Planning an overseas trip? Then, whether for business or pleasure or a crafty combination of both, you’ll want to be up on all the new hotel news. Fresh from the prestigious International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) conference, in Cannes, France, which Travel Talk reports on annually, here is our hot hotel takeaway – the hotels to keep on your radar for 2026 and beyond.
When it comes to luxury travel, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is always a good place to start – and this stellar group, celebrating 65 years as a leader in the field, has been busy.
In Florida, on a glorious white sand beach in Old Naples, the Naples Beach Club will reopen as the Gulf Coast’s first Four Seasons Resort, where it will pair beautiful accommodations with beachside dining and a new Tom Fazio-designed golf course.
Across the country, in Santa Barbara, the much-loved and historic Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara is reopening its doors. You’ll find its guest accommodations fully renovated and its secluded courtyards, glorious fountains and red-brick pathways all intact but refreshed.
With colonial and Beaux-Arts landmarks right on the doorstep of Cartagena’s UNESCO-listed Old Town, the new Four Seasons Hotel & Residences Cartagena means you can now have a truly world-class hotel experience as well as a cultural one in this ravishing Colombian city.
Across the pond, Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris has undergone a three-year renovation (to be honest, we hadn’t noticed it even needed one), while Venice’s famed Hotel Danieli has been given the top-to-toe treatment by Pierre-Yves Rochon, so that Danieli, A Four Seasons Hotel, Venice is now “a masterpiece restored,” as Four Seasons is calling it.
Watch-out too for Four Seasons Resort, Mykonos, scheduled for a spring 2026 opening. For certain, it will be upping the ante on an island already bursting with good hotels.
If you’re Asia-bound, meanwhile, Four Seasons Guangzhou, which sits high above the Pearl River, has refreshed its guest rooms and signature spaces, including the soaring atrium and dramatic 70th-floor sky lobby.
And if all this isn’t enough, March 2026 sees the debut of “Four Seasons 1,” the hotel company’s first yacht, with a few staterooms still available for its maiden voyage in the Caribbean. The yacht pairs pretty nicely with the Four Seasons Jet – a private jet that flies you around the world in considerable style – don’t you think?
There’s news too from Mandarin Oriental. This tony hotel company started life back in 1876 with its first hotel, The Oriental, Bangkok. That legendary hostelry, now Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, turns 150 years old in 2026 and is still considered one of the top hotels in the world today.
“Others follow trends, Mandarin Oriental creates them,” as MO expressed at the ILTM conference, sharing the news that with its current 45 hotels and another 34 in the pipeline, it will double its portfolio in the next eight to 10 years.
MO has recently acquired the glorious Art Nouveau Hotel Lutetia in Paris – now giving it a property on both the Right and Left Banks in the City of Lights – as well as the highly regarded Conservatorium Amsterdam, a former music school, both hotels previously part of the Set Collection.
Other openings include Mandarin Oriental Vienna, housed in the former High Court (seemingly appropriate for a group at the top of its game), and Mandarin Oriental Downtown Dubai, the Emirate’s newest hotel in its dazzling Wasl Tower. And if you happen to find yourself in Malaysia, perhaps on business, when the working week is done you’ll certainly want to head for some downtime to The Mandarin Oriental Siēya Desaru Coast, a rainforest retreat-cum-beach resort where jungle meets the sea, one hour by boat from Singapore.
But perhaps the new property we’re most excited about is Mandarin Oriental Punta Negra, on the Balearic island of Mallorca, slated for a July 2026 opening.
One of the many great things about Rocco Forte Hotels – their flagship hotel is Brown’s Hotel in London – is that, not mere “tourist” hotels, they have always been popular within their local marketplaces. So, expect to see beautifully well-turned-out Milanese at RFH’s new property, The Carlton in Milan (where celebrity barman Salvatore Calabrese will be running the bar program); noble Neapolitans at its “new” Palazzo Caravita (actually built in 1535) in Naples; and sassy Sicilians at Palazzo Castelluccio, a restored 18th century residence in the UNESCO World Heritage Town of Noto in Sicily.
Unlike the hotel companies already mentioned, The Leading Hotels of The World is not a single hotel chain but an umbrella group comprising, well, the leading hotels of the world – though “leading” is of course open to interpretation. At the conference, LHW President and CEO Shannon Knapp informed attendees that the association now numbers 425-plus members in 80 countries, but that only 5% of new applicants annually are accepted, keeping LHW somewhat exclusive.
Even so, the group added 40 new hotels in 2025 (which goes to show just how many hotels applied for membership). They include The Beach Club at Boca Raton, Florida; the renowned Hotel Imperial in Tokyo; The Silo Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa; Ngorogoro Lodge in Tanzania and Ayan Zalaat in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia – the first “Leadings” for those last two countries.
Mongolia, by the way, is a country we are going to be hearing a lot about in the next few years, as it makes good on its commitment to developing its tourist infrastructure.
Other countries with developing tourism to visit before everybody else catches on? Well, tiny Montenegro, for one, in the Balkans, with its medieval towns and stunning Adriatic coastline; and Sao Tome & Principe for another, a remote paradise island in the Atlantic, 200 miles off the East African coast, with volcanic mountains, stunning beaches and rainforests.
But the country with by far the most rapidly advancing tourism – and if this surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention – is none other than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Yes, KSA, as it’s known, is experiencing a massive tourism boom, with breathtaking new luxury hotels and resorts and diverse cultural and natural attractions way beyond traditional religious tourism.
So, see you there – or somewhere equally wonderful – in 2026.
Jeremy Wayne is a travel adviser with Superior Travel of New York. Email him at jeremy@superiortravel.com.
