T + L: It List -- Best New Luxury Hotels for 2010

Travel and Leisure (T + L) has released its It List for 2010, which profiles 45 of the best new luxury hotels across the world.  This is a great list because it provides awareness about fresh, new, and exciting places versus the well-established places that we hear about all of the time.  There are still some familiar names (e.g. W, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, Willard, Ritz-Carlton, Shangri-la, Waldorf Astoria), but they have set up shop in new locations. I have highlighted a few of the hotels for you below, based on the images that stood out to me the most from the list or if I have come across the hotel in other searches.  This is somewhat arbitrary, but it represents a pretty good mix of the new flavor out there in the world of luxury hotels. 

Upper House, Hong Kong - Awesome website! 
Alila Villas Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia  
Argos in Cappadocia, Uchisar, Turkey 
Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa, Lithgow, Australia 
Andaz Wall Street, New York, NY 
Shangri-La Boracay Resort & Spa, Boracay, Philippines 
Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona, Spain 
Las Alcobas, Mexico City, Mexico 

Enjoy browsing! I have also added the T+L Carry-On blog, tagged just to hotels, to the Blog List and the featured hotels onto the gallery links page.  You may want to check out today's Carry-On article on a new hotel under construction in Singapore.

.sb06

Oyster and Raveable -- New items added to the Hotel Resources List

More additions!

I've just added two more resources to the link list at the bottom of the page.  I thought about adding a separate list for hotel reviewing sites, but figured most of you were already well aware of the Kayak, Expedia, etc. type of sites so I figured I wouldn't crowd the page with commonly known resources.  I also didn't want to add too many review sites because they can be cumbersome to browse through and incredibly subjective.  I suppose my reviews will be subjective as well, but for the most part, the design is the primary focus, and nice features are pretty much nice features no matter how you look at it.

The two new sites I just added are Oyster and Raveable, which provide hundreds of reviews of hotels good and bad.  Both sites focus exclusively on hotels, versus more travel oriented sites that discuss hotels as just a part of the total travel package.  In addition to being able to search for hotels and reviews, both sites feature extensive listings of the best hotels by city as well as categories, themes, and features.  Oyster also features very extensive photo galleries for the hotels on the site, which is very helpful for getting a good feeling about the hotel.  Raveable also features a blog list of the best travel blogs out there on the web.

Reviews on both sites are very thorough, although Oyster claims to post professional, unbiased reviews versus Raveable, which pulls reviews from real customers primarily through TripAdvisor and MyTravelGuide.  I think both types of reviews can be useful, but it depends on which you trust more.  Both sites also allow viewers to check rates and availability for the hotel you are checking out...just some added convenience so you don't have to bounce around between multiple sites.  The only downside to the sites is that they are basically limited to US and nearby destinations at this time, so you world travelers out there will have to wait until they extend their coverage.

Until next time!

.sb06