Why the Best New Hotels of 2026 Aren’t All "New"
About this episode
The episode explores what makes a hotel the best, focusing on stories and experiences rather than just aesthetics or newness.
What makes a hotel the best? Not just new, not just beautiful, but worthy of a list that thousands of travelers plan their year around? For Afar senior deputy editor Jennifer Flowers, it comes down to a single test: does this hotel have a story? Not a marketing story—a real one, rooted in the place it sits, the community around it, or the history in its bones. In this episode, Afar editorial director Billie Cohen sits down with Jenn to go behind the scenes of the 2026 Best New Hotels list, one of the biggest the team has ever assembled at 40 properties. Jenn explains how the year-long vetting process actually works (yes, every hotel was personally visited), why she pairs the right writer with the right destination, and what separates a genuine standout from a merely beautiful place to stay. Along the way, Billie and Jenn travel from a nonprofit lodge reachable only by boat or seaplane at the edge of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, to a working dairy farm in Japan’s Tohoku region, to a six-suite, solar-powered lodge on regenerating land in South Africa. They dig into the year’s biggest themes: the rise of women hoteliers at the founder and CEO level, the surprising…
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