Why We’re Paying for All Fifty

The World’s 50 Best Hotels list dropped this week. Rosewood Hong Kong took the top spot again, surprising nobody who has stayed there and probably everybody who hasn’t.

We’ve stayed at nine of the fifty.

One of our favorite stays ever, Passalacqua, came in at number five. It deserves it. We’d go back tomorrow and happily pay more than we did. Four Seasons Firenze came in at number twelve. We left admiring it, but not missing it.

And that distinction is exactly why we’re doing this.

The problem with lists like these isn’t necessarily the hotels. It’s that so much of what’s written about hotels at this level comes from people who didn’t pay for the stay, in rooms that weren’t assigned at random, at hotels that knew exactly who was arriving and when.

That doesn’t make the coverage dishonest. It just means they’re having a different stay than the one we have when we book under our own names, pay the bill ourselves, and take the room we’re given.

So we’re going to stay at all fifty. And we’re going to write down the things we actually want to know before spending this kind of money.

What does the room sound like at six in the morning? Is the famous bar actually worth the famous prices, or are you paying for the photograph? How does the staff treat you on night three, when the welcome has worn off and you’re just another person calling down for ice?

Fifty hotels. Our money. No press rates. No gifted stays. No captions run past a brand team.

And plenty of these hotels will be exactly as extraordinary as everyone says they are. That’s the part people get wrong about skepticism.

The goal isn’t to prove that everything is overrated. It’s to figure out what’s actually worth it and be able to say so, out loud, without owing anybody anything.

If a $2,000-a-night hotel is worth every dollar, we’ll tell you. If there’s a $600-a-night hotel down the road that does it better, we’ll tell you that too.

Because the question isn’t whether these are fifty of the best hotels in the world.

It’s whether they’re worth paying for.

We’re going to find out.