Royal Lancaster Hotel

London

From the outside, it looks as glossy as a French Riviera casino, but step inside Hyde Park’s 18-floor Royal Lancaster and you’ll discover a world of calming interiors in shades of sand and sky, second-to-none service, a cutting-edge food and drink offering and guestrooms with the kind of superlative views usually reserved for royalty, rock stars and oligarchs.

Built as a speculative office block in London’s swinging Sixties, and having made a cameo appearance alongside Michael Caine in the 1969 film The Italian Job, the hotel marked its 50-year anniversary last year with the culmination of a three-year, £80m refurb and, boy, was it money well spent. All 411 rooms have been completely made-over and, when we you finally drag yourself away from that panoramic, emerald-green parkland view, you’ll discover a lavish wet-room-style bathroom stocked with White Company toiletries and a bed from which getting back out of won’t come easy.

After a Great Gats-bee cocktail in the new Lobby Bar, made with cherry brandy, Chivas 18 and honey from the hotel’s own rooftop hives, and a note-perfect meal in the Nipa Thai restaurant, we retired upstairs feeling like we’d just won the jackpot. Doubles from £509.