In 1980, a group of financial executives attended an Institutional Investor conference in the south of France. Their after-dinner conversation included stories about favourite hotels which they scribbled on napkins in an ad hoc popularity poll that led to the magazine’s survey of the world’s best hotels.
Since then, Institutional Investor’s annual ranking of the world’s top hotels has become an eagerly anticipated event each September.
The results of the poll are showcased in The World’s Best Hotels 2006, a tribute to the world’s top hotels that go out of their way to ensure guests always feel at home.
With luxury travel enjoying an unprecedented boom, for business or pleasure, the world of deluxe hotels has never been more competitive—not just to secure as big a share of the market as possible, but also in striving to offer the ultimate in every category: from 24-hour room service to Wi-Fi connectivity and over the top luxury.
Above all, the keyword seems to be consistency; the travelling financial executive needs to be reassured that whether it’s Berlin, Beijing or Boston the standards remain the same.
In this regard it is fascinating to see how well the Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt brands have performed in recent years—now taking on Four Seasons, The Ritz-Carlton and Mandarin Oriental in the battle to provide beds for bankers across the world.
At the same time new cities are represented in the annual survey: Moscow and Mumbai to name two that have been featured in recent years. And in the traditional cities we see successful newcomers, none more so than the Park Hyatt Paris–Vendôme that has dislodged some of the more established ‘palaces of Paris’ at the top of the survey. Third on the list is the Mandarin Oriental, New York, which looks down on Central Park from the 35th floor lobby.
Now in its Twenty-fifth year, this was the first survey of them all and only five hotels can claim the honour of appearing every year since 1981:
