News

The World’s 50 Best Hotels will return to London, UK, for its third year with a multi-day event programme culminating in the industry’s most highly anticipated annual awards ceremony on Thursday, 30 October at Billingsgate. New for 2025, 50 Best is pleased to announce the appointment of four new Academy Chairs, a new Special Award, and the debut of the first-ever extended 51-100 list to be announced ahead of the awards.

The event programme and awards ceremony will again unite the travel and hospitality community from all corners of the globe in recognition of the best hotels in the world. The ranking will highlight outstanding global hotel experiences, shaping the aspirations of consumers, travellers and hoteliers alike, with several days of events taking place that will be announced in due course.

This year, 50 Best has appointed four new Academy Chairs to the 50 Best Hotels Academy, increasing from nine in 2024 to a total of 13 in 2025. Each Chair in the Academy has been selected as an expert on the travel scene in their region, with outstanding hotel sector contacts. With the addition of four more regions, the number of voters in the Academy has expanded from 600 to more than 800, which allows for a more diverse cross section of voters, and whose votes will shape The World’s 50 Best Hotels list for 2025. The expansion of the Academy and addition of further Academy Chairs aims to achieve more diversity and dynamism in the voting system, representing an even greater global spread of voters and, in turn, recognised hotels.

The new 2025 Academy Chair appointments are as follows:

Camilla Guebur, Latin America South
São Paulo-based Guebur’s career began when she travelled the world as an international model and TV actor. Since, she has become one of Brazil’s most renowned content creators, written travel features for Vogue Brazil and now hosts a travel and wine TV show.

Hrvoje Petrić, Central and Eastern Europe
Based in Zagreb, Petrić is a travel and food journalist. He has visited more than 80 countries and written stories for titles including Vogue Adria, ELLE and StoryBook.

Samantha Brooks, US and Canada West
Brooks is LA born, raised and based, and began her career at Robb Report covering home design and real estate all over the world. Since, her work has appeared in Bloomberg, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and more and she is currently the editor in chief of Curator.

Wendy Watta, Africa
Watta, based in Nairobi, Kenya, is a freelance travel writer. Her work features in Conde Nast Traveler, Lonely Planet, Fodors, Virtuoso, Msafiri and more. She was previously a newspaper columnist and editor of two African travel and food magazines.

The full list of Academy Chairs can be seen here.

To complement this expansion, The World’s 50 Best Hotels will recognise more hotels than ever before with the inaugural announcement of hotels ranked between 51st and 100th. This list will be revealed in the weeks before the glittering awards ceremony, highlighting more destinations and more hotels on the global scene.

The list of Special Awards will also be expanding for 2025, with the addition of the Johnnie Walker Art of Design Award. This award celebrates how design in hotels goes beyond architecture to create a multi-sensorial experience for visitors, shaping the guest experience and often elevating the expected into the extraordinary. Every hotel ranked on the 1-50 list and the inaugural extended 51-100 list will have the opportunity to submit an application to be considered for the award. Every entrant will be judged on a set of design criteria including innovation, sensorial immersion, experience curation, ecological longevity and all-encompassing aesthetics. Applications will be judged by a panel of industry experts and senior 50 Best team members, with the overall winner being announced live as part of the awards ceremony in London on Thursday 30 October.

Emma Sleight, Head of Content for The World’s 50 Best Hotels, says: “We are thrilled to see the third edition of The World’s 50 Best Hotels brought back to London. As an international hub with a thriving and ever-evolving hotel scene, London is an ideal venue for gathering important travel industry figures and honouring and celebrating the best hotel experiences around the world. As the hotel scene continues to innovate, The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2025 also represents an evolution. The growth of the 50 Best Voting Academy through the appointment of new Academy Chairs and geographical regions, the inaugural 51-100 list and new special awards will elevate the ranking and celebrate even more elements of the hotel experience.”

Highlights for the event programme will include a ‘Welcome to London’ event and the Opening Banquet, which takes place the night before the reveal of The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2025, giving the hoteliers behind the 100 listed properties the opportunity to meet with their peers from around the world. Following the success of the inaugural #50BestTalks: Unpacked event, this thought leadership forum will once again make up part of The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2025 line-up.  #50BestTalks: Unpacked is designed to give hoteliers and travel experts a platform to discuss groundbreaking, industry-leading trends and topics of interest. Events will culminate with the captivating awards ceremony at the new venue of Billingsgate which will feature red-carpet arrivals and interviews, a drinks reception and the ceremony and countdown itself. The awards will be followed by a press conference with representatives from The World’s Best Hotel 2025.

The ranking will be complemented by a host of special awards and will reflect the very best travel experiences around the globe, collated from the votes of more than 800 anonymous experts. This voting panel – the 50 Best Hotels Academy – comprises a balanced mix of hoteliers, travel journalists, educators and seasoned luxury travellers, led by a group of industry-leading Academy Chairs. In the months leading up to the awards, special award winners will be announced as well as the first ever 51-100 list of The World’s 50 Best Hotels.

Any style of hotel worldwide is eligible to be voted for; it does not have to fit any criteria or tick any pre-ordained boxes to be considered. The awards are not ‘pay to play’ – meaning the venues themselves cannot and do not have to pay to enter the awards, nor will they have to buy tickets to the events or invest any fiscal sum in the nomination process.

How the 50 Best voting works

The 13 Academy Chairs each select a voting panel from their region, ensuring a balance of hoteliers, travel journalists, hotel educators and seasoned luxury travellers. Each Academy member can vote for any hotel they have stayed in around the world, irrespective of their home region. Each voter casts seven votes for hotels in order of preference based on stays experienced in the two-year voting period. Voting is carried out individually and strictly confidentially on a secure site and remains confidential before the list announcement. Academy Chairs are not privy to, nor have any knowledge of, the votes cast by the voters in their respective regions; furthermore, they are not official spokespeople for the 50 Best brand.  Additional information on the Academy Chairs and how the voting works is available on the 50 Best FAQs page here.

The Academy is the mechanism used to create The World’s 50 Best Hotels list. None of the employees of 50 Best nor any sponsors associated with the awards has any influence over the results. To ensure the more than 800-voter-strong Academy provides a fair representation of the global hotel scene, the Academy Chairs are split across 13 geographical regions. Each Chair is selected as an expert on the travel scene in their region, with outstanding hotel sector contacts. These Chairs each select a voting panel, ensuring a balanced selection of hoteliers, travel journalists, hotel educators, business travellers and consumer travel aficionados. A minimum of 25% of the panel will be renewed each year. All voters, aside from the Academy Chairs, will remain anonymous to eliminate the possibility of lobbying.