They said there was a real-estate boom in the making in Panama City. They must have been right. In the blink of an eye, there’s suddenly a 70-story luxury hotel by none other than Donald Trump, rising like a massive sailing ship on the waterfront of Punta Pacifica. This is the Trump Ocean Club, and while it may be a slight exaggeration to say that this hotel alone puts Panama on the international luxury-travel map, there’s no doubt that what was already a developing trend has been advanced by a considerable distance — and the Panama City skyline, it’s safe to say, has been fundamentally reconfigured.

The Ocean Club is largely residential, as is the case with most similarly sized developments these days. But the Trump Hotel Panama is no mere afterthought. Its 369 rooms and suites are outfitted with all the five-star necessities, and the design, contemporary yet accessible, is marked by a sunny, optimistic color scheme. Four restaurants compete for diners’ attention, and a well-equipped health club and a Japanese-style spa attend to matters of bodily relaxation. It’s a hotel of suitably grand gestures, from bottom to top, perfectly in character for Trump — and it’s slated to become even more so, as soon as the long-planned casino opens its doors.

How to get there:
Trump Panama is located 15 km (20 min) from the Tocument Panama International Airport. Transfers can be arranged starting at US$80 for a luxury sedan, one way. Please contact CustomerService@TabletHotels.com for assistance with airport transfers.

In a city as heavily traveled as Paris, hidden gems don’t stay hidden for long — especially when they’re as photogenic as the Hotel Ares Eiffel. We don’t mind sharing, though; it may fill up earlier than it used to, but the Ares remains one of Paris’s most stylish hideaways, thanks to a location that’s at once central and off the beaten path, and a design scheme that’s highly opinionated yet thoroughly accessible.

It’s a mix of baroque and modern, with a healthy dose of contemporary Italian influence in the form of Versace tile work and furniture by Poltrona Frau. The spaces aren’t enormous, but they’re opened up nicely by the clean design and the plentiful sunlight, and the considerable physical comforts ensure that the rooms feel cozy rather than cramped.

The concept might be described as something like “bare-bones luxe” — as is often the case in Paris, the Ares gets by without such niceties as a restaurant or a spa. Deserving of special mention, however, is the library, a small but finely-wrought space in dark wood and lime green. Best yet, you’re just blocks away from the Champ de Mars, and virtually in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, which makes for easy navigating, at the very least.

The contrast between the grandeur of Washington’s public face and the relative shabbiness of its functional spaces has long been a common observation. And until fairly recently, its hotels only strengthened the stereotype. But The Liason Capital Hill, an Affinia Hotel belongs to a new, more style-conscious D.C., where the nightlife is on the upswing, the restaurant scene is booming, and the hotels, increasingly, live up to their greater architectural setting.

Of course from the outside The Liaison isn’t exactly the Capitol, but once you’re through its doors you’re treated to hotel interiors that leave the old drab D.C. in the dust. The bedrooms are simple and modern, stylish but quietly so, understated enough that they’re still palatable for more conservative audiences.

Bolder still are the public spaces, from the lobby bar with its almost Pop Art portraits of world leaders to the rooftop lounge, a warm-weather gem, and Art and Soul, a restaurant where the visual style, however impressive, takes a back seat: chef Art Smith won a James Beard Award for his inventive upscale take on traditional soul food.

Business travelers, as ever in this town, are certain to be well looked after, but the Liaison sets its sights equally on leisure guests — and nobody minds thoughtful details like the seasonal rooftop pool.

Some of the most successful hotels play against type. Given Bangkok’s image as some sort of latter-day Sin City, there’s a real shortage of old-fashioned elegance. This is where the Hotel Muse Bangkok comes in. It’s a member of Accor’s MGallery sub-label, and it inherits some of its French colonial style from its European ownership, but it doesn’t stop there: the Muse’s lines are clean and contemporary, but its design is full of homages to the Bangkok of a century ago, rendered with a level of detail that’s almost baroque in its ornateness.

