What Is a MICHELIN Guide Hotel?

What is a MICHELIN Guide hotel? Broadly speaking, it's exactly what you think it is.

For over 120 years, the MICHELIN Guide has been famously committed to identifying high-quality gastronomic experiences. We’re now applying that same level of passion and expertise to hotels. Our mission is to identify the world’s best and most exciting accommodations — places worthy of being called a MICHELIN Guide hotel — and showcase them on our website and app, where you can discover, save, share, even book them.

RELATED: The MICHELIN Guide Charts a New Course for Hotels

At its core, a MICHELIN Guide hotel represents the intersection of style and service. The design has a clear, compelling personality, and the staff is dedicated to your comfort. It’s a cultural ambassador; a place in harmony with its surroundings and reflective of the local identity. It’s reliable, consistent, and delivers on the promise of both its price and its menu of amenities. It’s a destination unto itself, offering not just a room, but a unique and lasting memory. It’s a break from the everyday; a chance to try on a new life, if only for a night.

Discover and book the MICHELIN Guide hotel selection →

Confidence through curation

The MICHELIN Guide hotel selection isn’t just a curiosity, it’s a particularly useful tool for modern life. Curation is more important than ever. In the face of endless scrolls and seemingly infinite options, expert advice is invaluable — a trusted authority with taste like your own, separating signal from noise, locating and raising up the things you’ll like. And, in this case, the hotels you’ll want to stay in.

The selection currently features over 6,000 accommodations in more than 120 countries, with options for every style and budget. There are lively hotels and quiet hotels. Hotels in metropolises and hotels in the middle of nowhere. Hotels at the leading edge of modern design and hotels that celebrate the achievements of the past. There are castles, hostels, tents, and ryokans. Hotels in caves, in deserts, and even in ghost towns. There are places with two hundred rooms atop a city skyscraper, and with two rooms tucked inside an ancient watchtower.

A MICHELIN Guide hotel can be a lot of things, but it can never be boring.

A team of hotel experts

The one common denominator is that each hotel in the selection is evaluated and chosen by MICHELIN Guide hotel experts, a team of passionate, independent-minded professionals — the counterparts of the legendary MICHELIN Guide restaurant inspectors.

The hotel team is composed of inveterate travelers and specialists in international design and architecture, service norms, and global hospitality cultures. They closely monitor industry trends and publications, and rely on all available resources to unearth hidden gems. They welcome suggestions from MICHELIN Guide restaurant inspectors, and from MICHELIN Guide users. They all but scour the earth, adding new accommodations every week, continually updating and improving the selection.

The five quality criteria

While the selection includes established hotels with international reputations, it also includes more recent discoveries and brand new openings. Regardless of age or profile, all have been approved by our experts for meeting the MICHELIN Guide’s five quality criteria for hotels:

1. Excellence in interior design and architecture
2. Individuality, reflecting personality and authenticity
3. Quality and consistency in service, comfort, and maintenance
4. An open door to the destination
5. Ability to deliver an extraordinary experience for its price

In addition, special attention is given to accommodations that offer first-rate food experiences, as noted by MICHELIN Guide inspectors. Commitments to sustainability and social responsibility are also greatly valued.

Keeping the selection reliable

When a hotel no longer meets our standards, it’s removed. This can be done solely at the discretion of the hotel team, or as a result of guest feedback. To help keep the selection fresh and vital, MICHELIN Guide experts regularly review the post-stay feedback of guests who booked their hotel on the MICHELIN Guide website or app. If several negative ratings are received for a hotel, the experts investigate whether or not it should remain in the selection.

In comments on Instagram, via email, or in stamped letters, MICHELIN Guide users have repeatedly expressed an unambiguous wish: to access hotel recommendations as dependable as those dedicated to restaurants, and to find accommodations with character and personality to match their own. With those desires as our inspiration, we’re proud to introduce the new MICHELIN Guide hotel selection.

Book hotels with the MICHELIN Guide

Every hotel in the selection can be booked directly through the MICHELIN Guide website and app, which feature the lowest prices, VIP upgrades for Plus members, and concierge-level assistance for every step of your journey.

Discover and book the MICHELIN Guide hotel selection →