The 16 Hotels We Return to Again and Again

Some hotels do the trick for a night. Some we visit for only the most special occasions. And then there are those, like the hotels presented here, that set up camp in our psyches after a stay, the ones we find ourselves drawn to again and again and daydreaming about most of the time that we're not there. They're not necessarily the most luxurious. And not the merely once-in-a-lifetime. But rather the places where we feel our very best—and most taken care of. You know the kind. We know a few, too. And then we asked a bunch of well-traveled Friends of GQ for their picks as well. Our first question for them: Where do you check in when you want to go home?

1. L.A.'s Gold Standard: The Sunset Tower

Yes, the Chateau Marmont is still a favorite among a harder-partying set, but ask any moviemaker who craves a little privacy, relaxation, and Old Hollywood class for their L.A. home away from home, and they've got one answer. Check out the photo above: The California light's not bad, either.

2. How Diplo Does Kathmandu

The world-traversing DJ zones out with his kids in the courtyard of Dwarika's Hotel, at the foot of the Himalayas.

Diplo: “Dwarika's Hotel, in Kathmandu, Nepal, is the most classic and culturally preserved hotel I've ever been to. For me, no hotel speaks to its location better than this one. It's owned by my now friend Vijay and his family. The building is all brick, and each window fixture, door, and piece of hardware is an antique that Vijay's grandfather collected over the years. The carvings on every entryway or windowsill are so intricate and so well preserved. You can look at one side of the courtyard for hours, observing all the little details. Anytime I return to Kathmandu, it's no question that's where I stay. I took my kids out there with me the last time I went.”

3. Hotel Saint Cecilia Keeps Austin Chill

An attention-starved hotel opens every week in Austin, but this 14-room enclave, tucked behind a line of tall hedges, is still the hideaway of choice.

A couple of years back, stuck in the recurring fog of grief that attends the anniversary of the day someone close to you died, I sat alone in the courtyard of Hotel Saint Cecilia, under some ridiculous ancient tree, and felt profoundly at home. Which is weird, because it was profoundly not my home, nor anyone's, but rather a tiny hotel—a compound, really—and I had no relationship to Austin, or even to Texas.

It's funny to describe this now, because I haven't been back, though I have returned in my mind, on a number of occasions, at will or sometimes by accident, to the shade of that tree, to that warm day. I sat there for hours. I read a book. I hardly checked my phone.

Guests of the hotel can recline by the pool under a neon sign that says "SOUL." It's a bit of a ruse—the actual soul of the place is its understatement, the house-like rooms, the library-like bar. What they trade in here is not “coolness”—not like its sister property, the motel-style Hotel San Jose, on the main drag a few blocks away—but rather peacefulness. Saint Cecilia is carved out from the world around it. Somehow the noise never carries. You can come to Saint Cecilia and sit under the tree, sip whatever, and luxuriate in something simple, irrefutable, and real: that you're happy to be here. That's free with the stay. —Mark Byrne

4. Nico Muhly Goes to Iceland to Be Alone

When the composer wants peace and quiet—dead, frozen Icelandic peace and quiet—he finds it at Hótel Búðir, on the coast of a remote rugged peninsula.

Nico Muhly: “Hótel Búðir, on the Snæfellsness peninsula, is one of my favorite places on earth. It's just the right amount of remote: a few hours out of town, in a cove from which you can see glaciers to the west, the sea to the east, and a tiny black church just up the hill. The rooms are simple, but not in a kind of sleek Scando-minimal way—rather, what you might find in somebody's home, with framed prints and sensible fixtures. Heaven for me, though, is the lounge area downstairs, with a spectacular view through two walls of windows over the comforting but severe landscape. In the winter, one often has the place to oneself, with a real sense of being at the edge of the world but somehow cozy in a familiar luxury.”

5. The Standard in Miami Feels a Million Miles from South Beach

The Venn-diagram overlap of everything we need from one of these hotels: centrally located, but not in the thick of it (it's easily accessible to Miami things on both sides of the bay); a centerpiece pool, but without an EDM DJ in sight; a spa, but not a spa; a juice bar, but not a juice bar; and some sexy cohabitants who are there for precisely the same reasons you are—that is, to get toasty and not be bothered. Do everything they recommend. Drink the juices. Play the Ping-Pong. Spend all goddamned day staring up at the palm trees from one of those lemon-yellow chaise longues. This place is so good. And here's the cherry: It's somehow less pricey than a lot of places like it.

