The Very Best Brand-new Hotels on the planet – It Note 2018

Every year, Travel + Leisure editors look at thousands of hotel openings and renovations around the globe with one mission in mind: what properties will truly be game changers for our readers. A great location, thoughtful design, and intuitive service are a given. What’s harder to define is a little thing called buzz-factor. A standout hotel might be adding to the fabric of a neighborhood through events, opening up entirely new destinations by their very presence, and going above and beyond in terms of excursions (helicopter safaris, anyone?) to truly transport their guests.

With that criteria in mind, we compile the It List — our annual collection of the best new and reborn properties worldwide. Following spirited in-office debate and deliberation, we whittled down our master list of hotels openings from last year to just 100 properties. From there, we tapped our global network of contributors for detailed, firsthand accounts of each. We asked them about touches like the softness of the sheets; the signature dishes at restaurants; and the views from their rooms. After carefully considering their feedback, we narrowed down the list down even further, settling on 56 stunning hotels in places as close by as our hometown of New York City and as far-flung as the African island of Madagascar.