High marks for personality, then. The appeal, however, is more than skin deep, as the Muse’s facilities and comforts place it squarely in luxury-hotel territory. Even the most basic rooms have space for sofas and work desks, and in the bathrooms roll-top tubs and separate showers are standard throughout. Corner rooms make the most of the views, looking out over Bangkok’s upscale Langsuan district, and the top six floors are reserved for the Muse Residence King rooms, which are outfitted for long stays but make for perfectly plush short ones as well.

A business center and masses of event space mean the Muse is well suited to business travel, but it’s by no means solely a business hotel. The rooftop pool has an impressive view of the skyline, and is accompanied by a spa and fitness center. Meanwhile a Thai restaurant is joined by an Italian kitchen, and the nightlife is headlined by the Speakeasy, which isn’t quite what it sounds like — rather than some basement hole-in-the-wall, it’s a multi-room bar and lounge spanning two levels at the top of the Muse.

The sheltered seaside village of Portofino is probably the highlight of the Ligurian coast, and in a setting like this, where a jumble of picturesque little villas clings to the rocky hillside, there’s no need for a hotel to go too far out of its way to make big waves. So the piccolo in Domina Home Piccolo isn’t necessarily a reference to the raw size of the place — the rooms are actually quite spacious by the standards of a hotel in an Italian seaside town — but it perfectly describes the atmosphere: this 22-room boutique does a pretty convincing impression of a private villa.

And while the exterior is pure classic Portofino, the interiors have been thoroughly renovated, the rooms presenting a minimalist aspect, with modern furniture and large expanses of sunshine-intensifying white. The best-positioned rooms face out to sea, but there’s not a bad room in the house — and everyone’s entitled to a front-row view of the water from the restaurant’s terrace or from the hotel’s private beach. Anyway, you’ll want to sample as many of Portofino’s other views as you possibly can. Domina Home Piccolo isn’t the sort of hotel where you’ll pass an entire stay on the premises; but as a home base from which to explore this storied seaside town, it’d be difficult to top.

How to get there:
Domina Home Piccolo is located approximately 18 miles (30 Km) from Genoa airport and 6 miles (10 km) from the Rapallo exit off the A12 motorway. Santa Margherita Ligure railway station is 3 miles (5 Km) from the hotel. Please contact CustomerService@TabletHotels.com for assistance with airport transfers.

The Habita group, over the past decade or so, has amassed an impressive collection of boutique hotels, an empire that spans more or less all of Mexico, from the cities to the countryside to the beaches of Playa del Carmen. And even as their holdings expand to include their first foreign property, New York’s Hotel Americano, the brand-new Down Town Mexico is proof that they aren’t letting their imperial ambitions loosen their hold on the capital’s boutique-hotel business.

Architecturally it’s a bit of a departure, occupying a brick-fronted 17th-century palace a short walk from the Plaza de la Constitución, as central a location as a Mexico City hotel could ask for. Once inside, though, that signature Habita architectural flair returns with a vengeance: the original high ceilings remain intact, among other charmingly weathered period details, but the prevailing atmosphere is that of a very clean, very contemporary modern boutique style. Simple forms highlight rich textures, from the dark tiled floors to the raw wood furnishings to the screens, almost Moorish in style, that set the bathrooms apart from the bedrooms.

Where the Habita group goes, a certain stylish crowd is sure to follow, and that’ll be the case before long at Down Town’s restaurant and its roof terrace lounge. For boutique hotel enthusiasts, it’s another Mexico City neighborhood added to the recommended itinerary.

How to get there:
Down Town Mexico is located 6km from the Mexico City International Airport. Transfers can be arranged for US$250 for up to 2 guests in a private car or US$350 for 4-6 guests in a private van. Please contact CustomerService@TabletHotels.com for assistance with airport transfers.

The perennial tradeoff in ryokan hotels is getting the right balance of seclusion and accessibility. Tosen Goshobo, however, manages to get away with a pretty impressive combination. It’s only twenty minutes’ drive from the Kobe rail station, which means relatively easy access from most any of Japan’s major cities — but its position in the mountain village of Arima, one of the oldest hot springs in the country, means that the stresses of city life, once you’re within its walls, are little more than a memory.

A ryokan in one form or another has stood on this spot for centuries, though in its current incarnation it only dates back a little less than a hundred years. Goshobo is no nostalgia trip, though — even at mid-century, its owners kept pace with developments in modern architecture, and the result is a ryokan that’s quietly contemporary, blending traditional tatami interiors with some of the finer currents in Western residential design.

