The five hotels below are our Inspectors’ nominees for the inaugural Local Gateway Award — part of a series of awards announced this summer, with winners to be revealed along with the new global Key distinctions on Oct. 8, 2025.
Following the first two awards for Architecture & Design and Wellness, the Local Gateway Award celebrates a facet of hospitality that's just as crucial: the setting. That means both landscape and culture, and the way each is integrated seamlessly into a traveler's day-to-day.
Not only do these nominees embrace some of the planet’s most inspiring destinations, they add features — from architecture that blends into the land to expert-led excursions beyond the mere grounds of the retreat — that can transform and elevate an already exceptional setting.
These are among the most unique hotels in the world, set in some of its most extraordinary places. Step through their doors and you're not just entering a hotel, but beginning an experience that could exist nowhere else.
Longitude 131 — Yulara, Australia
What it’s all about: A luxurious basecamp adds its own twists to the natural and cultural experiences of Australia’s Red Centre.
Longitude 131 could only be here; and there’s no way to experience the Red Centre quite like it. Those who hadn’t known of the area before discovering the hotel might now find it on their bucket list — the geographical heart of the country, this stunning desert landscape is known for its ancient, massive rock formations with great significance for Aboriginal culture.
Longitude 131 is the smartly designed, luxury eco-camp in view of the region’s most iconic sandstone monolith: Uluru. And while its spa, restaurant and pool are a jumping off point for explorations of the canyons and local culture that draw adventurers from around the world, the hotel does not merely facilitate exploration.
Besides the inherent, tented luxury, guests flit between guided excursions and visits to the Field of Light, an installation of 50,000 glowing glass flowers by sculptor Bruce Muro that turns the desert into a kaleidoscope of colors. At Table 131, guests dine al fresco in a private, dune-side location under the glittering night sky narrated by a stargazing guide. And at an exclusive pop-up bar for guests only, they drink champagne and Australian beers while watching the sun set over red-tinged Uluru.
Defining features:
- 16 indoor-outdoor tented pavilions with remote-controlled blinds, king-size beds and views of Uluru.
- The Dune Pavilion, the only accommodation in the country in sight of both natural landmarks Uluru and Kata Tjuta.
- Full day tours to Ernabella Arts, the country’s oldest Indigenous art center.
- Spa treatments using local, nutrient-rich desert salts.
Tierra Patagonia — Torres del Paine National Park, Chile
What it’s all about: Integrative design and custom experiences that open Patagonia’s famous natural beauty to every kind of traveler.
The Tierra brand — set also in Chile’s unforgiving Atacama Desert — is known for its excursions, and expert guides sit with guests to customize a perfectly tailored itinerary for their stay. It's a practice that gives Tierra the ability to facilitate awe for the landscape, without requiring the level of intensity the phrase “treks through Patagonia” might usually evoke.
The design itself fulfills the same mission. Set within the national park, home to some of the region’s most sublime natural landscapes, the hotel is a long, skeletal building designed with painstaking intention to remove the barriers between guests and its famous, often harsh, wilderness. One particularly illustrative example is the one-way glass that makes up a long stretch of floor-to-ceiling windows, through which guests may watch wildlife graze, in full view, completely undisturbed.
Here, plenty of guests are content to immerse themselves in easier strolls or wildlife walks before returning to the lounge area for Chilean wines or spa treatments that take in Patagonia from comfortable interiors. And for more active travelers, the whole of Patagonia remains available for expert-guided exploration.
Defining features:
- Cozy, minimalist rooms that center spectacular views of the landscape.
- Customizable excursions that include nature treks, glacier cruises and horseback riding.
- Uma Spa with a glass-encased heated indoor pool, sauna and treatments incorporating local Chilean herbs.
- Locally sourced and traditional cuisine, along with a selection of Chilean wines and Patagonian craft beers and cocktails.
Zannier Sonop — Namib Desert, Namibia
What it’s all about: Total immersion in the world’s oldest desert from vintage-style luxury tents.An authentic experience is not always about faithful recreation. Here is a hotel that uses fantasy — the Twenties-vintage colonial style of the luxury tents, complete with found objects like telescopes and binoculars — to encourage the kind of total mindset change required to get the most out of a trip to a place this transformative.
