Hotels · 10 September 2026
The Venice Film Festival’s Hotel Map, From the Lido to the Giudecca
The red carpet is on the Lido. The better question is where everyone disappears afterwards.
Chapter Two
Hotels
Who operates it as against who owns it, how many keys, where the money went and where it did not. Openings, reopenings and the groups behind them.
Hotels · 8 September 2026
PASHA and Marriott Sign Three Projects Across Baku and Tbilisi
A Ritz-Carlton on the Caspian at Zagulba, a second residential tower in Baku and a 152-room Le Meridien in Tbilisi's Chugureti district add up to 752 rooms and residences, with no dates attached.
Hotels · 2 September 2026
Edition Opens the First Resort on Saudi Arabia's Shura Island
The 240-key Red Sea Edition, with interiors by Rockwell Group inside a Foster + Partners masterplan, is the first hotel to open on the dolphin-shaped island at the centre of the Red Sea development.
Hotels · 30 August 2026
Seven Casitas, Fourteen Islands: How Islas Secas Keeps Panama's Gulf of Chiriquí to Itself
The Pacific archipelago 20 miles off Panama's coast puts its entire guest capacity on one island and leaves the other thirteen wild, with a solar-powered operation and a conservation foundation attached.
Hotels · 27 August 2026
Ritz-Carlton Reserve Heads to Shanghai
The brand’s first urban Reserve is set to open on Shanghai’s North Bund in 2030 — an unexpected move for a collection that has traditionally preferred far-flung coastlines to city skylines.
Hotels · 26 August 2026
Hotel Lürzerhof reopens following €10 million expansion
Hotel Lürzerhof has reopened following an extensive EUR€10 million transformation, unveiling an adults-only rooftop wellness sanctuary amidst the Radstädter Tauern mountains.
Hotels · 23 August 2026
Sea Containers London Leans Harder Into the Liner Conceit With Its Refreshed River Suites
Jacu Strauss has reworked the Southbank hotel's Thames Apartment and Riverview Suites for 2026, and a Gordon Ramsay partnership is due later this year. Suitcase checked into a 65sq m balcony suite, from £550.
Hotels · 11 August 2026
The Refit Cycle: Why Luxury Hotels Are Reinvesting Instead of Rebuilding
Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels has approved HK$2.1 billion to renovate The Peninsula Hong Kong and The Peninsula Tokyo, while projects in Shanghai and Palawan reflect the same strategic shift: in today's luxury market, the highest returns increasingly come from reinvesting in exceptional hotels rather than building new ones.
Hotels · 4 August 2026
Points in the Bush: What JW Marriott's Solio Camp Tells Us About Branded Safari
A 19-suite JW Marriott lands in Kenya's Solio Game Reserve just as Virgin rebuilds Ulusaba from the ground up. The design is careful and the loyalty scheme is real, but safari value has always been decided elsewhere.
Hotels · 31 July 2026
The Real Work Is the Renovation
Park Hyatt Tokyo shut for 19 months to refine 171 rooms and deliberately leave one bar alone. San Antonio's 1909 Gunter has spent USD 57 million on its first phase. Las Vegas is quietly redoing thousands of keys. The hardest decision in each case was what not to touch.
Hotels · 27 July 2026
Three Ways to Build in a Landscape Without Flattening It
A tented camp on stilts in Kafue National Park, three new treetop lodges in Touraine and a year-long renovation in Moab all claim the wilderness as their subject. Only one of them lets the site set the terms.
Hotels · 27 July 2026
Four Deals, Four Growth Models: How Luxury Groups Are Turning Flags Into Assets
Aspen Hospitality is spinning The Little Nell into a brand, Pelican Hill becomes the first St. Regis Estate, Marriott signs two all-inclusive conversions with Catalonia, and Accor commits 5,300 rooms in Vietnam with Sun Group.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
The 2026 Hot List Redraws the Map: Where Luxury Is Actually Opening
Read the year's global winners against the regional lists and a pattern emerges: Spain and Italy are absorbing more new openings than anywhere in Europe, Japan and India are running deep benches, and the Gulf has stopped being a single-city story.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
The Hot List Reprices Itself: What 2026 Says That 2025 Did Not
Read the 30th edition of the Hot List against the 29th and a pattern emerges: rooms out, spa in, and a word quietly added to the cheapest category. A comparison of two years of hotel openings, by the numbers.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
The Map Has Moved: Reading the 2026 Hot List Against Last Year's Americas
Condé Nast Traveler's new-hotel list has quietly redrawn its American geography — from private islands to 200-key branded resorts in the Caribbean, from a Mexico-heavy South America list to an actual Peru-to-Brazil one, and, in the US, into old buildings.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
Four Openings, One Argument: What the Big Operators Are Buying Now
Six Senses lands in a 1911 department store, Valor puts 42 keys yards from the Old Course, JW Marriott pitches 19 tents on a rhino conservancy and Fairmont books a 2028 arrival under Mount Yotei. The common thread is proximity, not design.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
The New American Luxury Hotel Is an Old One
Hilton is putting a Waldorf Astoria into a 20-storey Collins Avenue tower and LXR into a Waikiki building it left standing. The Driskill has finished a rebuild before its 140th birthday. Ground-up luxury in the US now arrives in 2028 at the earliest.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
Locke Opens in Canary Wharf as Lamington Rebrands Room2 to Second Nature
Two long-stay operators moved on London's periphery this week: Edyn opened Locke London Canary Wharf with Holloway Li interiors and modular guestrooms, while Lamington Group retired the Room2 name in favour of a new brand, Second Nature.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
Craft as Structure: How Rabat and Riyadh Are Being Built From Local Pattern
Roar abstracts Amazigh weaving into the architecture of Story Le Carrousel Rabat while LW turns Najdi textiles and Al Sadu geometry into a 210-key W at Riyadh's financial district. Two answers to the same brief, and one telling blind spot.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
Three European Openings Show the Work of Building Inside Someone Else's Architecture
A Georgian terrace in Bath, a 1937 London car park and a 1960s Stockholm landmark are all being converted into hotels — by Providence Hotels, Hyatt and Ruby respectively.
Hotels · 26 July 2026
Three American Hotels That Chose the Building They Already Had
White Elephant lands in Aspen with 54 rooms, Fettle takes on Dorothy Draper's ghost at the Stoneleigh in Dallas, and Elizabeth Roberts Architects reopens a 20-room Jackson inn. Renovation, not construction, is where the interesting work is.
The DispatchReader’s card
Letters from the road,
delivered quietly.
New destinations, hotel openings and what our editors thought of them. Written for people who travel slowly.