6+7. Angie Mar's Grand European Doubleheader

The chef-owner of New York City's subterranean temple to meat, The Beatrice Inn, likes to build trips to Europe around stays at the Hotel San Régis in Paris and the Chiltern Firehouse in London.

Angie Mar: “I always like to start and end a trip to Europe in London. When I'm there, I live at Chiltern Firehouse. It's the best. You can enter into that place and you just kind of get sucked in. You don't want to leave.

And then when I'm in Paris, I only stay at the Hotel San Régis. It's quiet, it's quaint, it's got this really beautiful courtyard, and the hotel staff there is so lovely. Every time I land, they remember me.”

8. The Grand Old Nashville Hotel That Never Lost Its Swagger

The Hermitage Hotel is a southern classic, updated.

Every city in the South has a grande dame hotel. They are romantic. They are historic. They are large and lavish and rococo. For years, I insisted on staying in them, until I finally had to admit it: Most are city-block-size hell mazes that have hardly been updated since the days when local society used to come ballroom dancing every Thursday night (or whatever), and now are the domain of business travelers on cut-rate fares. Sigh. Luckily, there is still one glorious exception: the Hermitage Hotel, in Nashville. The interiors are sumptuous and gleaming. The rooms are modern, not in aesthetics (nothing here evokes the midcentury, or the word “boutique”) but in comfort and freshness. You get stationery with your name on it in your room, like at the Chateau Marmont but without the hip wink. The restaurant downstairs excels in the same ways—southern classics, updated. The truth is that when you romanticize the past, especially in the American South, things get gnarly and problematic and disappointing. The Hermitage is one of my favorite exceptions. —Will Welch

9. Jen Rubio Fell in Love with a Stockholm Hotel, Then Brought It Home

The co-founder of Away luggage spends half the year on the road. And when she's not traveling, she's trying to make her apartment a little more like Ett Hem.

Jeb Rubio: “We did a collaboration with Rashida Jones in 2017, and Rashida was like, ‘We have to stay at Ett Hem.’ So we went and then refused to leave. There are only 12 rooms, so you actually get to know the hotel, as well as the other guests. I'm definitely one of those people who doesn't spend a lot of time in hotel bars or restaurants—either I go out, or I'm in my room having room service. But you can't do that at Ett Hem. You go down to the kitchen; the chefs make everything in front of you. You sit around the dining table with other people, in front of the fire in the living room, or in the greenhouse. It's like living in your own town house in Sweden. I'm re-doing my place right now, and the entire mood board is Ett Hem. It also smells amazing, so I have them ship me candles every few months.”

10. The Ultimate Go-To in America's (Best) Second Cities

21c has quietly assembled an all-star roster of “museum hotels” in the South and the Midwest, our favorite spots to stay in Durham, Louisville, and K.C.—to name a few.

11. James Lohan Prefers to Borrow Someone Else's House in the Alps. (You Can, Too.)

The co-founder of Mr & Mrs Smith, the famously choosy boutique-hotel booking service, has checked into more than 1,000 hotels. But the handful of properties owned by Eleven Experience still knock him off his feet.

James Lohan: “The care and thought that goes into Eleven properties is just second to none. You feel like you're the only guest there, which you kind of are, because they generally are small—10, 11, 12 bedrooms, some even fewer than that. You're in a house, more than a hotel. They don't have a general manager; they have “hosts” who look after you. You feel like you're in the home of your very wealthy aunt, who has impeccable taste. You can walk into the kitchen and have a chat with the chef about what you want to eat. They're tailor-making everything for what you want. And they're all about adding activities to your stay. So depending on how extreme you are or how fit you are—or how lazy you are—you can really choose some unbelievable activities at all their properties. You can have a guide take you on a trek, or white-water rafting, or fly-fishing. There's one in the Alps that's just extraordinary. Up in the mountains, they've converted a shepherd hut into a little sort of overnight place, so you can have your own little party and then ski back down to the chalet. For me, they're incredibly special. And I've never seen a better mini-bar in any of my travels.”

12. Dr. Woo's Hotel-Within-a-High-Rise in Hong Kong

The tattoo artist of choice for every famous person with ink is a self-professed bathroom snob, and The Upper House delivers.

