Side by side Aman Kyoto vs Deplar Farm

Aman Kyoto is a 26-room retreat carved into 3.2 hectares of cypress and cedar forest at the foot of Hidari Daimonji, and what you're paying for (rates run roughly 360,000 to 650,000+ yen a night depending on season) is the forest, not the city. The Kerry Hill-designed rooms run 646 square feet with private Hinoki baths, sliding doors that unfold into extra space, and tatami floors that guests keep calling the best-finished wood and tatami they've seen outside a private Japanese home. The onsen, indoor and outdoor, is the reason more than one guest calls this the real onsen hotel in the Aman portfolio, and Taka-An's set menu (six ways with one seasonal ingredient, snow crab when it's in season) gets guests going back a second night.

Two things get priced in honestly. There's no pool and no gym, which a hotel at this rate would normally include as a given, and the wellness sits entirely on the traditional onsen experience instead. And the location is a genuine split: it's 13 to 18 minutes by house car from central Kyoto, which some guests find is exactly the point (a real pull from the crowds around Kinkaku-ji) and others find makes it a poor base if you actually want to spend your days out seeing the city. A few guests also flag that the main dining room is small and breakfast feels modest set against the nightly rate, and one flat-out said the delivery felt closer to a much cheaper property at these prices.

Book it if you want a few days of quiet at the start or end of a Japan trip, ideally paired with something central like the Ritz-Carlton or Park Hyatt for the days you actually want to be in Kyoto proper. If mobility is a concern, know the paths through the grounds are uneven rock, not flat. For the forest, the baths, and Taka-An, nothing else in the city gets close.

Deplar Farm is a turf-roofed sheep farm in a valley on the Troll Peninsula that Chad Pike turned into a sixteen-room lodge, and what you're paying for is the guide assigned to your room and the geothermal pool with the swim-up bar at the end of a day of heli-skiing, horseback riding or e-biking to a waterfall. The ratio of staff to guests is close to five to one, and it shows: one couple got a full day of low-impact alternatives arranged on the spot after a fall from a horse, another was walked through mocktail pairings all week because one of them doesn't drink. The all-inclusive activities and private guiding are the real reason this works at the price.

The catch is dinner. Breakfast and dinner default to a single 32-person communal table, and opting out costs extra, ISK 20,000 a head by one account, $180 flat by another. Some guests end up loving the forced mingling; others call it the opposite of what they wanted from a remote romantic trip, and more than one found the food itself just okay for what they'd paid, with a wine list that keeps getting upsold even when premium bottles were already included. Price the communal table in before you book, not after, because the rest of the stay is not built around opting out of things.

If what you want is wide-open adventure terrain and a staff that treats you like a returning relative rather than a guest, this earns the splurge. If you want a quiet two-top dinner every night without a surcharge, or guaranteed powder on the heli-ski days, you'll be fighting the format. For everyone else, book it for the valley, the pool, and the guide who'll rearrange your whole week around you.