Sonop is a cinematic, all-encompassing experience. The moonlike landscape doesn’t just surround the tented camp — the two are integrated seamlessly, the tented suites set atop the giant granite boulders that first sparked hotelier Arnaud Zannier’s interest in a Namib hotel after successful ventures in Siem Reap and the Alps.
The 5,600-hectare private reserve is home to leopards, hyenas, jackals and desert foxes, but wildlife sightings can be sparing in the desert. Instead, the appeal is the sheer scope, ever-present from every accommodation and further discovered through guided tours on electric bikes, horseback rides into the mountains or bird's-eye, hot-air balloon safaris. Telescopes show off an expansive starry night sky, an entertaining alternative to the down-to-earth pleasures like spa, yoga and open-air cinema.
Defining features:
- Casual dining and an extravagant, five-course gala-style dinner served nightly.
- Cigar & Cocktail lounge in the style of an old-fashioned gentleman’s club, complete with billiards table and parlor games.
- Full spa menu including signature treatments inspired by local medicinal traditions.
- Open-air infinity pool with desert vistas, open for sunrise and midnight swims.
- Private landing strip for arrival and transfers, including daily transport to sister hotel, Zannier Omaanda.
Post Ranch Inn — Big Sur, USA
What it’s all about: Remarkable architecture and high-level luxury in California’s most enigmatic natural landscape.
California’s Big Sur is among the most romanticized natural regions in the country — and it is also one of the most protected, a place with few hotels and even fewer of such world-renowned quality. The existence of the Post Ranch Inn is a testament to the eco-friendly design that convinced the community of its good intentions, a perfect harmony of architecture and nature that captures the special feeling that’s brought seekers to Big Sur for generations.
To find such luxury in Big Sur, more often known for campsites or rustic inns, would be enough for most. What makes this hotel so special is the way its design embraces the landscape through the type of creative thinking Big Sur has long inspired in its visiting artists. Some accommodations are built directly into the craggy cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, their living roofs a seamless blend of native grasses and wildflowers high above the Pacific.
A perfect harmony of architecture and nature, the retreat cultivates privacy and intentional disconnection above all else to encourage full appreciation of California’s famous ocean vistas and star-strewn skies.
Defining features:
- The Sierra Mar restaurant with sweeping views above ocean waves and farm-to-table cuisine.
- Edible garden tour with a master gardener to explore local crops, growing techniques and taste fresh produce.
- Two heated infinity pools with ocean views and an additional lap pool.
- Meditation workshops, yoga classes, guided nature walks and a falconry program.
- Guided art walk exploring onsite installations.
La Fiermontina Ocean — Larache, Morocco
What it’s all about: Meaningful cultural interaction in a spectacular seaside setting on Morocco’s northwest Atlantic coast.
Nearly six hours by car from Marrakech, the closest major city to La Fiermontina Ocean is Tangier. Touch down and — after a seven-kilometer drive through an unpaved road lined with olive trees — you’ll reach one of the most special properties in the world.
This underrated, beautiful corner of Morocco is hardly on the radar of popular tourism, but the gorgeous ocean villas and beach club speak to the marvels of the setting. Yet of particular note is the human, cultural element that comes from a hotel in partnership with a national non-profit organisation known for its work with migrants and refugees.
Following the mission of the Fondation Orient Occident, with which the hotel shares ownership, the hotel participates in a number of behind-the-scenes actions to build community. But such an ethos contributes to the guest-facing experience, too. Many of the resort’s buildings are set in the small town of Dchier — including four traditional homes set in a green sea of olive trees and hills — a purposeful choice to facilitate guest and community interactions.
In addition to myriad local guides, treks and other adventures along the coast, one of the most celebrated experiences here is a breakfast in the home of a local family, a moment that encourages an often emotional, face-to-face interaction as well as direct financial contribution to the community.
Defining features:
- Four traditional stone accommodations in the village of Dchier outside the main hotel complex.
- Collaboration with Fondation Orient Occident across environmental and community initiatives.
- Suites and villas with ocean views, rock carved gardens and private pools.
- A mix of Italian and Moroccan cuisine at Ocean Restaurant, open to guests and locals.
- Private beach club and water sports like surfing, stand-up paddle boarding and kayaking.
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Hero Image: Tierra Atacama in the midst of Chilean Patagonia.
