Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, originated in Japan as a practice of mindfully immersing oneself in the forest through sight, scent, sound, and touch. Research suggests that spending time among trees can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, support immune function, and promote overall wellbeing through exposure to natural compounds called phytoncides. Around the world, forest hotels and treehouse retreats are embracing these benefits, offering immersive stays that combine nature, wellness, and design while allowing guests to experience the restorative power of the forest from within the canopy.
Plants offer a unique way to experience a destination, shaping local culture, cuisine, wellness traditions, and biodiversity. From historic gardens and ancient forests to botanical hotels and regenerative farms, these landscapes reveal the deep connection between nature and wellbeing. Rich in medicinal plants, fragrant herbs, and rare species, they provide immersive experiences that support conservation, encourage slower travel, and showcase the powerful role plants play in both ecological and human health.
Sand dunes are dynamic landscapes shaped by wind, time, and shifting sand, forming ever-changing ridges, deserts, and coastal systems across the world. In rare places such as Brazil’s Lençóis Maranhenses and Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, seasonal rains and groundwater create surreal dune lagoons where desert and water coexist. These extraordinary environments are also home to unique stays and hotels designed to work with fragile ecosystems, offering immersive experiences that allow travellers to stay within some of the world’s most remarkable dune landscapes.
Colour shapes how we experience a destination long before we fully register its architecture or geography. From the cobalt blues of the Greek seaside and the volcanic blacks of Iceland to rainforest greens and desert reds, every landscape carries a palette that influences mood, perception, and emotional response. Studies in colour psychology suggest that blues and greens promote calm and restoration, earth tones create grounding and warmth, while brighter shades stimulate energy and connection. Through design driven hotels and nature led stays, travel becomes an immersion into these natural palettes, where architecture, climate, and landscape work together to shape atmosphere, memory, and our deeper connection to place.
Remote destinations offer a rare form of travel where nature remains in control and human presence feels temporary. From Patagonia and the Peruvian Andes to Chilean glaciers and the Arctic North, these remote hotels are set within landscapes shaped by wind, tide, altitude, and silence, where wildlife outnumbers people and geography defines daily life. Reaching them often requires long, intentional journeys, but this remoteness preserves their power and sense of discovery. Built by pioneers in extreme environments, they use restrained, nature-led architecture that blends into the land, creating immersive stays that prioritise solitude, scale, and deep connection to some of the world’s most untouched wilderness.
From the Cyclades to the Peloponnese, Greece’s seaside hotels are shaped by an intimate relationship between architecture, landscape, and the sea. Built from local stone, limewashed plaster, timber, and marble, these design-driven stays emerge naturally from cliffsides, pine-covered coastlines, and volcanic terrain, creating spaces defined by light, airflow, texture, and horizon views.
Slow summer stays offer a more intentional way to travel, especially through landscape hotels designed for stillness and immersion in nature. Instead of rushing between itineraries, days unfold naturally through long lunches, unhurried dinners, time spent outdoors, and simple rituals like morning coffee or evening walks. Staying longer allows a destination to reveal itself gradually, creating a deeper connection to place through familiarity, rhythm, and daily life. These immersive travel experiences prioritize slow living, sustainability, and meaningful moments, offering a more grounded and enriching way to experience summer.
Agricultural stays combine working farms with hospitality, allowing guests to experience cultivation, food, and landscape as one connected system. From vineyards and olive groves to regenerative farms, these properties make seasonal cycles like planting, harvesting, and soil care visible, shaping both the stay and the food served. Across global regions, from Mediterranean farmland to coastal and rural landscapes, they range from restored farmhouses to contemporary retreats, all rooted in land stewardship, local culture, and regenerative practices.
Creative travel invites a slower, more intentional rhythm where making becomes part of the journey. Around the world, a growing number of retreats combine nature, craft, and culture, offering workshops in ceramics, painting, textiles, and photography. From the Amazon rainforest and Arctic fjords to Japanese mountains and coastal retreats, these hotels encourage guests to disconnect from routine and create with their hands.
