Miami may be where you make yourself seen in a bid to get in the gossip pages; Palm Beach, though, is an altogether different sort of place, and no hotel encapsulates its essence quite like the stately Breakers. This hundred-year-old hotel, designed after the style of an Italian Renaissance villa, spans an estate of some 140 acres opening onto the Atlantic Ocean, and incorporates two golf courses, a tennis complex, a 20,000-square-foot spa and a Mediterranean-style beach club, the sort of place where uniformed valets deliver towels and cold drinks to guests lolling in seaside cabanas.

The accommodations are as elegant and traditional as any on this side of the Atlantic, and come with all the trappings, from marble bathrooms and Italian armoires to high-speed internet access and PlayStations. Rooms overlook the golf course, the gardens or the ocean, the last, most often, from private step-out balconies.

This is old-world luxury, to be sure; it’s only just now that the requirement for gentlemen to wear jackets and ties after seven o’clock has been done away with — although this crowd isn’t exactly rushing to embrace t-shirts and flip-flops. Still, if you’re pining for the ever so slightly more exclusive atmosphere of the old days, there’s always the Flagler Club, a separate building offering personalized concierge services and private facilities.

Five restaurants serve a variety of cuisines, from classic American seafood and steaks to the award-winning French restaurant L’Escalier, one of Palm Beach’s finest. Leisure activities include spa treatments, tennis and golf, all manner of water sports, and old favorites like croquet, horseshoes and shuffleboard.

Many hotels in Vancouver can boast breathtaking views — this town is nothing if not topographically gifted. However, the district of Coal Harbour on the north edge of downtown has a slight edge on the rest. Think of it as stadium seating for the panorama that unfolds across the Burrard Inlet. Coal Harbour itself is a tony spot well worth an evening stroll; recently redeveloped with parks and a marina, the neighborhood boasts a sophisticated collection of towers with a level of design not commonly found in North American cities, and in one of these sleek glass towers you’ll find the Loden Hotel.

Rooms at the Loden are available in five levels of understated fabulousness, the pinnacle of which is the Halo Suite, which comes complete with wrap-around terrace for superb mountain-ogling. Fabulousness is also to be found in memorably mid-century modern touches throughout, while understated-ness ensures an unpretentious experience thanks to a muted regional color palette (no forest-green bedspreads to be found) and exquisite service. The extra deep soaking tubs are a most welcome feature on romantically drizzly winter nights.

Loden’s acclaimed in-house French restaurant, Voya, is just plain sexy, with a hint of late-1940s lounge atmosphere, which is echoed in the bedrooms. One would be as fortunate to spend several hours in the dining room as to order room service and dine in the soaking tub — stay two nights and you could do both. Save time to sip multiple cups of coffee, explore the city’s vibrant arts scene, and savor some pine scents from the source in nearby Stanley Park.

When it comes to genteel living in the Irish countryside it would be difficult to top the Mount Juliet Conrad. The 18th-century manor is as elegant as they come, as befits a house that’s a former Earl’s residence. But it’s far from being solely an interior experience. Country-house life involves a healthy complement of outdoor activities — that’s why you bother with the country in the first place. And Mount Juliet’s got you covered here as well, with not just a Jack Nicklaus–designed golf course, but an archery range, an equestrian center, and a cricket club — not to mention close proximity to the River Nore and some very fine fishing.

Out of the old house’s thirty-one guest rooms, two of them are presidential suites, which is surely at least in the running for a record. Then again even the humblest of the main house’s bedrooms is more than plush enough. Add a dozen or so more rooms in the clubhouse by the links, and an odd lot of freestanding houses and lodges, and you’ve got a selection that spans the range from deeply historical to quietly and classically contemporary. With a French brasserie, a bar in the clubhouse, and the fine-dining Lady Helen restaurant, the Mount Juliet Conrad offers a dining situation for every need — if that’s not the essence of country-house life, we don’t know what is.

Total luxury overkill is the theme at Grand Resort Lagonissi, a sprawling seaside compound on a peninsula 30 miles south of Athens. This is the kind of place where wealthy industrialists arrive via helicopter or Learjet, and Hollywood stars make discreet entrances in chartered limos. Long a favorite of the Mediterranean jet-set, Lagonissi is catching on worldwide — their Royal Suite made Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s most expensive hotel rooms (though presumably a portion of the $25,639 nightly rate goes to cover the wages of the suite’s pianist, chef, and personal trainer).

Slightly less ostentatious are the Villas, each with its own heated seafront pool, and even the most (relatively) humble standard room comes with a Jacuzzi tub in its oversized marble bathroom. The setting is stunning, both naturally and architecturally — the design is commendably understated and laid-back, enveloping you in comfort rather than bludgeoning you with opulence.

This is Greece, after all, and the natural surroundings speak for themselves. The living here is easy, the climate balmy and temperate, with the deep blue Aegean sea stretching out into the distance. It is easy to understand, upon a moment’s leisurely reflection at the pool bar, or on a hired yacht, how it came to pass that the foundations of Western society were laid here — with nothing but sun and sea all around, there is plenty of time for leisurely contemplation and the invention of things like (for instance) geometry, or democracy. It is significant, though perhaps not surprising, that Archimedes cried “Eureka!” not on horseback trudging across some Northern plain but in the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean — and in the (sadly pre-Jacuzzi) bathtub, no less.

Though they’re all outwardly different, the boutique hotels of Lisbon’s Heritage group share a common approach: they’re historic buildings in central locations, heavily renovated, with one eye on contemporary design and the other on historical preservation. And of all of them, the Britânia is at once the most discernibly retro and the most perversely modern — no historic style speaks to today’s eye quite as naturally as Art Deco. And Art Deco the Britânia most certainly is — it’s a 1942 original by Cassiano Branco, and it’s so relentlessly Deco that you almost have to be an enthusiast of parquet floors, black lacquered wood, shiny chrome and white marble in order to properly enjoy it.

