The World’s Best Luxury Hotel Brands For 2021 Will Have You Begging To Travel

Hot property.

The World’s Best Luxury Hotel Brands For 2021 Will Have You Begging To Travel

Image Credit: jetsetchristina.com

Luxury Travel Intelligence has announced the World’s Best Luxury Hotel Brands for 2021. With international travel soon back on the cards for Australians, they are all well worth a gander.

Six Senses, a (you guessed it) luxury 5 star hotel brand with  16 hotels and resorts and 25 spas in 19 countries around the world, took out top spot for the second year in a row. In other big news, three other brands made their way into the top 12 for their first time ever.

Before we give you the list – here’s how the hotels are judged. Luxury Travel Intelligence assesses them over a 12 month period in what they describe as “the perfect assessment process,” using “a rigorously defined algorithm that measures the performance and values of luxury hotel brands.”

Per Luxury Travel Intelligence: “This year, our algorithm has 131 touch points relevant to the luxury hotel sector. Each has its own weighted score value with a total maximum accumulative score of 4736. The touch points relate to overall brand performance, rather than the performance of individual properties. It is all about a brand’s ability to deliver: its passion, commitment, ethos and values, as well as the quality of its management and staff.”

Luxury Travel Intelligence adds: “Continuing investment and how well it is executed is also a major factor, particularly regarding new properties and the refurbishment of existing ones. This year’s results are reflected as percentages, with last year’s positions in brackets.”

  1. Six Senses 83.3% (1)​
  2. Mandarin Oriental 82.6% (5)
  3. Auberge 81.8% (3)
  4. Aman 81.4% (2)
  5. Belmond 79.9% (4)
  6. One&Only 77.0% (6)
  7. Oetker Collection 75.7% New Entry
  8. Four Seasons 74.1% (8)
  9. Rosewood 73.5% (7)
  10. Raffles 72.7% New Entry
  11. Viceroy 72.2% New Entry
  12. COMO 71.0% (10)

Other brands that were good enough to be monitored by Luxury Travel Intelligence during the year were (in alphabetical order) Alila, Anantara, Banyan Tree, Dorchester Collection, Firmdale, Jumeirah, Leela, Oberoi, Park Hyatt, Peninsula, Ritz Carlton, Rocco Forte, Shangri-La, Soho House, St. Regis, Taj and The Luxury Collection.

Brands that currently have less than ten properties (Luxury Travel Intelligence’s minimum requirement) but rate highly when applying their algorithm are (in alphabetical order) Airelles, Althoff Collection, Bulgari, Capella, Cheval Blanc, Maybourne, Montage, Nikki Beach, Pendry and Soneva.

Luxury Travel Intelligence also points out, for those curious to know more about the selection proces, that their researchers “engage with everyone from CEOs of the brands we have rated to thousands of managements, staff and guests.”

“This is all part of the process for creating our destination led reports for our members (affluent, discerning travellers) but it also allows us to utilise our findings to create this unique report.”

“Every year the process starts again – the results from previous years have no bearing on the following year.”

“This does inevitably lead to volatility in each year’s results (such as this year), but this is a dynamic sector and we want to reflect what is really happening out there.”

As for the winner – Six Senses – they write: “We continue to be very impressed with Six Senses. It has an authentic blend of wellness, sustainability, warm hospitality and crafted guested experiences. Also, its leadership is exemplary. The recent addition of Neil Palmer as Chief Operations Officer will bring boundless experience, energy and further integrity to the brand.”

In terms of the exciting new entries which have broken into the list, they write: “We have been tracking Oetker Collection for several years while they have been building an exceptional portfolio of globally renowned hotels.”

On top of that, they say they were “particularly impressed with the meticulously rebuilt of The Eden Rock in St Barths and their creation of The Woodward, a 26 room all-suite hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, which opened in September.”

Likewise, Raffles, with a new CEO at the helm, impressed Luxury Travel Intelligence by “quietly creating a raft of impressive new properties across the globe.”

Viceroy, for its part, has demonstrated, in Luxury Travel Intelligence’s view, “great courage and commitment to building a global modern luxury hotel brand offering intuitive service, authentic experiences and provocative design.”

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