6 Innovative Hotels Redefining Hospitality Design

From Paris to San Antonio, six note-perfect properties show that hotels around the globe are playing a brand new tune.

Story Le Carrousel Rabat, Morocco by Roar; Urban Agency

Angled to frame views while preserving each room’s privacy, architect Urban Agency’s honeycomb facade for this oceanfront property recalls the muqarnas vaulting of traditional Islamic architecture, a gesture to the vernacular continued inside by designer Roar’s contemporary reading of North Africa’s indigenous craft heritage. A spiraling ramp doubles as an art promenade through the soaring lobby, where reception desks are etched with Amazigh motifs. More than decoration, wall reliefs abstract traditional weaving patterns into architecture, wayfinding borrows forms from Tuareg jewelry and amulets, and regional embroideries influence materials and detailing. The 131 guest rooms favor a muted, natural palette drawn from Morocco’s landscape, while the rooftop bar glories in Atlantic vistas.

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“Amazigh life was once divided by craft and care—women dyeing wool, men tending the herds that yielded it—an ethos woven into every surface here”

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Palazzo dei Fiori, Venice, Italy by Teresa Sapey + Partners

The Madrid-based architect transforms this 16th-century palazzo, built for Doge Nicolò da Ponte on the Grand Canal between San Marco and the Accademia, into the fourth Italian outpost of Room Mate, the Spanish boutique hotel chain. Its 16 apartment-style suites, totaling 33 bedrooms across four levels and three mezzanines, take their names and palettes from flowers and plants found in the city’s hidden gardens—from Magnolia and Rosa Antica to Girasole and Oleandro—rendered in soft pastels and earth tones against original terrazzo floors, arched windows, and ornate cornices. Contemporary Spanish and Italian furnishings mingle throughout, while an installation of violet-neon archways offers a theatrical counterpoint to the aristocratic building’s cinquecento bones.

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“The hotel enjoys close-up views of the Grand Canal and surrounding buildings, fully immersing guests in La Serenissima’s uniquely enchanting atmosphere”

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Le Magnifique, Paris by Maison Darré

Housed in a former 19th-century theater—later a cinema, then a studio where the tune that became Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” was first recorded—this property revives the neighborhood’s bohemian past, its hand-painted circus-themed fresco at the entry leading to a reception hung with antique keys. Columns nod to those at nearby La Coupole brasserie and the long-closed Saint-Germain-des-Prés Drugstore, while stair railings trace musical staves. At the heart of the 62-room hotel, a mosaic-lined pool evokes a sunken Greek temple, while Le Picabia, the wood-paneled bar named for the painter, wraps its scalloped, teal-and-brass counter in strings of glowing bulbs—designer Vincent Darré’s surrealist stage-set vision, distilled into one space.

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“Scalloped arches, hand-painted florals, checkerboard marble, burnished brass—pattern layered on pattern, so the eye never quite settles, and never wants to”

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Unframed, Miami Beach by Atelier Gulla Jónsdóttir; Rudy Ricciotti Architecte

The wavelike, balconied facade of Ricciotti’s eight-story building sets the tone at this new Autograph Collection asset, its curvy porte cochere and walnut-and-bronze front door opening into Jónsdóttir’s equally fluid lobby. The space’s sculptural, organic envelope is echoed by a seashell-like reception desk in hand-carved wood; curvilinear sofa groupings; and an elevator hall lined with stacked, biomorphic archways that evoke a tide-worn underwater grotto. Upstairs, the 149 guest rooms continue the tropical-modernist mood: Custom velvet-upholstered beds and rust-red linen drapery play off wood cabinetry and Calacatta Viola marble countertops, while those enveloping balconies offer glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean through lush plantings.

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“No two curves in the building repeat, each one is organic—shaped as if by nature rather than a straightedge”

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Andaz Lisbon, Portugal by Studio Urquiola

Spanish-born Patricia Urquiola’s Iberian sensibility gets to play on home turf in transforming this former bank building in the capital’s Baixa district. While preserving such original details as an 18th-century marble staircase and a tiled panel of Our Lady of Misericordia predating Lisbon’s 1755 earthquake, the Interior Design Hall of Fame member layers in bold Mediterranean color and craft. Art, curated by Federica Sala, threads through the 170 guest rooms, where bespoke furnishings and textile works nod to the country’s global ties, from Goa to Mozambique to Macau. Traditional elements such as azulejo tiles and calçada, the black-and-white mosaic pavements, get modern reinventions while hand-painted ceramic pitchers by Studio Krus cluster on that monumental stair.

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“History runs deep here, but nothing feels borrowed—each surface reinterprets the city’s memory in a wholly contemporary voice”

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The Gunter Hotel, San Antonio by DLR Group

Marking its Tribute Portfolio debut after a $57 million restoration, this 1909 beaux-arts landmark reopens with its double-height colonnaded lobby’s marble flooring and ornamental plasterwork intact, layered now with brass accents and curvy, jewel-toned furnishings. Behind a gallery wall, a hidden speakeasy—Bar 414, named for the room where blues musician Robert Johnson recorded in 1936—connects via a concealed staircase to a new recording studio for today’s creatives. All 311 rooms include a turntable and a Johnson album, or guests can browse the 900-album vinyl library beneath the lobby’s art deco chandeliers and take favorite LPs back upstairs.

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“The lobby’s feathered chandeliers, antlered sconces, and rug that swirls like a river under velvet sofas and houndstooth chairs are proof that eclecticism can still feel cohesive”