Photo courtesy of Kittawa Lodge on King Island.
It will be a while before Australia opens its borders to the rest of the world (they know how to play it safe Down Under), but when the country comes back, it will be with gusto. We salute the hotels that opened this year under the shadow of the pandemic, as well as a few from late 2019 that never got a fair shot once they opened. When you do finally make it there, here are more than a few excuses to stay a while and explore its extremes.
Don t miss all our picks for the World s Best New Hotels in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. In the United States, we ve broken down our favorite new hotels by region: the Northeast, the South, and the West.
Photo courtesy of Marataba.
We could say a lot of things about 2020 but most of them would not be very nice. However, one half-glass-full way to think about the year is to consider it as one (very long) season of teachable moments. Slowing down brought important things into sharp relief the precarious state of the environment, the reliable awesomeness of the natural world, the power of people who band together for a cause.
Though much of the world slowed way down and was even brought to a standstill at times, beautiful new hotels did manage to open some of them paying particularly close attention to their environment, community, impact, and trying to do business differently. Those companies deserve extra attention, and we ve highlighted the feel-good factors that stand out to us.