Amanfayun vs The Dolder Grand

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.

The pitch is a castle on a hill above Zurich, with a Norman Foster wing grafted onto the 1899 original, and it mostly delivers. Guests who've stayed three, four, a dozen times keep coming back for the same three things: the view over the city and lake from the balconies, staff who remember names and birthdays years later, and a breakfast people plan mornings around, the bircher muesli in particular. The modern wing rooms read as genuinely special rather than generic five-star, and the art scattered through the corridors, including a piece one guest was convinced was a real Dalí, gives the place a personality most hotels can't fake.

It isn't uniform, and the price makes that worth knowing before you book. Historic-wing rooms draw real complaints for feeling sparse and a little cold next to the new side; one recent guest, fresh off a stay at the Chedi Andermatt, said the rooms had lost their wow factor. The spa's reputation has slipped for some: a couple of reviewers who used to call the staff top professionals now describe them as arrogant and the space overpriced for what it offers, though plenty of others still call it the best in Switzerland. Breakfast buckles on busy weekend mornings, with slow coffee refills, and there's at least one drawn-out billing dispute on record along with a guest who felt brushed off at check-in until a $15k booking was proven. Book the modern wing if you have the choice, and don't expect spa-retreat calm on a Sunday.

None of that changes who this is for. If you want a hotel you could spend a whole weekend inside without leaving, a short shuttle ride from central Zurich, this is still the one people mean when they say the best hotel in Switzerland.