Byline: VICTORIA MATHER
What makes a truly great hotel? And how much will it cost you to stay there?
Victoria Mather, editor of the Tatler Travel Guide 2004, selects the best
HOW do you tell a fabulous hotel from a frightful dump?
The five-star factor, as opposed to the five cockroach rating, is all to do with attention to detail.
A hotel does not have to be stratospherically expensive to be special; the smallest establishment can be run with the love and passion that makes a guest feel like a prince.
The X factor of excellence is a subtle synergy between comfort, unobtrusive but immaculate service and making one feel like the guest for which the hotel has been waiting.
Whatever you are paying, you are paying to be made to feel unique, in a special place.
To feel ordinary in a run-of-the mill dive you might as well have stayed at home. A hotel is a fantasy, the lifestyle which you dream of living, where the bedroom is perfect, without the clutter of the imperfect life from which you are escaping.
In a fabulous hotel there's no such word as 'no'.
BEST FOR FOOD LOVERS
The One & Only Le Touessrok, Mauritius Website: www.oneandonlyresorts.com UK reservations: ITC Classics (tel: 01244 355 527) Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]425 a night WE TRAVEL to eat now. No holiday in a swanky resort hotel would be plausible without fabulous food, but it's amazing how many are cursed by dismal buffets, particularly in the Caribbean.
The Indian Ocean has its fair share of buffet horrors but the newly renovated (actually rebuilt, revamped and re-energised) Le Touessrok has reinvented the concept of resort food.
Their genius is British chef Patrick John, whose talent is for contemporary food with the freshest ingredients.
Simple or exotic, it is exciting, from the sushi and sashimi restaurant on the beach to Safran, the hotel's Indian fusion restaurant.
It is possible to eat around the world, from fresh pasta to Chinese to roasts.
So that they can afford to stay in this sort of top-end resort, with all the water sports, the new 18-hole golf course, the Givenchy spa and the sleek rooms with plasma screens, many guests choose to be on half-board.
You could stay here for ten days and never eat the same thing twice. Booking again is really just the most practical way of going back for seconds.
BEST FOR ROMANTICS
JK Place, Florence Website: www.jkplace.com UK reservations: Bellini Travel (tel: 020 7437 8918) Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]150 a night SCENT is the enhancer of romance. The new JK Place, 20 individually designed rooms on the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, is heady with fragrant candles, sensuous with the smell of lilies.
High on the roof terrace is low level seating; get up close and personal with flickering hurricane lamps and views over the renaissance domes and cupolas.
This is modern, relaxed romance.
The library is full of DVDs, you can help yourself to wicked cakes in the lobby, and the service is terrific but never pompous.
There's all that culture within walking distance - and fab shops.
Go on, forget the Uffizi, get someone to buy you a present in the softest leather.
BEST BAR SCENE
The Standard Downtown LA, Los Angeles Website: www.standardhotel.com Tel: 001 213 892 8080 Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]105 a night THE definition of in-crowd fun.
The new roof bar is fantastically lively with waitresses dressed as cheerleaders, and vibrating waterbeds for lying down by the infinity-edge pool after one martini too many.
At night there's an open-air dance floor with a DJ, and movies are projected on to the surrounding buildings.
It's very Austin Powers. Rooms are categorised from Cheap 'For the Soon-to-Be Tycoon' to 'Humongous' and 'Wow'.
BEST FOR PARTY PEOPLE
Soho House, New York Website: www.sohohouseny.com Tel: 001 212 627 9800 Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]250 a night YOU might never want to leave.
Why would you? The rooms within this old building in the cool Meatpacking district are bigger than others in far posher, less cuttingedge New York hotels, and the mini-bar is a dream - makeup, a little freezer of ice-cream, huge bottles of Grey Goose vodka, even clothes and books.
You almost don't need to stay - just walk in and check out the scene.
On the sixth floor is a sleek bar, a restaurant that specialises in comfort food, an open fireplace and a glassed-in room for smokers - NYC's most endangered species.
An episode of Sex In The City was filmed here. There's a rooftop pool and a spa with all the Cowshed products from Babington House, the English country house hotel that is Soho House's rural cousin.
Sleep in a silver-gilt sleigh bed, where the bath within the bedroom is the uber-fashionable egg shape, and have a party in the huge steam-showers.
BEST FOR DIVERS The Four Seasons Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt Website: www.fourseasons.com/ sharmelsheikh UK reservations: Mediterranean Experience (tel: 020 7630 6047) Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]85 a night THE Red Sea is the sea of adventure, fabulous diving in clear water.
There are many jolly, cheapo places to stay in Naama Bay, but the Four Seasons is the ultimate treat.
Right on the sea, with a jetty and the best diving boats and instructors, it's within a private estate (so very safe), has excellent food and service, sublimely comfortable rooms and tolerable Egyptian wine (the white's similar to Pinot Grigio, so no need to go near the European stuff which costs a fortune).
There's a spa for Mum and a charming swimming pool area. The staff are marvellous with children.
Very good value.
