10 Travel Writers, 10 Favorite Hotels

What makes a hotel your favorite? The favorite? Every traveler has a different criteria: some love grand properties with opulent décor, while others prefer small places with a personal touch. The service, the food, the rooms and the setting usually figure in too.

If you’re lucky, you’ve stayed at a handful of hotels that you consider to be exceptional. They’re the sort of places you’re wistful to leave.

Ten travel writers for The New York Times have stayed countless nights at countless hotels. Here, places they love.

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I’m not sure what charmed me most when my husband, Mahir, and I arrived at the Hotel Santa Caterina, in Amalfi, Italy, for our honeymoon in July 2002. Was it the cliff-top setting with dramatic views of the Mediterranean Sea? The cascading gardens full of bougainvillea trees, olive groves and lemon and orange orchards? Or was it the warmth of the Gambardella family, who opened the 66-room hotel in 1904 and have run it ever since? At least one of them goes out of their way to personally greet incoming guests. On our visit, it was sisters Giusi and Ninni Gambardella.

“Ciao bella,” Giusi said, as she embraced me. “We are honored that you chose to stay with us for this very special occasion. Thank you.”

Our suite was luxurious, yet homey: the coastline glimmered through the open balcony doors, and the chic white bed and couch were impossibly comfortable. The floor, a collection of hand-painted tiles in blue and green shades, had character.

We spent much of our five days at the property sitting in our balcony and gazing at the azure sea. Occasionally, a pink bougainvillea would drift our way from the ocean’s breeze. This reverie was only interrupted when we left our room and meandered through the gardens to the glass-enclosed elevator, which was carved into a cliff and took us down to the beach club. Come dusk, we would start with an aperitif at La Terrazza Bar and then make our way into the restaurant, where the maître d’, Pino Francese, treated us like old friends and took care to see that our orders were executed perfectly.

For me, the sign of an outstanding hotel is a pang that comes when it’s time to check out. And my heart did tug when we left. What better way to celebrate our 10th anniversary in 2012 than to return?

The Gambardellas welcomed us once again — this time it was Giusi’s son, Crescenzo Gargano — and Francese remembered the very dishes that we had enjoyed on our last visit. “Do you want the sea bass baked in salt or served simply grilled?” he asked on our first night. It was as if we had never left.

What makes Santa Caterina my favorite hotel is that I feel like I am part of a family, not a numbered guest — everyone there has the delicate intuition of true, personal hospitality. When we go back for our 20th anniversary, I have no doubt that the hotel will be exactly as I remember it.

As the New York City of my youth has vanished or crumbled over the decades — from the Times Square arcades to the subway system — The Jane has become my favorite wallet-friendly preserve of history and local lore when I revisit the city where I grew up.

Designed by the architect behind the immigration station at Ellis Island, William A. Boring, the six-story American Seaman’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute (as the hotel was first known) opened in the West Village in 1908. It became a haven of seafarers, nomads and castaways — including survivors of the Titanic, who were lodged there in 1912. The red-brick building, noted for its distinctive cupola, was granted landmark status in 2001 and renovated and reborn as The Jane on its centenary, in 2008.

I washed up there a few years ago by chance: I needed cheap accommodations without the word “hostel” in the title. The price — barely $100 per night — inspired suspicion, and I approached the lobby as I would approach a game of three-card monte. But the new concept, a stylish 171-room throwback to the Jazz Age, beguiled me totally.

Like film sets, each floor immerses you in a retro mini-world. Bellboys in red caps and jackets mill around the wood-paneled lobby, suggesting old Regency hotels. The plush rooftop bar and velvety ballroom, outfitted with oriental carpets and vintage pieces, evoke “The Great Gatsby” or (depending on my mood and number of drinks) “The Shining.”

And when the night ends, I lie on the narrow bed in one of the slim wood-paneled single rooms — more like a ship’s berth or sleeper-train compartment — and slip into a Cary Grant moment, sailing across the ocean (“An Affair to Remember”) or chugging through the American countryside (“North By Northwest”) while quietly rejoicing that I will wake up in the greatest film set of all: my hometown.

Though the literary twilight of the luxuriously louche Hotel Belle Rives in Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d’Azur, where novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald shacked up and wrote, makes me swoon, it’s not within my normal budget. The simple, comfortable, friendly, family-owned-and-run 18-room Hotel Atlantic, a seaside four-star hotel in the delightfully well-preserved little belle epoque town of Wimereux is, however, and this is one of the reasons I like it so much.

As France’s best beach towns continue to gentrify, winsome Wimereux, just north of Boulogne-sur-Mer on the aptly named Cote Opale facing the English Channel in Picardy, remains an affordable spur-of-the-moment destination from my home in Paris. Here, I can recharge my batteries with hikes along the magnificent foot path that follows the protected Deux Caps littoral and lazy afternoons on my balcony, reading or just staring out at the topaz waters of the English Channel and daydreaming while I anticipate my next meal.

