The 10 best luxury hotels in New York City, ranked for 2026

Aman New York occupies the restored Crown Building at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, and its arrival in Manhattan in 2022 changed the city's luxury hotel conversation permanently.

The 83 suites, with their 4-metre ceilings, Japanese cypress bathtubs and custom furnishings designed by Jean-Michel Gathy, are among the largest rooms in midtown Manhattan and the most carefully detailed. What distinguishes Aman's approach from the city's other luxury properties is the philosophy of refuge: the design specifically reduces stimulation rather than amplifying it, creating a quality of quiet that is genuinely rare 250 metres above Fifth Avenue. The Aman Spa, spread across eight floors and including a 25-metre pool, a full yoga and fitness studio, hair and nail salons, and 11 treatment rooms, is the most ambitious hotel spa in North America. The rooftop garden and bar, accessible to residents, produces cocktails and food with a Japanese-Mediterranean sensibility that matches the property's aesthetic. Arva, the hotel's restaurant, has become one of the most sought-after reservations in New York within two years of opening, the Italian-influenced menu executed with precision and served in one of the most beautiful dining rooms in the city.

The Mark is the most stylish hotel in New York and has been since its 2009 renovation by Jacques Grange, the French decorator whose previous projects include private residences for Yves Saint Laurent and Princess Caroline of Monaco.

The 150 rooms and suites in an Upper East Side townhouse building are individually designed with a wit and confidence that most hotel designers lack: black-and-white striped bathrooms, custom Frette linens, furniture that manages to feel simultaneously contemporary and informed by art history. The hotel exists at the specific intersection of serious luxury and genuine personality. The Mark Restaurant, operated by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, produces excellent French-American cuisine served in one of the most elegantly designed dining rooms in the city. The Mark Bar, a room that the New York social world has adopted as a preferred venue, serves cocktails and light food to a clientele that includes the curators, collectors and cultural figures who populate the blocks between 72nd and 86th Streets. For the traveller who wants to be genuinely in the Upper East Side rather than adjacent to it, The Mark is the unambiguous choice.

The St.

Regis New York is a Beaux-Arts landmark built in 1904 by John Jacob Astor IV, and its position at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street has been one of Manhattan's most coveted addresses for 120 years. The 238 rooms and suites are among the most opulently designed in the city, hand-embroidered silk wall coverings, crystal chandeliers, Louis XIV-inspired furniture, the kind of gilded grandeur that would feel overwhelming anywhere except this building, where it feels precisely correct. Every room comes with 24-hour butler service, a St. Regis standard that the hotel has maintained since 1904. The King Cole Bar, with its celebrated 1906 Maxfield Parrish mural of Old King Cole, is one of the great rooms of New York and the birthplace of the Bloody Mary, invented here in 1934 by barman Fernand Petiot. Alain Ducasse's restaurant Benoit, operating in partnership with the hotel, produces impeccable French brasserie food. The seasonal butler service, which changes with each season and includes specialised programmes for summer entertaining, autumn activities and winter holidays, is one of the most genuinely personalised hotel experiences in the city.

The Baccarat Hotel takes the crystal manufacturer's 250-year heritage and builds it into a hotel environment with impressive conviction.

The glass-latticed facade on West 53rd Street catches the midtown light in a way that references the brand's signature product at architectural scale, and the interior, designed by Gilles and Boissier, fills the Grand Salon, the bar and the guest rooms with Baccarat crystal chandeliers, hand-blown glass objects and the specific quality of refracted light that has defined the brand since 1764. The 114 rooms and suites are beautifully proportioned and finished with French luxury house precision. The Grand Salon, serving afternoon tea and evening cocktails in a room of extraordinary beauty, high ceilings, crystal reflections, flower arrangements that take a team of specialists to maintain, is the finest hotel public room to open in New York in the past decade. The Spa de la Mer, developed in partnership with the luxury skincare brand, offers treatments that combine advanced marine biology science with French aesthetic luxury. The location directly opposite MoMA makes the Baccarat the choice for culturally motivated travellers who want both world-class art and world-class hotel within 50 metres of each other.

The Carlyle has been the address of choice for presidents, royalty and cultural figures in New York since 1930, and its position at 76th and Madison has an accumulated cultural weight that no recently opened hotel can replicate.

JFK used the Carlyle as his New York residence. Princess Diana stayed here. Elaine Stritch lived here for decades. Woody Allen has played clarinet at Café Carlyle on Monday nights for years. The hotel is genuinely woven into the fabric of New York cultural life in a way that makes staying here feel participatory rather than observational. Bemelmans Bar, named for Ludwig Bemelmans, the Madeline illustrator who painted the 1947 murals in exchange for room and board, is the most atmospheric cocktail room in New York: rabbit waiters in white jackets, jazz piano, the original Bemelmans murals of Central Park animals in evening dress, cocktails that arrive in perfect proportion. The 190 suites are decorated in the style of classic New York apartment living, with antique furniture and artworks that suggest long occupation rather than hotel inventory. Under Rosewood management since 2018, the service has reached a consistency that matches the property's historical character.

The Four Seasons New York was designed by I.M.

