Side-by-side
Aman New York vs Amangiri
Amangiri takes the higher Fat Score, 16.0/20 to 15.5/20 — but it's a genuine choice: pick Amangiri for location, Aman New York for dining.
Scored across five dimensions — Service, Design, Location, Dining, and Wellness — from signals across luxury travel communities, editorial publications, and verified guests.
Scoreboard
| Dimension | Aman New York | Amangiri |
|---|---|---|
| Tier | — | Fat Approved |
| Overall Fat Score | 15.5/20 | 16.0/20Wins |
| Service | 13.5 | 14.0 |
| Design | 17.5 | 18.5 |
| Location | 16.5 | 19.0 |
| Dining | 15.0 | 13.0 |
| Wellness | 18.0 | 16.5 |
The Verdicts
Aman New York
Aman New York delivers spectacular rooms and an otherworldly spa in prime Midtown, but it's missing the intuitive service that defines the brand elsewhere. The entry-level suites at 725 square feet are Manhattan's largest, wrapped in Kerry Hill's serene Asian-influenced design, while the spa's hammam suites and sauna-cold plunge circuits rank among the city's finest wellness experiences. Yet at $3,000-4,000 per night, the service feels more like a competent five-star hotel than the transformative Aman experience you'll find in Tokyo or the Maldives. It's a members' club masquerading as a hotel — prioritizing exclusivity over the warm anticipation that makes other Amans magical.
Amangiri
Amangiri's setting remains genuinely unmatched — the resort is carved into the Colorado Plateau so completely that arriving feels like entering another world, and that picture-frame window at the entrance, the fireplace-lit annex, and the sky deck stargazing still stop first-time guests cold. But this is a hotel wrestling publicly with its own success. Prices have climbed from roughly $1,000/night in the mid-2010s to $4,500–$10,000+ today, and a large, vocal cohort of repeat guests — the exact loyal, high-spending travelers Aman built its reputation on — now say the product hasn't kept pace with the price, citing slow restaurant service, inconsistent food, understaffed pool areas, and a reservations team that can be curt rather than gracious. At the same time, a meaningful number of recent stays, especially in the Camp Sarika pavilions under newer leadership, describe intuitive, anticipatory service and genuinely memorable moments (Navajo-guided slot canyon tours, via ferrata, in-room fireside evenings). The honest read: the architecture and landscape justify the trip on their own merits, but treat the on-property food and service as a coin flip rather than a guarantee, and go for the place itself — not for flawless five-star polish you'd expect from an Aman in Asia.
Strengths & trade-offs
Aman New York
Strengths
- Manhattan's largest entry-level suites at 725 sq ft
- Exceptional spa with hammam suites and thermal circuits
- Perfect soundproofing blocks all city noise
- Prime location steps from Central Park
- Stunning Kerry Hill minimalist architecture
Trade-offs
- Service lacks Aman's signature intuitive anticipation
- No functioning butler service despite website claims
- Concierge struggles with top restaurant reservations
- Food quality mediocre by NYC standards
Amangiri
Strengths
- Architecture that dissolves into the canyon landscape rather than sitting on top of it
- Unrivaled sense of seclusion within a vast private desert estate
- Genuinely memorable excursions — via ferrata, slot canyon tours, Lake Powell, stargazing
- Spa consistently praised as a standout, even by critical reviewers
- Camp Sarika pavilions offer some of the best private-pool accommodations in the US
Trade-offs
- Restaurant service frequently slow, with multi-hour meals and understaffed pool bars
- Food quality inconsistent — praised by some as Michelin-level, called bland or poorly executed by others
- Reservations and gate staff sometimes cold or unhelpful, undercutting the arrival experience
- Price escalation (roughly 3-5x since the mid-2010s) increasingly seen as disproportionate to the actual product