The talented chef Benjamin Delpierre just won a Michelin star at La Liégeoise, the hotel’s restaurant, for his delicious contemporary French cooking prepared with a lot of impeccably fresh seafood and locally grown produce. There is also a superb cheese trolley from Philippe Olivier, one of France’s best cheesemongers in nearby Boulogne-sur-Mer, which is also the country’s largest fishing port. And if I want something simpler, the hotel’s L’Aloze brasserie has sea views and does a great sole meunière. The Atlantic also has a small spa, but it’s not a luxury hotel. Instead, its forte is wholesome comfort, like the small, scrubbed, well-run places we’d stay on family vacations to Maine or Cape Cod when I was growing up. I share my affection for this part of coastal France with some very distinguished company, too: French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, have a villa in Le Touquet just 25 miles south and well worth a day trip.

Port Townsend, a couple hours north of Seattle and just 35 miles across the water from Victoria, British Columbia, is a town of about 10,000 people in a picturesque corner of Washington. One of a handful of Victorian-era seaports in the country, the town’s fascinating history alone makes it worth a visit — it’s a prime example of what happened when 19th-century boomtowns didn’t quite achieve their aspirations. Port Townsend was on its way to becoming Seattle, the metropolitan powerhouse for the Northwest, when the railroad companies decided to stop their routes short of the town. The eastern and southern areas of Puget Sound developed into what they are today, and Port Townsend’s development froze in its tracks.

The Old Consulate Inn is a memory of headier times. A lavish Victorian home with carefully preserved Edwardian décor, it was constructed, as were many other homes in the area, on the premise of Port Townsend becoming the city of the future. That may not have happened, but the extravagance of that era can be relived at a reasonable price at the Old Consulate. With eight rooms, some of which have details like claw foot tubs, turret sitting rooms and views of the water and Mt. Rainier, it’s a charming retreat into a different time.

Additional details are what put this place over the top. The innkeepers, Cindy Madsen and Nathan Barnett, play their roles with complete dedication, dressing in full Victorian garb. The multicourse breakfast is equally meticulous and well-prepared — Cindy even provides the occasional recipe for dishes she prepares on the inn’s website. There’s a billiards room, a poetry and fiction library and, when I stayed in a small room called the Artist’s Garrett a couple years back, a sweet old dog that would thump its tail whenever I came back. All in all, a great experience in a place with an intriguing history.

A great hotel, like a great trip, should involve a journey, embody a culture and script a story to tell later. Reaching the hilltop fortress-turned-hotel Kasbah du Toubkal in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco mandates a literal journey, a 15-minute uphill trek from the town of Imlil. There, four years ago, porters strapped my family’s Rollaboards awkwardly atop donkeys that we followed up a dusty path to the walled Kasbah, where 14 rooms and a private hamman ring the courtyard.

We dropped our bags in our rustic wood-beamed room and threw open the shutters to thrilling views of dry slopes descending to lush riverside pastures. Afterward, we returned to reception, which seemed unprepared for our request to see more of the area so soon upon arrival. An elderly man — who we suspected was shoehorned into guide service by the office, given his sweater vest and loafers — genially led us down valleys of flowering walnut groves, through mud-walled villages, to a door opened by his daughter. On her mountain-view terrace, he steeped fresh mint tea, kissed his shy grandson and shared the unwritten rule that everything is negotiable in Morocco, that bartering is fun and not haggling shows weakness.

In the days to come, more appropriately dressed guides accompanied us over mountain scree, dropping us back at the time-arrested Kasbah for candlelit feasts. We never saw our first friend again, but he had taught us much. On the eve of departure, invited into the office to settle our bill, we requested a discount, asserting that our son shouldn’t be charged for adult meals. (We said this despite his teenage appetite; exaggeration, we’d learned, is the ally of negotiation.) In the end, the manager gave us a generous discount and, most rewarding, a smile of respect.

One of my favorite properties is in one of my favorite places, Puerto Rico, which is still recovering after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September. Located on the northeast coast by the Espíritu Santo River State Preserve, away from bustling Old San Juan, past wildflowers and green fields with brown cows, the 483-acre St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort is a former coconut plantation.

Driving through the gates felt like penetrating a secret world: Lush tropical plants and flowers flanked quiet footpaths that snaked around palm trees and low-slung buildings. It’s the first and only resort in the Caribbean to be a certified gold Audubon International signature sanctuary. Guests followed iguanas along nature trails, biked around lakes and explored a vast bird sanctuary. The private, two-mile-long beach with soft, pale sand was ideal for strolling. It’s the sort of luxurious (though not stuffy) vacation for which one might splurge when there’s something meaningful to celebrate. And more than once, I did.

The resort is scheduled to reopen in late October after a $60 million renovation, a boost for the all-important tourism industry in Puerto Rico. Much will be different. But I hope some things remain: the brilliance of the stars in the night sky; the low rumble and hiss of the ocean; the mating call of coqui frogs in the treetops, singing their love song.

It was not a room with a view. Or at least not the view, the famous Florence tableau with the golden lights of the Ponte Vecchio reflected in the slow-moving Arno River.

What first caught my eye at the Ottantotto Firenze, the hotel to which I now compare others, wasn’t a pretty panorama (my second-story room overlooked a street). Instead, it was a fireplace: a 16th-century stone behemoth, large enough to spit-roast a wild boar, that had been reimagined as an aristocratic-chic headboard for my plush double bed.

