Top 10 Luxury Hotels in China, 2026

Rising above the Guardian Art Center a few minutes' walk from the Forbidden City, The PuXuan is Beijing's quiet design statement — stone, timber and light handled with museum precision, rooms that rank among the city's most serene, and service tuned to the individual rather than the script. We stayed, and it recalibrated what we expect from a city hotel; the full review is on the site.

Peninsula rebuilt its Beijing flagship into one of the most generous hotels in Asia — enormous suite-style rooms, marble bathrooms with the brand's signature technology, and the Rolls-Royce fleet gliding through Wangfujing. We reviewed it in person: the hardware is extraordinary for the rate, and the location puts the Forbidden City, the hutongs and the shopping streets within minutes.

A series of pavilion courtyards beside the east gate of the Summer Palace, some more than a century old, restored in a hushed grammar of grey brick, lattice and lantern light. Guests slip into the palace grounds at dawn before the public arrives — the single best imperial-Beijing experience money can arrange. The pool, cinema and dining are pure Aman; the setting is pure Qing dynasty.

The 1911 Shanghai Club — once the most exclusive address in colonial Asia, its Long Bar legendary — anchors the Waldorf Astoria's Bund presence, with a modern tower behind delivering river-view rooms. We stayed and reviewed it: the heritage wing's suites are the move, breakfast under the glass dome is a ritual, and Pudong's skyline across the water never gets old.

Bulgari paired a slender modern tower with the restored 1916 Chamber of Commerce building on Suzhou Creek — the ballroom alone is worth the visit — and the result is Shanghai's most polished contemporary stay. Il Ristorante Niko Romito upstairs, the brand's signature bar terrace facing Pudong's towers, and rooms measured in Milanese precision. Booked with Bulgari programme benefits.

A low-rise vision of pavilions, lagoons and willow gardens in the resort style of southern China, minutes from the UNESCO landscape of West Lake. It is the rare city-adjacent hotel that behaves like a resort — swimming pools amid lotus ponds, tai chi at dawn, tea culture on the doorstep. As Four Seasons Preferred Partners we add breakfast, upgrades and credit.

A centuries-old village at the edge of Hangzhou's tea terraces, converted house by house into Aman's most humble-luxurious property — stone paths, camphor trees, and the temple bells of Lingyin drifting over the roofs. Days are tea fields, dumpling houses and the monastery path; nights are lamplight and silence. There is nothing else like it in China.

Courtyard villas in the mist below UNESCO-listed Qing Cheng Mountain — Taoism's cradle — with the Dujiangyan panda base minutes away. We stayed and wrote the full review: the wellness programming is the real thing, the air is a revelation after the cities, and pandas before breakfast is exactly as good as it sounds.

Xi'an's most polished hotel by a distance — Tang-dynasty motifs rendered in modern glamour, a serious club lounge, and the logistics muscle to make the Terracotta Army, the city walls and the Muslim Quarter effortless. We reviewed it in person; for the two nights most itineraries give Xi'an, nothing else comes close.

Aman's courtyard retreat sits above the grey-tiled roofscape of Lijiang's UNESCO old town, with Jade Dragon Snow Mountain on the horizon and Naxi culture at the doorstep. Yunnan is China at its most scenic — canyon treks, hill-tribe markets, camellia courtyards — and Amandayan is the civilised base the region long lacked.