If you’re in the market for luxurious hotel getaway, don’t bother looking at flights – this is your sign to book something on UK shores instead. Why? Because a trio of home-grown hotels have just been named among the finest in the world.
Last week, National Geographic unveiled its selection of the 30 best new and revamped hotels on the globe for 2025. It includes spectacular places in the likes of Morocco, Italy, India and Japan, but one of the best represented countries on the list is our very own little island.
The publication split its list into 10 categories, each with one winner and two runner ups. Three hotels in Britain made the cut thanks to factors like hyper-local produce, wellness offerings and historic charm. Here’s a closer look at the UK hotels declared three of the very best in the world for 2025 by National Geographic.
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Fowlescombe Farm, Devon
Winner of the ‘food hero’ category, Fowlescombe Farm in Devon is an all-inclusive, but not the kind of all-inclusive you’re thinking of. Yes, every meal is provided, but you don’t just sit back and relax to be waited on hand and foot. Guests are encouraged to take part in gathering the ingredients for their breakfast, lunch and dinner – you may help gather eggs, forage through hedgerows, knead bread or feed the livestock.
Food is served in The Refectory and while the menu will probably look different every day, dishes in its four-course dinner have include poached halibut, sirloin of shorthorn beef and lemon thyme parker bun with cultured butter. Other activities at Fowlescombe include floristry, paddle boarding and stargazing. NatGeo describes Fowlescombe as an ‘ideal escape for those keen to muck in and learn firsthand where their food really comes from’.
Saltmoore, North Yorkshire
Luxurious sanctuary Saltmoore in Whitby earned the runner-up spot in the ‘wellness haven’ category. Nation Geographic said that the 72-room retreat offers a ‘very British spin’ on wellness, with sea plunges and beach walks. That’s as well as a spa with an ice bath, a sauna and steam room, a cryo chamber and a treatment room.
Saltmoore’s Wellness Cafe is there to nourish your insides with poke bowls, açai bowls, smoothies and bone broths, or there’s the hotel’s Brasserie for something much more indulgent, with dishes like chicken schnitzel, fish and chips, honey glazed pork rib and the Saltmoore burger.
Swan Inn at Fittleworth, West Sussex
National Geographic named another British hotel was named one of the most romantic. The Swan Inn in Fittleworth was the runner up in the ‘romantic bolthole’ category. The publication said: ‘It’s hard to imagine a cosier place to hole up on a romantic break than the Swan, a 14th-century West Sussex coaching inn lovingly updated to the standards of country-hotel luxury.’
The inn has been a place of refuge for nearly 500 years, originally as a stop for royal couriers to change horses in the 1500s and later became a haunt for artists who wanted to depict the surrounding landscape. Fittingly, it even hosted Romantic painters J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. There are just 12 rooms (ideal for that romantic sense of privacy), all en-suite and decked out in antique furniture. NatGeo added ‘the downstairs pub remains the heart of the local community, serving exquisite locally sourced food beside the crackling fireplace’.
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