Every hotel, rated out of nine
What the room is like, what it actually costs once everything is added, and which one to ask for.
Hotel Tarifa Lances: the pool, the strait, and the best dusk in Cadiz province
A hundred and five rooms on Los Lances beach, newly under the Radisson Individuals badge, with a terrace that looks across to Morocco and a rate that still belongs to the old Tarifa.
Four Seasons Madrid: seven buildings, one hotel, and a pool above the rooftops
The largest urban spa in the city, fourteen metres of water under a skylight on the eighth floor, and service that people who stay in a great many hotels single out. The best all-round address in Madrid.
New Hotel Lafayette: a beautiful small hotel in the 9th, and the case for booking up a category
Deep teal panelling, ochre joinery and one of the better-looking ground floors in central Paris, on a quiet street below Montmartre. The square metres are the thing to plan around.
The London room where the bed wins and the second guest loses
citizenM Tower Bridge has designed brilliantly for one occupant, built a lobby worth working in and a rooftop worth staying up for. The room rate is the argument.
The Balmoral: the clock tower, the whisky, and the best address in Edinburgh
A hundred and eighty seven rooms above Waverley station, a bar holding five hundred whiskies, and a clock that has been three minutes fast since 1902. The grand hotel Edinburgh built for people arriving by train.
Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid: the grande dame, restored to within an inch of her life
Two years shut, a restoration nobody wanted to put a ceiling on, and a marble spa dug out underneath. The finest ground floor in Madrid, and a room rate that expects you to use it.
Gleneagles Townhouse: a bank on St Andrew Square, and the best breakfast room in Edinburgh
Thirty three rooms in a former banking hall, a restaurant under the glass dome where the tellers used to be, and a rooftop the city cannot get into. The most enjoyable hotel in Edinburgh.
The Madrid EDITION: the best rooftop in the city, three minutes from Sol
Ian Schrager's brand on Plaza de Celenque, with the largest luxury rooftop pool in Madrid, the strongest location on this list, and a rate that rewards anyone willing to avoid August.
The Witchery by the Castle: nine suites, no lift, and the most theatrical rooms in Britain
Candlelight, oak panelling and roll-top baths in a building from 1595, ninety seconds from the castle gates. Not a hotel in any conventional sense, and all the better for refusing to be one.
Rosewood Villa Magna: the Madrid hotel the city actually drinks in
Mid-century rather than marble, on the Milla de Oro, with a Turkish marble hammam downstairs and two bars that Madrid has quietly adopted as its own.
URSO Hotel and Spa: thirty eight rooms in Chamberi, and the shrewdest booking in Madrid
A 1913 palacete with its wrought-iron lift and neo-classical facade intact, a Natura Bisse spa in the basement, and a rate that has not yet caught up with how good the neighbourhood has become.