Of course anyone can enjoy oversized rooms, a breath of fresh air in a European city-center hotel. A few top-floor rooms have private terraces, obviously a plus, but all the rooms provide more than enough space to spread out, plus coffee makers, wireless internet, and big marble bathrooms. Services are boutique, meaning a touch minimal: a swanky bar and lounge is about it — room service is available round the clock, but for more you’ll want to set sail for the Avenida, not even a block away.

It’s natural to be a bit wary of an English name on a South American hotel: the choice to jump ship, linguistically speaking, means one of two things. Either the proprietors are hopelessly out of touch and are making a desperate attempt to bring in tourist traffic, or they’re savvy world travelers who know their market before the place even opens. In the case of Tailor Made in Buenos Aires, it’s the latter.

The owners don’t just know the market — they seem to be listening to your every gripe, and they’ve built a hotel to prove it. Tired of paying an arm and a leg for an international phone call? No problem, they’re free from your guest room. Turned off by overpriced room service menus and extra fees being tacked on for every last service a hotel provides? At Tailor Made, you can grab a cold beer or a snack in the lobby — for free — at any time of day. And forget about ponying up for internet access. Everything from laundry to wi-fi is complimentary here. The details are taken care of, hence the name.

Tailor Made is located in the chichi neighborhood of Las Cañitas, otherwise known as the current stomping grounds of Buenos Aires’s beautiful people. It’s a hike from downtown, but the barrio is thick with of-the-moment eateries and high-fashion boutiques. Not that you’ll necessarily be in the mood to spring straight out of bed in the morning: the hotel’s five guest rooms are coolly understated in style — think natural light, crisp white and polished oak — but stocked with plush amenities. You’ll find Egyptian cotton sheets, large LCD televisions, hydrotherapy bathtubs, personal Mac Minis (the property is Apple-friendly through and through) and wine fridges filled with varietals from Argentinian wineries. And if all that’s not enough, the staff is, naturally, ready to accommodate special requests.

Long the most upscale lodging on the island of Kauai, the Princeville is back, this time under the St. Regis banner. There are two ways for a classic grand hotel to go, when it’s time for a big renovation — the St. Regis Princeville went the right way, with a new look that’s somehow more classic, more old-world luxe than before. On Kauai there are any number of places for a bare-bones, barefoot escape, but when it comes to cliffside luxury with a view over Hanalei Bay there’s not much in the way of competition.

The resort itself cascades down the hillside, so while the entry is high enough for a commanding view, the bottommost floors lead straight to the beach. The rooms are exquisitely attractive, lacking for no modern luxury, with indulgent spa-like bathrooms and subtly integrated electronics. Best of all, the rooms are oriented towards the bay, so that just about every bed looks straight out to sea.

Three restaurants, three bars, three jacuzzis and a world-class health club and spa make the St. Regis a self-contained pleasure palace. And it’s positioned to give its guests the run of the island — not just on the Robert Trent Jones, Jr.–designed golf course, but on all manner of outdoor expeditions as well, from hiking and horseback riding to kayaking, diving or surfing.

When it comes to Sicilian hospitality, glossy high design is hardly the first idiom that comes to mind. As the island’s economy has developed, Sicily’s general atmosphere of rustic earthiness has gone from stigma to selling point. That’s true of Taormina, whose old town center is as pleasantly weathered as any in southern Italy. But once inside the old Metropole Taormina Maison d’Hôtes, behind that 18th-century grand-hotel facade, it’s another story entirely.

This was a bastion of old-world splendor, as Taormina has long been among Sicily’s first tourist stops. It was closed for the better part of forty years, and now that it’s re-opened, its interiors are almost unrecognizable. This is Italian style at its most contemporary — not modern, exactly, as the plentiful marble and well-selected antiques will attest, but the lines are clean, the palette focused, and the furnishings by Poltrona Frau are anything but old-fashioned.

Most of the twenty-three rooms and suites face out to sea, and all have access, naturally, to the spa and to the infinity pool with its seamless view over the Bay of Naxos. It’s all the urbanitysophistication you’d expect from contemporary, urban Italy — transplanted to the sublime and decidedly un-metropolitan site of Taormina’s old Metropole.

If your location was Hollywood and Vine, you’d put it in your name too. The Redbury, which appeared in the blink of an eye on this famous intersection, is a welcome blast of personality, in a hotel scene that was in danger of lapsing into sameness.

It’s hard to believe there could ever be an “LA look,” given the breadth and diversity of this SoCal megalopolis, but the Redbury’s interiors are notable first of all for how successfully they break the Hollywood boutique-hotel mold. Minimalist modernism seems miles away here. And like any style worth its salt, the Redbury’s look is difficult to capture in a phrase — unless you find that something like “swinging-London boho-glam Persian-Oriental Zeppelin-groupie gay-uncle antiques-dealer” rolls effortlessly off the tongue.

The Redbury’s appeal, though, is more than skin deep. It’s an all-suite property, or all-flat, if you buy into their terminology. And why not — they’re all in the neighborhood of a thousand square feet, with gas ranges in the kitchens, chic mosaic-tile wet rooms, and in-room laundry machines, plus huge LCD televisions and turntables with vinyl provided.

Of course the lounge spaces are scarcely less stylish. Cleo, the restaurant, serves small plates from a number of Mediterranean traditions, from tagine to moussaka, and The Glade is the outdoor lounge, with its own fair share of Moorish inspiration. Comfort, sociability, and no shortage of personality — what more could one ask from a Hollywood hotel?