Most hotel openings are a new building with a familiar lobby. A few each year are worth planning a whole trip around. These are the six from 2026 I would send someone to now.
Orient Express Venezia, Venice
The Duke of Urbino once lived here. For almost six centuries Palazzo Donà Giovannelli was a home, then a picture gallery, never a hotel. Orient Express spent eight years and Aline Asmar d'Amman's considerable nerve turning it into one: 47 rooms and suites under restored frescoes and Murano chandeliers, a private garden, a restaurant from three-Michelin-star chef Heinz Beck, and an art deco Wagon Bar that nods to the train. It opened in March and already holds a MICHELIN Key.
The address is the point. Cannaregio is where Venetians still live, ten minutes on foot from the crush around San Marco, and stepping off a boat at a palazzo's own water door is the Venice people picture before they go and rarely get.
Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro
Not new, but changing. Dior showed a couture collection in this hotel's gardens in 1961; on 3 November it comes back for good, with Latin America's first Dior Spa inside a reopened Pool Wing. Around it sits a five-storey wellness club with an ice bath, an infrared sauna and, this being Rio, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio. The Palace has been the city's best party for a century. Now there is a reason to be up before noon.
The St. Regis Singapore
All 299 rooms and suites redone in the greens of the Botanic Gardens a few minutes away, and three new rooms to eat and drink in: Sophia for Italian, the Tea Room with a tableside tea sommelier and a scone trolley that does not run out, and a rebuilt St. Regis Bar. Order the Straits Mary, the house Bloody Mary remade with bak kwa bourbon. The champagne is sabred every evening, the butlers are on all night, and Orchard Road is on one side with the Gardens on the other.
Rimrock Banff, Emblems Collection
The Rimrock started life in 1895 as the Hot Springs Hotel, beside the springs on Sulphur Mountain. A $115 million rebuild has taken it back to the water. The new 9,600 square foot Bathhouse runs an infinity pool facing the Rockies, salt and vista saunas, glacial cold plunges and a meditation room suspended in the air. Banff has never had anything like it. Afterwards there is a cocktail bar built around a vinyl listening room, which is the correct way to end a day in the mountains.
Falkensteiner Resort Lake Garda, Salò
This used to be the Tavina mineral water plant. Matteo Thun has turned it into a €150 million resort on the quieter western shore: a 5,500 square metre spa, an adults-only rooftop spa with saunas looking across the lake, and the world's first House of Negroni. It is built for families as much as couples, with a kids' club the size of a small hotel, and the second phase of construction runs until summer 2027, so I would pick the room with that in mind.
Serras Sevilla, Seville
Aníbal González, the architect behind the Plaza de España, built Casa Álvaro Dávila between 1915 and 1917, directly across from the Cathedral. Serras spent three years and about a million euros a room restoring it, and opened in September with only 43 rooms, hand-glazed ceramic headboards, and a rooftop pool and bar that put you level with the Giralda at sunset. Fismuler, one of Madrid's most reliable tables, has its first restaurant in Andalusia downstairs. The best view in Seville is now a hotel room.
Booking them
All six are Fora Reserve hotels, and booking them through me often gets you more than the room, usually at the same rate as booking direct: typically breakfast for two, a property credit, and an upgrade when the hotel has one to give. Each hotel decides what is available on the day, and I will tell you which perks apply before you commit.
If you are already a client, each hotel name above opens it in my booking portal, where you can see live rates and book it yourself. If you are not yet, tell me where and when and I will build the trip around it.
I book as an advisor with Fora. The hotel programmes I work with are on the perks page.