The best hotels in Thailand: city hideaways, spas and beach resorts

The Four Seasons Tented Camp is an off-grid jungle safari that gets you up close and personal with rescued elephants. Its remote address attracts older, adventurous travelers who come for the ethical animal encounters and stay for the relaxed atmosphere. Each of the 15 glamping tents is inspired by 19th-century explorers’ camps, but reinterpreted with modern comforts. The vibe is Out of Africa meets Southeast Asia, and the magic is in the meticulous details. Picture: vintage steamer trunks, hand-hammered copper bathtubs, hurricane lamps, and faucet handles made to look like tusks. The all-inclusive resort has one restaurant, Nong Yao, which serves breakfast with the elephants and a dual western and Thai menu for lunch and dinner. Don’t miss sunset cocktails at the beautiful Burma Bar, overlooking the Ruak River. Chelsea Bengier

Price: Rooms from around £2,400 per night.

Trisara feels special before you even arrive. Once northwest Phuket’s Nai Thon beach has disappeared behind you and the road snakes upwards through an impossibly green jungle, the island’s buzz feels miles away. It’s wild yet perfectly manicured, with gardens smelling of jasmine and frangipani. The villas are hush-hush hideaways where you won’t see a single other soul. Each one has a dreamy infinity pool that seemingly blends into the ocean below and multiple sets of padded sun loungers on a parasol-shaded deck. The action, instead, happens down at the beach, where a multi-tiered saltwater pool runs almost half its length and well-heeled regulars sip lychee martinis under bamboo umbrellas. There isn’t a whole lot to do in this corner of the island, but that’s exactly the point. Compared to Phuket’s tourist-thronged south, the resort’s perch in the little-visited northwest keeps the area blissfully quiet. Enjoy the Jara Spa, a complex of ocean-facing spa rooms pitched up at the top of the hill, offering in head-to-toe treatments, and dine in the on-site restaurats: every single one is a delight. The showpiece, though, is PRU, Phuket’s first (and only) restaurant to earn a Michelin star for chef Jimmy Ophorst’s hyper-local and zero-waste tasting menus. Chris Schalkx

Price: Rooms from around £1,000 per night.

Aman Nai Lert Bangkok is not a place one loves then leaves. It stays with you. For nearly a year, over and over, I’ve wished to be back in its ninth-floor infinity pool, delicate shadows from a massive sampong tree canopy dancing on the salt water as a wispy breeze fluttered in my hair. I can’t count how often I’ve begun salivating when I thought of the tender, sticky-sweet-and-salty moo ping pork skewers and limitless bowls of melt-in-your-mouth mango I devoured at breakfast. And I crave deeply the energy-releasing tap-tap-tap of the hand-carved teak tools used in the extensive and empyreal hotel spa’s singular Nud Tok Sen massage. These are not only happy memories; they are all connected to the rich storytelling of this urban resort built amid a seven-acre bubble of lushness that was the early-20th-century teak retreat of visionary Thai entrepreneur and businessman Phraya Bhakdinorasreth, known as Nai Lert – it’s well worth a tour. His descendants’ hotel and private members club is intimately tethered to its place down to the littlest detail, such as custom-designed tipis for the youngest guests depicting Nai Lert’s famous pet leopard, Chao Taem. (The classic-luxury touches are there too, like circular bathtubs – so large that they’re practically plunge pools – best enjoyed with gratis Billecart-Salmon Champagne from the minibar.) Glamorously artful and thoughtful in both aesthetics and hospitality, the bolt-hole is perhaps Bangkok’s most personal, chockablock with intimate references in a setting best described as elysian. Being a guest here feels like being woven into the fabric of its history too. Kathryn Romeyn

Price: Rooms from around £900 per night.

It’s the island’s priciest place to stay (North of £1000 a night in the low season, and double that in high), but it is also the very best. A stay at Four Seasons Samui is like stepping into the White Lotus life – part of the reason why season three of the hit HBO series was reportedly filmed here. It’s easy to see why it was chosen – it’s serene and seriously photogenic, with 78 residences and villas cut into a steep jungly hillside (and former coconut plantation). Architect and interior designer Bill Bensley can take full credit for the stylish and lux feel, from the jazzy artwork to the very cool Coco Rum pool bar, where striped sofas line a palm-dotted pool with sea views beyond

Koh Thai, the open-air restaurant, has food as good as the views (handily, you don’t have to stay to eat here). It’s the same spot for breakfast, where an incredible French pastry chef prepares the most delicious matcha madeleines, vanilla brioche and chocolate financiers – every morning is a surprise. There’s a spa, of course, there is, with treatments using Thai herbal products, a breezy outdoor yoga pavilion and a small kid’s club in a treehouse. Snorkel offshore, laze on a lounger the size of a super-king bed on the beach or sip spirits in the rum vault (one of the many drinking spots) before a lantern-lit meal on the beach. Hannah Summers

Price: Rooms from around £1,200 per night.

Some hotels lose their lustre after a while. Others, like the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, only get better with age. This Southeast Asian hidey-hole has been around since 1876 but doesn't feel mired in the past. Frequent spruce-ups have kept it looking tip-top, while an ever-evolving lineup of a dozen or so restaurants (including Kinu by chef Takagi Kazuo and classic Thai restaurant Baan Phraya) keep a finger on the pulse of Bangkok's dining scene. And then there's the spa, with CBD-oil-infused massages, ice baths, and rubdowns using herbs from northeast Thailand's Isan region, that still sits in a league of its own. They just don't make them like this anymore. Chris Schalkx

Price: Rooms from around £450 per night.

