Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1542301
The most interesting hotels stopped behaving like hotels. The term "all-inclusive" used to mean bottom-shelf liquor at a swim-up bar. Now it means Four Seasons sending a private jet around the world, or Hermitage Bay in Antigua where a Nobu-trained chef makes lunch from that morning's garden haul, and the only wristband is your Patek. My most well-traveled friends — the ones who used to hit 12 cities in two weeks — are bragging about doing nothing for five days at places like Hacienda AltaGracia in Costa Rica, where your day just slides from horseback rides through coffee country to a hydrotherapy circuit and a dinner you never had to think about. The hotel isn't base camp anymore; it's the entire expedition — and, honestly, no one seems mad about that. Service got smarter by getting quieter. Nobody wants to see their butler hovering in the hallway anymore. They want their butler's WhatsApp. The real luxury tell in 2025 was the screenshot: a concierge at Nekajui Peninsula Papagayo, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, texting the surf report before sunrise, or the host at Prospect Berkshires locking in a private lakeside sauna as soon as you arrive. The champagne-sabering, towel-origami school of hospitality is over, replaced by hotels that remember you are lactose intolerant without turning it into dinner theater. Friends who once bragged about presidential suites now brag about the property that found a lost AirPod, untangled an impossible rail connection, or noticed they drink coffee black and stopped bringing milk. The highest luxury isn't being fawned over; it's being understood without having to explain yourself twice. Hotel design lives in two extremes now. Design is basically split into two religions, and I'm very here for the split. On one side, you have the monastic crowd: places like Hôtel du Couvent in Nice or Anantara Convento di Amalfi, where everything is limewash, stone, candlelight, and one perfect chair that looks like it took three years to choose. On the other, you've got full theater: The Carlton in Milan, where Rocco Forte Hotels goes all- in on polished parquet, big art, and proper "get dressed for the lobby" energy, or METT Singapore at Fort Canning Park, which turns an old colonial HQ into glossy, jungle-framed spectacle. Same guest, different mood. Some trips you want to feel like a Cistercian with 74 The Fascinating New Rules of Travel good moisturizer; others, you want the hotel to match the drama of your credit card bill. Layovers turned into side quests. What used to be a necessary evil became the most interesting part of the itinerary. People started booking the long layover on purpose, staying overnight in what used to be "nowhere" and treating it like its own chapter. One night in Athens means you're at Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel discovering a riviera that's been there all along, instead of wrestling with the ferry scrum. A Nairobi stopover turns into a night in Karen at a gallery where the art and the people-watching are 10 out of 10. Transit days stopped being dead time and started functioning like bonus levels. The best hoteliers had past lives. The best hotels in 2025 were built by people who technically had no business building hotels. A Greek shipping executive gets deep into life coaching and opens Perma Serifos. An Airbnb algorithm engineer and his wife decide Crete needs a place like Tella Thera, where your roof is my olive grove and your shower water feeds my trees. These aren't graduates of Cornell's hotel school, but people who got obsessed with one idea, tied to a place that actually matters to them, and then spent way too much money turning it into a functioning obsession the rest of us can book. You feel it the second you walk in — it's like someone's extremely expensive diary entry, and you're paying $800 a night to read it. What stopped being cool — and what came next. The infinity-pool industrial complex finally collapsed under its own weight. Every hotel from Tulum to Tasmania built the same chlorinated horizon line for the same floating breakfast tray shot at the same golden hour. It became the architectural OnlyFans: technically impressive, but spiritually exhausting. Now the interesting properties have three pools, each the size of a living room, not a stadium. Open-plan bathrooms remain proof that some architects have never traveled with another human being. And the hidden speakeasy behind the phone booth/ bookshelf/meat locker stopped being clever around the time your dentist added one. Travel journalist, photographer, and creative consultant Paul Jebara covers design-driven hotels and luxury destinations for Condé Nast Traveler, Galerie, and Town & Country. By Paul Jebara Some trips you want to feel like a Cistercian with good moisturizer; others, you want the hotel to match the drama of your credit card bill. — Paul Jebara Slim Aarons' Sunning at Il Canille, Capri, 1980 FROM SLIM AARONS: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION, 2023, ABRAMS, NEW YORK. © 2023 SLIM AARONS / GETTY IMAGES.