Side by side Amanfayun vs Awasi Patagonia

What you're paying for at Amanfayun isn't the room. It's a reconstructed Longjing tea village strung along a stream beside Lingyin Temple, with monk-led chants at Yongfu at dawn and a footpath gate that lets you beat the tour buses. That's the whole case for the property. Travellers separated by years describe the same thing: the stream-lined pool against centuries-old stone, the tea gardens, the sense of arriving somewhere old rather than merely nice. One guest's grandparents got personal attention getting around the grounds; another's toddler had every staff member charmed within a day. The food backs it up too: the vegetarian restaurant and Steam House draw near-unanimous praise, and Hangzhou House, the Michelin-starred restaurant on property but run separately from Aman, has fans calling it among the best hotel meals in China.

The rooms are the catch, and it isn't minor: the "cottages" get called too dark by admirers and critics alike, from a 2024 review through one from this June, so this isn't one unlucky villa. Hangzhou House also splits opinion hard: one couple paid around SGD 350 for two and found the mushroom dish bland and the service checked-out, while others rank the same meal among the best in China. Service overall skews warm, but there's a real minority describing poor English and a dismissive front desk, including one traveller turned away rudely when asking how to reach a nearby restaurant with a frail parent in tow. Worth flagging too: the public footpath lets non-guests wander the grounds, which cuts against the exclusivity a rate like this implies, and the traffic-controlled West Lake area makes arrival logistics genuinely complicated.

Book it for the temple access and the atmosphere, not for a flawless five-star room. On the setting, the food, and the sense of stepping into old Hangzhou, nothing else nearby comes close.

Fourteen standalone villas above Lake Sarmiento, each with its own outdoor hot tub and a straight shot of the Torres del Paine range through the window, and a private guide assigned to you alone for the length of your stay. That last part is the real reason to book this over the bigger lodges nearby: your guide builds each day around your fitness, your interests and the weather, not a group itinerary. One guest's guide drove to a trout stream the morning after she mentioned she liked to fish; another's carried a whiteboard on hikes to sketch out the geology on request. When the match is right, it is the best private guiding several longtime guests say they have had anywhere, on any continent.

The flip side is that quality depends entirely on who you get, and for a stretch under a previous management team it slipped badly. One couple's first guide nearly ruined the trip before they were reassigned; a different guest arrived to find the kitchen's default dinner menu heavier than expected and had to learn to ask for off-menu dishes. Current ownership has since replaced the seasonal manager model with a year-round GM and a new CEO, and the stay reports from the past year read close to flawless again, but this is a brand that had a real wobble recently, not a hypothetical one. The wood-fired hot tub is also weather-dependent: several March guests got one or two usable soaks across four or five nights because of wind, though a few recent stays report it piped with heated water and running regardless.

Book this over Explora or Tierra if the private guide and the villa itself matter more to you than being physically inside the park or having a full spa. The drives to trailheads run 45 minutes to 90 minutes each way, and there is no pool here at all. For hikers who want to walk straight out the door, or anyone who wants spa facilities included, the neighbors do that better. For everyone else, this is the villa, the food and the one-on-one guiding in Patagonia done right.