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It’s a big deal, The 50 Best Hotels List – or at least, the winners want you to think as much.
Taking the show to Paris for the first time this year, the awards have just wrapped up and three of Bangkok’s top hotels have placed inside the world’s top ten. That’s no mean feat for any country.
And while that will no doubt be cause for celebration at Capella Bangkok (No.2), Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok at Chao Phraya River (No.3) and Mandarin Oriental Bangkok (No.10), these days more and more attention is being paid to how rankings like this actually work – and whether any listing business can credibly claim to identify the world’s second, third or tenth-best hotel.
The list is collated from more than 800 anonymous voters from the hotel, travel and media industries, each apparently choosing seven of the best hotels they’ve stayed at during the previous three years. But there’s no predetermined checklist defining what ‘best’ actually means (publically, at least) and, importantly, stays taken as part of press trips or provided free of charge are equally eligible for votes.
Last year, the New York Times suggested sister list The 50 Best Restaurants is ‘mind opening’. In an op-ed, Pete Wells suggests: ‘To be media literate these days is to understand that no ranked list, whether it is the ‘100 Greatest Drummers of All Time’ or the ‘35 Cutest Dog Breeds to Ever Exist,’ should be taken too literally.’
Closer to the topic, the Irish Independent argues the system naturally favours easily accessible destinations, big cities and newer hotels with marketing muscle to host journalists and influencers (all eyes on us, Bangkok).
The 50 Best Hotels says that hotels cannot ‘pay, apply or nominate themselves’, while voters cannot vote for properties in which they have a financial interest. The results are also independently verified by Deloitte. So it’s not all that bad, perhaps?
What’s considerably hard to argue with however, is that Bangkok has one hell of a hotel scene and these three absolutely deserve the recognition.
Bangkok takes three of the top 10
Leading Thailand’s charge is Capella Bangkok at No.3. The intimate riverside hotel has become a regular fixture at the sharp end of the ranking and was crowned the world’s best hotel in 2024.
Immediately behind it is Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok at Chao Phraya River at No.2, the Jean-Michel Gathy-designed riverside resort that has quickly become one of the defining luxury hotels in the capital.
Then there’s the old guard. Mandarin Oriental Bangkok lands at No.10, putting the nearly 150-year-old institution comfortably among a global leaderboard.
There’s a rather satisfying geographical quirk here, too: all three sit on the banks of the Chao Phraya River.
But these three are not the only Bangkok properties to make the list. Aman Nai Lert sneaks in with a new entry position of No. 48, and when the ranking is extended to 100, Rosewood Bangkok at No.70 on the 51-100 list (released a few weeks ago to more gentle applause), brings Thailand to a resounding five.
What about other Asian hotels on the list?
Rosewood Hong Kong took the No. 1 crown as the ‘best hotel in the world’ this year.
Further down the list we find Mandarin Oriental Qianmen (No. 7), Upper House Hong Kong (No. 8), Raffles Singapore (No. 17), Desa Potato Head in Bali (No. 21) and Bulgari Tokyo at No. 24.
New entries from Asia also include Patina Osaka (No. 33), The Peninsula Hong Kong (No. 46) and Bangkok’s own Aman Nai Lert at No. 48.
Whether you like it or not, The 50 Best Hotels garners all the buzz you’d expect and you can add whatever size pinch of salt you fancy.
Are Four Seasons, Capella and Mandarin Oriental objectively the second, third and tenth-best hotels anywhere on Earth? There’s probably no ranking capable of answering that.
But are they three very, very good hotels in a city that continues to punch remarkably high when it comes to hospitality? And can many other countries claim fame for such top-heavy results?
On that, we’re considerably less inclined to argue.