Hotels Victoria Beckham Has Stayed At

Philippe Starck’s design gives St Martins Lane a playful streak, carried through from its bold interiors to the golden hand that serves as a door handle at Blind Spot, the hotel’s hidden cocktail bar. In Covent Garden’s theater district, this is a hotel with an evening life of its own: the speakeasy serves drinks inspired by cities around the world, while EllaMia moves from craft coffee to cocktails after dark. Upstairs, rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows and customizable LED lighting, letting guests adjust the mood as daylight fades. The combination of expressive design, generous windows and places to linger makes it a distinctive base for exploring London’s West End.

English gardens provide the design thread at The Dorchester: their colors and motifs shape the rooms and suites, while an extensive art collection explores the British landscape tradition. Outside, Hyde Park stretches across from the hotel’s Park Lane address in Mayfair, with Bond Street’s boutiques nearby. That connection to its surroundings gives this grand London hotel a character beyond its dining credentials, which include contemporary French cuisine at the three-Michelin-starred Alain Ducasse restaurant. The Promenade supplies a more everyday rhythm, serving breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner with live music. Together, these spaces make the hotel as much a place to spend an afternoon or evening as a base for exploring London.

Ludwig Bemelmans’s murals and nightly piano at Bemelmans Bar give The Carlyle an identity that extends well beyond its guest rooms. Cabaret at Café Carlyle makes music central to this Upper East Side Art Deco landmark, where art and entertaining shape the public spaces. In The Gallery, decorator Renzo Mongiardino took inspiration from Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace, creating a distinctive setting for afternoon tea. Upstairs, rooms include designs by Tony Chi and Thierry Despont, while suites furnished with original artwork carry a residential character. Central Park, Madison Avenue, and nearby galleries put the neighborhood within easy reach, but the hotel’s own rooms for music, drinks, and conversation are reason enough to spend an evening here.

The 1893 World’s Fair clock is back at the center of the Waldorf Astoria New York’s lobby, a fitting anchor for a hotel whose recent restoration makes its architectural heritage central to the stay. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon restored its exterior and interior spaces, preserving the scale of the Art Deco architecture. Upstairs are 375 redesigned rooms and suites; the King Room includes a seating area, writing desk, and deep soaking tub. Downstairs, Peacock Alley returns alongside Lex Yard, chef Michael Anthony’s brasserie. The Park Avenue address places guests in Midtown, near Grand Central Terminal, Rockefeller Center, and Fifth Avenue’s shops.

Arrival at La Réserve Paris takes place in the Louis XV Salon, setting the tone for a hotel shaped around the rituals of a private Parisian home. Jacques Garcia’s interiors draw on the building’s recovered woodwork, moldings and cornices, adding marble fireplaces and rich fabrics to its residential proportions. The 25 suites outnumber the 15 rooms; silk walls, antique furniture and oak parquet carry that character upstairs, where every accommodation has a dedicated butler. On Avenue Gabriel, just off the Champs-Élysées, the hotel also gives guests reasons to stay in: a library reserved for residents and their friends, a 16-meter indoor pool, and Jérôme Banctel’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Le Gabriel.

Le Bristol Paris has a yacht above its rooftops: naval architect Cäsar Pinnau designed its sixth-floor indoor pool with teak decking and a trompe-l’oeil stern, with views toward the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur. That playful space adds a distinctive chapter to this grand hotel on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, whose rooms and suites follow an elegant Parisian style. A 13,000-square-foot courtyard garden gives guests room to linger, while the kitchens reveal how much is made here: the hotel mills its own flour, bakes its bread, and produces chocolates in-house. Three-Michelin-starred Epicure anchors a stay in which French cooking deserves as much attention as the address.

Royal blue in the lobby, a grand staircase and rooms furnished with silks and antique art give the Ritz Paris its richly layered character. César Ritz chose a private mansion on Place Vendôme for the hotel he opened in 1898; he and his wife, Marie-Louise, approached it as a vast private home, mixing periods and French decorative traditions. That residential idea still gives shape to a stay, from individually styled accommodations to the wood-paneled Salon Proust, where books and armchairs frame afternoon tea. Outside, the Grand Jardin extends the hotel’s sequence of salons into greenery, with magnolias, a fountain and wooden alcoves along a trellis gallery.