Dr. Woo: “I think it's the nicest, coolest hotel in Hong Kong. It's on the middle floors of a high-rise—the rooms start on the 38th floor. Hong Kong is this super-modern city nestled into a jungle, so you get beautiful views. At night, it's got a great bar. I have meetings there all the time. I've stayed there more times than I can count. Like, when I go, they say, ‘Welcome home.’ They're like family to me. One of the best bathrooms, too. Even for the regular standard rooms, they have this tub, surrounded by windows. I'm a bathroom snob, man. I think bathrooms make or break a hotel room. Sometimes I think the bathroom is more cozy than the room itself.”

13. Ian Fleming Built GoldenEye. Chris Blackwell Made It Famous.

Commune with legends living (Grace Jones, Hillary Clinton) and dead (Fleming and his long-gone pals) at this retreat on the north coast of Jamaica, where Fleming wrote all 14 of his Bond books.

GoldenEye's origin story is almost as good as the resort itself: Once the home of the man who wrote the Bond novels, the property was purchased in the '70s by record mogul Chris Blackwell (the founder of Island Records) and has played host to not just Blackwell but also his legendary circle of friends. Blackwell began adding cottages on the property, and slowly—almost by force of nature—his personal retreat became a hotel. That a trip to GoldenEye today retains the same carefree Caribbean ease of Fleming's day, or from before when Blackwell opened it up to strangers, borders on the absurd. How, one wonders, can this all still be so good—how, as the world changes around us, is GoldenEye so unbothered by time? Don't worry about it. These are questions for after you leave. —M.B.

14. The Best Way to See Tokyo Is from a Pool at the Top of a Tower

The Aman Tokyo was the high-AF-end Aman Group's first property in a major city. The skyline views are staggering, and its spa is your best shot at rapidly recovering from jet lag. There are certainly cheaper ways to do Tokyo, but none quite as instantly transformative. Turns out Aman's good at cities, too.

15. Hotel San Cristóbal Is Quickly Collecting Regulars

Mexico has experienced an absurd tourist boom over the past decade, with places like Tulum cycling from under-discovered to overcrowded at record speed. Which is why this newish gem on the Pacific Coast of Baja feels like such a gift: It's got all the return-trip potential of a more established property, but with none of the crowds. Yet. Get there before it's everyone else's go-to spot, too.

16. The Mediterranean Golden Era Is Still Alive and Well on the Coast of Tuscany

How much do longtime guests love Hotel Il Pellicano? So much that when it went up for sale, it was bought by one.

I confess I was suspicious of Il Pellicano at first. Any hotel that sells art books about its days of yore, or hawks a status-y tote bag, or features a seaside terrace so aggressively Instagrammed it's like DeLillo's “most photographed barn in America” (famous only for the crowds lined up to take a picture of it)—all of that made me nervous. But. But! Turns out thousands and thousands of people for decades and decades are not wrong, and this extremely special spot on the Tuscan coast is every ounce as good as it looks in the art books (and on Instagram). My wife and I went there for a couple of nights on our honeymoon last summer. That would make it a “special occasion” spot—not a “return to again and again” spot—but I'm not writing about us anymore.… On our first night, we ran into an old colleague of mine, there with her husband for four days, for the 12th or 15th, or something, year in a row. They came back to Il Pellicano every year, the same weekend. They were not alone. Everywhere: Italians, Americans, etc., etc., who, it was quickly clear, built their year—psychically, at least—around their return trip to Il Pellicano. All these people had been coming for years. Or their parents had. Or they'd been there for their honeymoon, and this was their five-year anniversary. They knew which room to ask for. They knew which of the two restaurants to eat at which night. They knew to order the club sandwich and fries on the most photographed seaside terrace in Italy.

The point is, for seemingly everyone, it was an extremely singular and not-taken-for-granted pleasure to be in residence. For its reputation (and price...), the hotel's not super fancy, but everything is exactly right. If you've read this far into this magazine feature, you know what I mean. Because the difference between super fancy and exactly right is the difference between a one-off and a place you think about pretty much every other day, and put money in the piggy bank to get back to as soon as possible. —Daniel Riley

A version of this story originally appeared in the April 2019 issue with the title "The Hotels We Return to Again and Again."