China has some of the world’s most polluted cities and so luxury hotels like the Cordis Hongqiao Hotel in Shanghai are turning clean air into a business strategy. Windows in the hotel are always closed, and all incoming air passes through two layers of filtration. Every one of the hotel’s 396 rooms has a pollution monitor showing the levels of PM2.5 — particulate matter so small it can stick in a person’s lungs. The hotel claims the air inside is usually 10 times cleaner than outside.

Get greeted by a meow. Or a series of meows. Standing on bamboo stilts in Myanmar’s Inle Lake, the Inle Heritage serves as both a hotel and a conservation initiative focused on Burmese cats. So as you enjoy the hospitality and delicious native cuisine, feline friends abound, ready for companionship … or a bite.

Buenos Aires has a reputation for intense soccer fans, tons of beef and an overabundance of psychoanalysts. But there are also a lot of “telos” or sex motels. Typically featuring small, steel doors and windowless facades, these establishments are more interesting from the inside. And while many locals have been using these venues for almost a century, tourists seeking a hidden side of the city are now finding their way in.

Your next hotel may be a tourist destination in itself. To check into the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, hotel guests take a high-speed elevator to the Sky Lobby on the 70th floor. When the doors open, it’s not uncommon to hear gasps. Soaring, floor-to-ceiling windows reveal LA’s sprawling cityscape, unfurled all the way to the coast. From a 1,100-foot height, guests can see the Pacific Ocean, Beverly Hills, the San Gabriel Mountains and even the surrounding helipads below — and that’s just the start.

Imagine a hotel that is part Disney, part Antoni Gaudí and part ”Alice in Wonderland” fever dream, and you’ve pictured the Crazy House in Da Lat, Vietnam. A stroll around the hotel grounds brings a labyrinth of screeching gates and peanut-shaped passageways, while you duck into tiny tunnels and stumble upon hidden crannies. Walk through the hotel, and you’ll see curves, not straight lines. You climb tree stumps, not stairs, and you sit on giant concrete toadstools, not cushy armchairs. Skinny footbridges snake through low-hanging branches and leafy vines.

The Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club in Miami opened inside the 1930s-era Surf Club, an iconic private venue for famous guests like Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Winston Churchill. Such a historical legacy can prove quite the attraction, as current-day visitors are keen to book a spa or get dinner and drinks at a place once frequented by celebrities and other icons of a bygone age.

Anyone who’s roamed the enchanting streets of the capital Tbilisi — or ventured up the majestic Mount Kazbegi to feast on mouthwatering cheesy bread and delight in top-shelf wine — can tell you that Georgia has always been great at welcoming visitors. Hotel entrepreneur Valeri Chekheria helped build his nation into a post-Soviet tourist gem. And if you stay at one of his hotels, you’re bound to have a good time. “We treat all our guests like they’re a gift from God,” he says, invoking an age-old Georgian belief.

From old forts to abandoned villas, India’s landscape is a kaleidoscope of architectural influences drawn from its unmatched history. Aditi Balbir, an ardent traveler herself, is turning her nation’s rich tapestry of forgotten buildings into a new Airbnb-style bouquet — arranged specifically for those willing to tread off the beaten path. Her company, V Resorts, takes over old bungalows and buildings in small-town and rural India and turns them into tourist-friendly homes, bringing visitors to often-ignored parts of the country. 

The Peruvian hotelier has made it his business to ensure that the hordes of tourists who descend on his nation to see Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail actually benefit rural communities, while leaving the country’s sensitive ecology unharmed. A pioneering ecotourism expert, his Inkaterra group of resorts welcomed 220,000 visitors per year before the pandemic. But while COVID-19 has hurt tourism, neither the virus nor age has blunted his spirit of innovation — whether it’s turning Machu Picchu carbon neutral or restoring a marine forest.

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There is something downright eerie about Nevada at night. The desert air carries sounds deep into the darkness. And for those seeking a creepier hotel experience (with some kitsch), then you can start your road trip with a night at The Little A’Le’Inn. The inn, which is decorated with alien memorabilia, is a key landing point for the only company to offer an adventure tour of Area 51, where you can view petroglyphs that appear to depict ancient aliens and visit the infamous “Black Mailbox,” a meeting place for UFO enthusiasts.

More than 600 clowns (dolls, not human ones) occupy the premises of The Clown Motel, which has been called “America’s scariest motel.” While most visitors are amused and entertained by the Tonopah, Nevada motel’s decor, proprietor Hame Anand admits that once or twice guests have booked rooms, only to leave right after they arrived. It probably didn’t help that three of the motel’s rooms have been officially labeled haunted by paranormal experts.

For fans of fear, Tonopah is also home to the Mizpah Hotel, a popular and recently renovated haunt for TV ghost hunters (and poltergeists looking for their turn on TV). Built in 1907, the hotel celebrates a bygone era with furnishings that evoke the town’s boom-bust mining history. In the Wagon Suite, for example, you can settle down for the night in a carved wagon bed.

If you could stay free at any hotel in the world, which one would you choose?

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