Park Hyatt Vienna

Not all Park Hyatts are purpose-built skyscraper hotels of the variety made famous by the Tokyo branch in Lost in Translation. Those in Europe tend instead to make use of one or another distinguished bit of local architecture. The Park Hyatt Vienna occupies a stately former bank building whose former tenants only made way a few years ago; this newly redeveloped corner of the city center’s pedestrianized historic district is now home to a few luxury-brand flagship stores, as well as this, possibly Vienna’s finest hotel.

As a brand Park Hyatt might not leap first to mind among the big-name high-end hotel groups, but if you’ve stayed in one, you know the experience is uniformly first-rate. This is what we’re talking about when we extol the virtues of highly professional hospitality: from the service to the décor to the state-of-the-art in-room gadgetry, it’s simply in a different league from most any other hotel you’d care to name. And if it sounds like a recipe for comfortable boredom, think again — in a luxury hotel, after all, comfort is the name of the game, and there’s a thrill to be had, if a subtle one, from seeing the hotelier’s art practiced at so high a level.

The rooms, so often a bit of a compromise in buildings occupying historic structures, are nothing of the sort here. They’re extraordinary comfortable and impeccably styled, and the unique character of the existing building only makes them more memorable. The suites, as you might imagine, are downright extravagant, while even the standard rooms are 99th-percentile material. And the public spaces are perhaps even more full of character. The swimming pool makes the most of its setting down in the old bank vault, and the restaurant and lounges are possessed of the opulence you’d expect from a proper Viennese palace — even if it’s one of quite recent vintage.