurant is the kind of spectacle no other hotel on this list attempts.
90.0/100 Top 49 score—No change
Rank 07Raffles Singapore
Singapore · est. 1887
The birthplace of the Singapore Sling, restored across a multi-year renovation that kept the colonial-era courtyard architecture while rebuilding the infrastructure behind it entirely. Every room is a suite, a policy the hotel has held since long before "all-suite" became a luxury marketing category.
89.9/100 Top 49 score3Down 3
Rank 08The Savoy
London, UK · est. 1889
The first hotel in Britain with electric lights and lifts throughout, and the American Bar inside it has a documented claim to inventing several cocktails still on menus worldwide. A multi-year, nine-figure restoration in the 2000s kept the Edwardian and Art Deco detailing while rebuilding almost everything guests do not see.
88.2/100 Top 49 scoreNewNew entry
Explore more of Top 49
Top 49 rankings are editorial. Scores are produced from the published criteria on each list and are refreshed on the cadence stated there. Figures shown across this section are curated demonstration data.