Pei, the architect of the Louvre pyramid, and its 52-floor limestone tower on East 57th Street is a Midtown landmark. The 368 rooms and suites are among the largest in Manhattan by average square footage: the I.M. Pei design allocated extraordinary ceiling heights (the superior rooms start at 4.5 metres) and window dimensions that make the city views feel like exhibitions rather than outlooks. The Four Seasons service standard, applied here with the same rigour as the brand operates globally, produces an experience of reliable, warm, professional care that is harder to achieve than it looks. The Ty Bar, at the base of the tower with direct access from 57th Street, is one of Midtown's most civilised after-work and pre-theatre destinations, serving cocktails with the Four Seasons precision in an understated room that the best luxury hospitality has always preferred. The spa is comprehensive and well-operated. For business travellers and cultural visitors who want the Four Seasons standard at a New York Midtown address, with walking distance access to Carnegie Hall, MoMA and the major 57th Street galleries, this is the default excellent choice.

The Plaza Hotel opened in 1907 on the Grand Army Plaza at the southeast corner of Central Park, and its French Renaissance chateau facade has been one of New York's most iconic silhouettes for 118 years.

F. Scott Fitzgerald set scenes of The Great Gatsby here. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint met in North by Northwest here. Eloise lives on the sixth floor in Kay Thompson's beloved children's books. When the most famous hotel in American cultural mythology is also a genuinely excellent place to stay, with Central Park views from the upper rooms and a Palm Court that serves afternoon tea to one of the most glamorous assemblages of guests in Manhattan, the decision is easier than the room rate makes it look. The 282 rooms and suites are appointed in the Edwardian style, gilded mouldings, marble bathrooms, antique-reproduction furniture, the gold-and-white palette that the original architects specified in 1907. The Palm Court, an atrium dining room with a stained-glass ceiling, is the most theatrically beautiful breakfast and afternoon tea room in the city. The Oak Room Bar is one of Manhattan's finest old-school cocktail destinations. The level of service has been variable over the years following different ownership transitions; under the current management it is consistently at the level the building deserves.

The Beekman opened in 2016 in a beautifully restored 1883 Romanesque Revival building whose defining feature, an eight-storey atrium topped with a pyramid skylight, is one of the most remarkable interior architectural spaces in New York.

The 287 rooms and suites are designed around this central atrium, with the upper floors facing the pyramid above through their windows, and the ground-floor public spaces radiating from the light-filled central hall. TriBeCa, the hotel's neighbourhood, has become one of the most desirable residential areas in Manhattan and gives the Beekman a local quality that Midtown luxury hotels cannot manufacture. Temple Court, Tom Colicchio's restaurant in the ground-floor dining room beneath the atrium, produces serious American food from an award-winning chef in one of the most spectacular dining environments in the city. The Bar Room, a more casual companion to Temple Court, is one of the better hotel bars in downtown Manhattan. For travellers who want to experience a different New York from the Midtown luxury concentration, closer to the cultural institutions of the Financial District, the galleries of TriBeCa and the restaurants of SoHo, the Beekman is the most architecturally compelling choice at this price point.

The Loews Regency is the power hotel of New York, the address where deals are made over breakfast, where media executives conduct strategy sessions between meetings, where the Park Avenue breakfast table has been a fixture of Manhattan business culture since the 1980s.

The 379 rooms and suites on Park Avenue between 61st and 62nd Streets occupy a 1961 building that has been repeatedly renovated without losing its essential character: classic New York luxury, understated in design, maximised in functionality, with a staff that has been serving the same type of client for 60 years and knows precisely what is required. The Regency Bar & Grill produces the most famous breakfast in New York, not for the food, which is reliably good, but for the table of media executives, agents and publishers who have been conducting business over eggs since the Reagan administration. The rooms are well-maintained and spacious for the Park Avenue price point. Central Park is a two-minute walk. The neighbourhood, the 60s blocks of Park Avenue, is as residential and peaceful a New York address as exists within walking distance of Midtown. For the business traveller who wants the classic New York luxury experience without the design theatre of newer properties, the Regency is the right choice.

Langham Place New York brings the Asian luxury hospitality brand's characteristic understated elegance to a Fifth Avenue Midtown address at a price point that undercuts its immediate neighbours significantly.

The 214 rooms and suites occupy a 2012 tower with large windows and efficient design, not the most historically resonant property on this list, but one that delivers clean, comfortable, well-serviced luxury accommodation in the right location with consistent quality. The design, by Avroko, produces a contemporary American aesthetic that avoids the faux-historic decoration of older Midtown properties. The Chuan Spa, drawing on Chinese wellness traditions including acupuncture, cupping and Traditional Chinese Medicine consultations alongside conventional spa treatments, offers a programme genuinely distinct from any other hotel spa in New York. The restaurant, The Langham Club, is a civilised breakfast and all-day dining option. The location at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue puts the Empire State Building at walking distance, the Midtown shopping corridor along Fifth Avenue directly outside, and the Herald Square transit hub within five minutes, making the Langham Place the most practically useful luxury hotel on this list for first-time New York visitors.