When Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal
bin Abdul Aziz bought the George V in Paris, in 1996, he declared that it
was “simply the best hotel in the world.” Eight years later, the
refurbished hotel, managed by Four Seasons Hotels under a 99-year
contract, is the top choice of a high-powered panel of senior corporate
and financial executives surveyed by Institutional Investor magazine for
its 24th annual ranking of the World’s Best Hotels. The Four Seasons
George V, which features a restaurant with three Michelin Guide stars and
charges $850 per night for a room, rises from 11th in last year’s ranking. Taking second place in this year’s ranking is Bangkok’s Sukhothai, which
offers a restaurant set in a water garden and “seems to float on a lotus
pool,” as one recent guest put it. At the third-ranked Bel-Air of Los
Angeles, the hotel’s Presidential Suite is tucked away behind a lush,
12-acre garden.

Here are the top ten hotels in the world, as ranked by respondents to
Institutional Investor’s World’s Best Hotels Survey.

 
  1         Four Seasons George V     Paris
  2         Sukhothai             Bangkok
  3         Bel-Air               Los Angeles
  4         Four Seasons Singapore     Singapore
  5         Four Seasons Marunouchi   Tokyo
  6         Peninsula             Hong Kong
  7         Four Seasons Istanbul     Istanbul
  8         Mandarin Oriental       San Francisco
  9         Ciragan Palace Kempinski   Istanbul
  10         Park Hyatt-Vendome       Paris

This year’s panel of senior corporate and financial executives ranked 80
hotels in 37 cities. The voters are seasoned travelers who spent an
average of 52 nights in hotels over the past year. Respondents rated
hotels they had visited recently on a scale of 1 to 100.
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