Along with the hotel’s design credentials, the healing waters of the Arima springs are well known across Japan, and they probably account for their fair share of the business. So too does the cuisine: it’s worth booking in advance to get yourself a seat at Goshobo’s table.

In Spain, where mass tourism is at its most massive, the best travel experiences are very often found in the smallest places. On that score Casa La Siesta certainly qualifies. It’s far enough off the beaten path, a few miles outside of Vejer, near the Andalusian coast. And it’s a mere speck of a place, a seven-room house isolated on a hill facing out toward the sea, a new build with a rustic edge, a luxe and stylish little boutique hotel.

Rough timbers and raw wooden furniture contrast with rain showers and plush king beds, while the suites add elegant freestanding tubs, and there’s more than a touch of Moorish or Moroccan tile work, as befits Casa La Siesta’s Andalusian heritage. All are expansive enough, with impressive views from private terraces, but for an added measure of space and privacy there’s always the Casita La Siesta, a separate two-bedroom house with its own gardens and pool.

It’s a simple life, where the nightly highlight is a prix-fixe dinner prepared by the Casa’s private chef. From here it’s a short drive to Vejer, which has a few fine restaurants of its own, or a little longer to the beach or the golf course, and a little longer than that to Cadiz, if you’re dying for some city life — though the possibility, after a taste of Casa La Siesta’s pastoral atmosphere, does seem remote.

It’s about experience. There are smaller hotels, hipper hotels, certainly less ostentatious hotels than this gleaming gold tower, but if you’re looking to do Sin City the way it’s meant to be done, there are few hotels better suited to the purpose than the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The views are impressive, the rooms suitably flashy, and there’s no in-house casino — some find this last fact a drawback, but to be able to shut out the chaos of the gaming floor at will is, in this town, one of the most useful luxuries there is.

The interiors aren’t short of marble or crystal, but in Las Vegas that signature Trump look comes off looking tastefully conservative. In fact, perhaps unsurprisingly, the style is more Manhattan residential than Vegas theatrical. The studio suites pack in luxuries like king beds, marble baths well-equipped kitchenettes and HD televisions, and things only spread out from there, through one-bedroom suites to two- and three-bedroom penthouses.

And there are places where the Trump shows peculiar strengths. The spa covers eleven thousand square feet, all of it put to good use, and the hotel welcomes children and dogs with what seems like genuine enthusiasm. There’s a fine-dining restaurant named for Donald J. himself, as well as a health-focused poolside eatery. And the Trump’s location provides entree to the best Las Vegas has to offer, from the Fashion Show mall to the Strip and beyond.

Now that they’ve got the urban boutique hotel more or less down to a science, the Mexico-based Habita group is on to the next challenge. Hotel Endémico is a major departure: on a hillside overlooking the Valle de Guadalupe in the Baja wine country, the Endémico is hardly a hotel at all. Gone is the traditional luxury lodge, replaced by twenty hyper-modern freestanding “EcoLofts,” pod-like villas elevated on stilts a few feet above the desert floor. From the outside they’re almost comically minimal, simple wooden boxes with rakishly angled roofs.

But that’s from the outside. From the inside they’re impeccably styled, compact luxury bedrooms with dramatic views: the valley is framed through floor-to-ceiling windows, with your neighbors cleverly placed outside the edges of the picture. At 215 square feet they’re not overly large, but a certain coziness is what’s called for here. The interiors look sharp in black, white and raw concrete and there’s some semi-private exterior space as well: each one comes with a furnished private deck, complete with an enclosed firepit.

And the Endémico, for all its privacy, isn’t entirely an exercise in solitude. There’s an infinity pool and jacuzzi that share the same valley-spanning view, as well as a restaurant that takes a local, handmade approach to the cuisine of Baja California, under the direction of the Culinary Arts School in nearby Tijuana.

How to get there:
Hotel Endemico is located 113 km (1h:30min) from General Abelardo L. Salinas airport in Tijuana. Transfers can be organized upon request. Please contact CustomerService@TabletHotels.com for assistance with airport transfers.