This handsome seven-room hotel, which opened in January in the lively Santo Spirito district, brims with evidence of previous occupants: from a Renaissance-era baker who lived above his mill and bakery to 16th-century nobility who climbed the staircases of pietra-serena, the durable Tuscan stone typical of fine Florentine palazzi.

In the tiny village of Mells, nestled in England’s bucolic Somerset County, is an old coaching inn that has been taking in travelers since the 15th century. While the structure itself may be centuries old, with a 500-year-old sitting room and a cozy cobblestoned courtyard, its eight rooms are decidedly more 21st century, with good Wi-Fi and Scandi-chic boutique hotel furnishings, yet also charming homey touches such as vintage Welsh blankets and the inn’s own line of handmade bath products.

I stayed at the Talbot Inn just before Christmas three years ago and the setting — both inside and in Mells — was memorably festive. My spacious room came with a modern four-poster bed and a sleek claw-footed bathtub in the bedroom as well as a sitting room and en-suite shower. And the meals (breakfast is included), served in the atmospheric yet stylish country pub on the first floor, were delicious. The fare here is good English country cooking that showcases local ingredients — game terrine, black pudding croquettes, grilled steaks, gammon, trout from nearby — but you can also get pub standards such as fish and chips, of course, along with the inn’s own Talbot Ale.

The 15th-century church next door — St. Andrew’s — is beautiful and also noteworthy, as it is the final resting place for the English war poet Siegfried Sassoon. And picturesque Somerset County and its verdant fields are all around and just perfect for long rambles.

I look for five things in a place to rest on my travels: a decent bed, a central location, a thoughtful breakfast and functioning Wi-Fi are the first four. The fifth is that it have little else. I’m not going to use an elegant lobby or a heated pool or a concierge, so why should I pay for them? I’d trade it all for some local quirk.

La Dimora del Genio, a bed-and-breakfast hidden away on an upper floor of a residential building amid the ancient bustle of Kalsa, Palermo’s Arab Quarter, fits all those requirements. It’s also not easy to find, by which I mean it’s impossible. (A worker at the Al Quds restaurant had to point me to the right building, where Paola Mendoza, the owner, buzzed us in.)

Inside you can barely tell what century you’re in. Common rooms are painted in earthy oranges and yellows and furnished in the sweet spot around four parts tasteful-antique for every one part bric-a-brac. One room has a ceiling fresco and walls everywhere are decorated — or is covered the right word? — with fanciful artwork by her late husband, Maurizio Muscolino, who spent his last years painting and sculpting in their country home.

Paola doesn’t speak any more English than Trilly, her Jack Russell Terrier, but like most Italians instinctively finds a way to communicate. Her breakfasts, however, speak for themselves. Along with strong coffee (another Italian instinct) she serves her own jams made from organic fruit from the countryside, to be slathered on fresh-baked bread from the restaurant downstairs. All in all, there’s plenty of quirk to go around, and absolutely no extraneous amenities. Just perfect.

Seven months ago, my life changed. I had the incredible fortune of becoming The New York Times’ 52 Places Traveler and getting to travel around the world living exclusively in moderately priced hotels (and Airbnbs and on friends’ couches). Early on, I knew I didn’t need hotels with fancy amenities, but for my sanity’s sake, I couldn’t stay in chains. I wanted to feel like a person cared enough to scatter thoughtful details around, to ensure that guests felt like someone was looking after them. Boutiques or bust, all the way.

Some travelers look for escapes and retreats, for that feeling of being removed from everything. What makes a hotel really stand out for me is a sense of being integrated into the place where it is. My time is limited and I have to spend at least one full day — if not two — at every destination locked inside, writing, rather than outside exploring, as I’d rather be. The rare hotel that makes me feel that I’m not missing out but am absorbing a culture while taking care of my work, is a keeper.

I could name 10 that have done exactly that, from the decrepit glamour of the Columns Hotel in New Orleans, where the bed was so high it required steps to get into, to the hipster KEX Hostel in Reykjavik, where the rooms were bare, the bathrooms shared, the environs a screeching construction zone and the lobby the coolest bar in town, serving its own beers and filling with free jazz and happy dancers every night.

But the one I think about more than all the rest is the Click Clack Hotel in Bogotá. The chic lobby and rooftop bars drew a cosmopolitan, almost entirely Colombian crowd. My room, labeled an XS as in the clothing size, could only fit a single human, which somehow made it feel more tailored to me. Wry signs were scattered around like surprises: “Unless you enjoy exhibitionism, close the blinds” on the window, and a sanitation guarantee on the toilet seat reading “Break only in case of emergency.”

Every morning I had a breakfast of tropical fruits and made-to-order eggs under a skylight in a beautiful restaurant with a plant wall and chairs and couches upholstered with fake grass. At night, Colombian sophisticates would meet there or on the roof deck, with its incredible views, for innovative cocktails. That hotel more than anything made me feel a part of the cosmopolitanism of that incredible city that, when I couldn’t go to it, came to me.