-- The founders of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Bars lists have crowned the world’s best hotel for the first time—and it’s Lake Como’s Passalacqua.
Following closely behind Passalacqua were a series of iconic Asian stays. Rounding out the top five were Rosewood Hong Kong; Four Seasons Chao Praya River, Bangkok; The Upper House, Hong Kong; and Aman Tokyo. La Mamounia, in Marrakesh, came next—a triumph for a city still reeling from the devastating earthquake on Sept. 8.
“There are multiple facets to what makes a list like this successful,” explains William Drew, director of content at William Reed, adding that the hotels list has been nearly a decade in the making. “How it drives business to the hotels is important, and on a slightly less empirical level, how it encourages discovery—cultural discovery—encouraging travel to new parts of the world that you might not have done otherwise.
The process by which World’s 50 Best compiles its rankings is based on the first-person experience of 580 jurors assigned to their roles by regional division heads called academy chairs. These jurors each file votes for the top seven hotels, in order of preference, that they have stayed in in the last 24 months .
A seventh special award went to Sonu Shivdasani, CEO of Soneva, and the only person to be recognized individually at the ceremony. His three resorts, including No. 7 Soneva Fushi and No. 36 Soneva Jani, are temples of sustainable luxury; the latter resort, in the Maldives, has both overwater villas with their own waterslides and its own glass recycling plant, all on a tiny private atoll.