When traveling for business, we often prefer hotel rooms of the same type in London, Paris, or Shanghai. It's just more convenient. A different set of rules applies when we search for a place to celebrate a special family holiday, a weekend with a new lover, or a few days of blissful solitude with some great books. Suddenly a balcony with postcard-worthy views counts more than the number of TV channels, a sumptuous bed with a heavenly mattress and hand-ironed linens more than a Wi-Fi connection in every nook and cranny of the hotel building. That's where this new TASCHEN collection comes in. A compilation of 100 hotels, in locations from Abu Dhabi to Vietnam, the two volumes make it a breeze to choose where to relax next. The gamut runs from dream castles like Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda to the glass-fronted hipster chic of Juvet Hotel in Norway; from Mediterranean pensiones with nostalgic flair and moderate rates to the pricey-yet-worthy desert glamour of Amangiri resort in Utah's canyon country. From bed & breakfast basic to six-star luxurious, each hotel comes with a reader-friendly chart listing the number of rooms, current prices, type of cuisine, amenities, plus the all important X-factor: the feature that makes staying there a truly unique experience.

Author Biography

A native Austrian, Margit J. Mayer started her journalism career in 1983 at WIENER magazine in Vienna. Focusing early on style and contemporary culture, she wrote and edited for major German magazines like MannerVogue, Vogue, GQ, ELLE, and Stern. As editor in chief of AD Architectural Digest Germany from 2000 to 2011, Mayer and her team chronicled the rise of "New Berlin" with its close ties to the art scene.