BEST FOR WATER BABIES
Elounda Gulf Villas, Crete Website: elounda.com/ eloundagulf/index.htm UK reservations: Abercrombie & Kent (tel: 0845 070 0612) Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]145 a night A PRIVATE swimming pool with your hotel room is indecently decadent, and completely wonderful.
Elounda Gulf Villas, overlooking the Gulf of Mirabello, is a charming villa-hotel where each villa has its own pool - and a proper one too, not a pathetic little footbath.
Elounda is the St Tropez of Crete, and the Gulf Villas resort is small, privately owned, designed with flair (one villa has a glass lift) and looked after by the owner, Anna Kadianakis - who once flew in Bollinger champagne from Athens when she discovered it was a guest's favourite.
You can either use the villas as villas, cooking for yourself, or have all the facilities of the hotel, including the very good restaurant. It is relaxed, and one can enjoy fishing, or sightseeing, or just lying by the pool.
BEST FOR WEEKENDERS
Hotel Schlossle, Estonia Website: www.schlossle-hotels.com Tel: 00 372 699 7700 Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]120 a night CULTURE without pain. The Baltic states are the hot place to go. Been to St Petersburg? Then try the medieval architecture of Tallinn in Estonia and stay at the 13th-century Hotel Schlossle, with its wooden beams and log fires.
It's like a baronial ski lodge, but without the inconvenience of having to ski. At this time of year there's a Christmas market in the town.
Shop until you drop, drink mulled wine and eat hot sausages and gingerbread, then sink into your creamy linen bedroom behind thick stone walls.
It is fairytale romantic.
BEST OF BRITISH
Hotel Tresanton St Mawes, Cornwall Website; www.tresanton.com Tel: 01326 270055 Doubles from [pounds sterling]165 a night WHEN Olga Polizzi, sister of Sir Rocco Forte, converted this crumbling old hotel in pretty St Mawes, she reinvented the British seaside hotel.
Out went Fawlty Towers, in came Forte Towers, sleek and modern, with Olga and her husband, the writer William Shawcross, and her daughter all pitching in to run the place.
To wake in one of the pretty bedrooms, painted in soft seagreens, blues and whites, is a joy.
The view is of the sea over tropical gardens, a huge terrace below.
The Prince of Wales stays privately in the rooms above the bar; Tony Blair popped in for dinner (and was astonished to find Mr Shawcross waiting at table).
This is sophistication without pretension - although Tresanton does have its own yacht.
Along the corridor to the cinema is a rack with blue Wellington boots in every size - the food is delicious and organic.
The house next door has been converted into new suites and a children's room with its own garden. This is the perfect place to stay for visiting the Eden Project.
BEST FOR ECO-WARRIORS Singita Lebombo, South Africa Website: singita.krugerpark.co.za Tatler's Hotel of the Year 2004 UK reservations: Abercrombie & Kent (tel: 0845 070 0611) Rates: Doubles from [pounds sterling]560 a night, full board THIS offers a reinterpretation of the safari. The traditional one is entrenched in routine: a dawn start, a greasy brunch, nothing to do in the middle of the day, then an afternoon game drive followed by a stiff gin and a dinner of brown food. The original Singita properties - Singita Ebony and Singita Boulders - perfected the uber-luxury safari, with delicious food and wine, a spa and terrific design.
Ebony was colonial, Boulders white and glass, so that the bush seems to flow over the deck into one room.
The new Lebombo, in a remote part of the Kruger National Park by the Mozambique border, is eco. The design is stunning, but specifically intended to touch the earth lightly, each room built on the hillside on steel stilts.
There are inside and outside showers, inside and outside beds (one on the balcony above the river, so you can sleep under the stars); shade is provided by a latticework of wood.
There's a spa, and a glittering pool in front of the sleek restaurant where you can eat sophisticated, casual food at the proper times of breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. And not at a communal table - always a nightmare when one sat next to an American showing you pictures of lions on his laptop.
Lebombo is elegant, inspiring and deeply comfortable: the bush without tears.
BEST FOR ROBINSON CRUSOES
North Island, Seychelles Website: www.
northisland.com UK reservations: ITC Classics (tel: 01244 355 527) Rates: Seven nights full board, [pounds sterling]6,600 per person, including flights and helicopter transfers THE ultimate in barefoot luxury. This new resort on its own island is fantasy made reality: white sand beach, just 11 villas among the palm trees, and a chef who is more one's personal cook.
Wonderful snorkelling and diving, baby turtles hatching - it is remarkable to be sitting at breakfast eating fresh mango in the open-air restaurant when a mother turtle heaves herself out of the sea to lay her eggs by the bar.
The design is of timbers, glass and shells - very pure and restful.
J.K. Rowling chilled out here with her new baby.
It is a sensationally soothing place to be: each villa has its own small pool with power jets, and the big pool is designed in white and pale blue to reflect the sea and the beach below.
There are kitchens in each villa should you want to eat in: privacy and calm is key here.
* The Tatler/A&K Travel Guide 2004 was published this week in the January edition of Tatler.