Anantara Mai Khao Phuket is real fly-and-flop territory – touch down at the airport, and you’ll be at the gates of Anantara Mai Khao in just 20 minutes and sipping iced coffee by your pool shortly after that. Compared to other luxe hotels on the island – many of which can be a two-hour drive away in heavy traffic – this alone could be a reason to stay. The rooms are huge. All 83 of the standalone structures are private villas with high walls and extensive outdoor terraces (with loungers and shaded sala), huge pools, bedrooms and bathrooms. Thoughtful design touches include sliding glass doors separating your living space and pool and a huge stone outdoor bathtub (big enough for two) separated from the pool by a glass panel, allowing you to slip between hot soaks and cooling dips.

The real star of a stay here is a meal at the Tree House, a Japanese omakase built into the branches of an ancient banyan tree. You can choose to dine at a table, gazing out over the gardens, but the more exciting seat is at the counter, watching the chefs prep ingredients that have recently jetted in from Japan. There's a spa and a kids' club, as well as a babysitting service if parents are in need of a night off, and while the hotel isn’t ‘the’ White Lotus hotel, the beach is set to feature, and the resort will likely be even more popular. Hannah Summers

Price: Rooms from around £300 per night.

Compared with many of its rivals, this Bangkok stalwart doesn’t have a location that’s wildly convenient: the postcard sights need a boat transfer, and most top tables are more than a 30-minute taxi ride away. But for me, and the legions of other loyal fans of this monochrome masterpiece by hotel guru Bill Bensley, that’s the point. Pitched up on a lush riverside plot in the hushed Dusit district, The Siam feels like a portal to a bygone Bangkok. Even though it opened a decade ago, it’s easy to imagine it as a plush playground for the city’s erstwhile big guns, the mid-century movers and shakers whose heirlooms – vintage Pan Am posters, tattered travel trunks and chipped ceramics – adorn the marble-floored hallways. I’d be hard-pressed to point friends to a lovelier lunch spot than the hotel’s Thai restaurant, set between the timeworn pillars of three ancient teakwood houses, where butlers in dressy black sarongs deliver the kind of classic Thai hospitality – lilting “sawadee ka” greetings and tables set with fresh orchids – that’s becoming harder to find. None of which is to say that the hotel is stuffy – there’s a tattoo parlour in the spa. An ongoing refurb is keeping suites and private-pooled villas looking fresh. And with the opening of a Jim Thompson homeware boutique in the wooden house the illustrious silk magnate helped procure for its former owners, things have come full circle. The Thai capital’s five-star hotel scene gets plusher every year, but this timeless beauty remains in a league of its own. Chris Schalkx

Price: Rooms from around £500 per night.

There's a small-town feel to this northern Thai retreat, which opened in April 2023 in Chiang Mai's leafy Umong district. At its heart, four antique Thai dwellings with their hand-carved gabled roofs and teakwood frameworks still intact harbour the hotel's main facilities, from a four-bedroom villa with breezy balconies and a private pool to a boutique selling local crafts. Pitched between the bamboo-fringed communal pool and a stilted meditation lounge, the wellness centre is a highlight, whether you opt for the week-long mindfulness retreats or a quick reflexology-focused fix-up. The restaurant, taking over one of the Thai villas, is just as wellness-minded: days here start with ginger-turmeric elixirs, good-for-you superfood bowls and tofu-stuffed Thai lettuce wraps, but the rest of the menu is far from hair-shirted: options feature Northern Thai noodles and Lanna-style riffs on comfort classics – think tacos with pulled wild boar belly and fish and chips from snakehead fish with spicy khao soi ranch dressing. And with their bright interiors accented with local textiles and wickerwork, the 44 rooms and duplex suites hit the sweet spot between rootsy Thai and comfortably modern. Chris Schalkx

Price: Rooms from around £250 per night.

It’s only a short speedboat ride from jam-packed Phuket, but Anantara’s perch on the eastern tip of palm-tufted Koh Yao Yai island feels like a wholly different slice of southern Thailand. By the time you arrive at the resort’s jetty, which juts out from a jumble of tropical trees, any hint of Phuket’s notorious beachside bustle has long disappeared into the blue horizon. Wedged between jungle-cloaked hills and a cream-coloured beach, the resort unfurls like a small town (yet gargantuan by Koh Yao Yai island standards) of multi-storied buildings with wavy facades and roofs covered in grass smooth as a golf course. European families on their school break mix with Thai weekenders at the breezy restaurants and the blob-shaped pool, which curves around wooden islets dotted with sun loungers, swirling pathways and lush patches of tropical greens. It’s a far cry from the snug, small resorts that have occupied these islands so far – but for a few days of beachy, margaritas-by-the-pool self-indulgence, this one’s hard to beat. Chris Schalkx

Price: Rooms from around £300 per night.

Some two hours into the three-hour drive northward from Bangkok, the landscape starts changing. Concrete sprawl morphs into Khao Yai’s undulating hillscape bedecked in thick jungles and fruit orchards, and just off the area’s main road that snakes past pastiche European-looking country clubs and patchworks of farmland, the Intercontinental Khao Yai emerges from behind a hedgerow of towering trees. Dotted around the lush estate, you’ll see railway-themed buildings and train cars – which is the exact theme Bangkok-based hotel designer Bill Bensley was going for. The lobby is built like an old-timey ticketing booth, while suites are set up in upcycled vintage railway carriages and draw inspiration from different Asian railway journeys. Also set up in railway carts are two restaurants and one bar (head to Poirot for champignon-topped mushroom tarts and boeuf bourguignon) and a spa specialising in Thai and aromatherapy massage. Needless to say, this imaginative stay is a hit with little ones, but even grown-ups will appreciate the whimsical respite from busy Bangkok. Chris Schalkx

Price: Rooms from around £300 per night.