This is the dawning of the Second Golden Age of Hotels. Smith, a senior correspondent, says that he based his proclamation on an epiphany he had upon entering the TyWarner Penthouse at the Four Seasons Hotel New York. "Something like that doesn't evolve in a vacuum,' he explains. "It was shaped no more by [architect] LM. Pei and [designer] Peter Marino than it was by the forces of the market."
The "something" Smith speaks of is a one-bedroom,4,300-squarefoot palace that Pei and Marino created for Warnet, the hotel's owner.
areas, the cavernous lobbies," says Smith. "Now it's about private spaces and spacious privacy."
During the original Golden Age, while American industrialists were building ballrooms and banquet halls, two young French tire salesmen began publishing a handbook that listed their favorite lodgings and auto mechanics throughout the Gallic countryside. Brothers Edouard and Andre Michelin released their first Michelin Guide in 1900 as a complimentary tool for traveling motorists. In 1926, the guide introduced the now-famous star rating system for restaurants, a practice that since has been emulated the world over and applied to nearly every product, service, and experience money can buy.
Today, as we enter the Second Golden Age of Hotels, we have an abundance of guides and rating systems to assist us with our travel choices. Stars, diamonds, numerals, and even crowns purport to denote comparative quality, though they frequently serve more to confuse than to inform. More often than not, they also fail to answer the basic question of which hotel is the best in town. This question is the underlying principle behind our annual guide to the top accommodations in 100 cities worldwide. As selected the properties showcased in this edition provide ample evidence to support his theory. Several hotels from the first Golden Age-including the US Grant in San Diego, Calif., and the Hermitage Hotel in ashville, Tenn., both built in 1910 after undergoing striking renovations. Other properties, such as the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow, have risen to their current heights from more recent, and less illustrious, beginnings.
The Ritz-Carlton, Moscow opened this year on the former site of a hotel run by the Soviet-era Intourist organization, whose primary responsibility was to monitor, rather than to enhance, one's stay in Russia. The reinvented property reflects the country's capitalistic transformation, which at the Ritz takes the form of 400 whisky shots, gold-flecked sushi rolls, and a 2,550-square-foot suite that, at 19,000 per night, is Moscow's most expensive acconunodation. Overlooking the Krernlin and Red Square, the suite may be the ultimate symbol of Russia's renaissance-and of the Second Golden Age of Hotels.