Water has long shaped how we move through the world, carving valleys, feeding forests, and creating natural corridors where life gathers. Today, some of the most memorable hotels sit where land meets water, along fjords, lakes, rivers, and lagoons where the landscape feels fluid and ever-changing. From Norway’s glacial fjords and alpine lakes in Europe to jungle rivers and coastal wetlands in the tropics, each setting invites a different rhythm of travel.
Cacao experiences are increasingly found in hotels and eco lodges across Colombia, Belize, Mexico, Ecuador, and the Caribbean, where guests can engage with cacao through tastings, ceremonies, and farm-to-cup rituals. Naturally rich in antioxidants and mood-supporting minerals, cacao continues to shape wellness-focused hotel stays and nature-based travel rooted in presence, land, and tradition.
The traditional hotel room is evolving as travelers increasingly seek privacy, space, and a stronger connection to place. A new generation of decentralized landscape hotels is redefining hospitality through private villas, cottages, and cabins dispersed across the land, offering independence alongside thoughtful, unobtrusive service. In these stays, privacy is not a luxury add-on but the foundation of the experience, allowing guests to slow down, live more autonomously, and inhabit their surroundings more fully.
Wellness in the wild is shaped by landscape as much as ritual. Forests support immunity and lower stress through natural phytoncides, oceans uplift mood and breathing with negative ions, lagoons calm the nervous system, and mountains sharpen focus through clean air and altitude. When retreats align yoga, meditation, and sensory practices with their natural surroundings, the body responds at a physiological level. Wellness becomes an ecology, inviting a slower pace, deeper presence, and a restored connection between body, mind, and place.
2026, the Year of the Horse, carries the energy of movement, change, and bold action. This editorial invites you to say yes to journeys long imagined and experiences waiting to be lived. Featuring 26 Room + Wild destination hotels, each rooted in its geography and culture, the guide explores places that offer more than escape. These hotels open doors to new landscapes, ways of living, and perspectives, reminding us that intentional travel has the power to reshape how we see the world and how we move through it.
Discover remote hotels shaped by the world’s most extreme landscapes, where the journey itself becomes part of the experience. Reached by long, uncertain roads, these places reward patience with profound stillness and connection. From Arctic coastlines and high mountains to deserts and isolated islands, these hotels are defined by their surroundings, with architecture responding carefully to light, climate, and terrain.
Dark sky hotels offer a rare escape into the cosmos, where minimal light pollution reveals constellations, meteor showers, and the quiet vastness of the night sky. These remote stays are often set within protected dark sky regions, designed to honour natural rhythms and preserve celestial visibility.
Mountains change the way we see and feel the world, offering elevation that quiets the mind and sharpens the senses. As the land rises, valleys open, light shifts across granite, and time slows to the steady rhythm of stone and sky. The clarity found at altitude creates a natural reset, where silence feels textured and every breath feels intentional. This is the essence of Room and Sky, a space shaped by height, light, and elemental calm.
Connection is at the heart of meaningful travel, sparked by shared sensory experiences that awaken the senses and bring people closer. Adults-only landscape hotels amplify this connection, offering coastal cliffs, rainforest retreats, and mountain sanctuaries where architecture, design, and service honor the natural surroundings.
Jungles are Earth’s densest ecosystems — tropical forests where heat, rain, and life intertwine. From the Amazon to Southeast Asia, they act as the planet’s lungs, sustaining over half of all known species. Bathed in endless shades of green — a color proven to calm the mind and restore balance — these landscapes offer both visual and emotional renewal. Hotels invite guests into this living pulse, where architecture yields to nature, air feels richer, and every moment hums with rain, birdsong, and rebirth.
Site-specific, sustainable architecture begins not with what to build, but how to belong. These hotels are shaped by their surroundings—formed by local climate, terrain, and materials—to exist in harmony with nature. They follow the land’s contours, echo the colors of stone, and open to light and wind. In doing so, they heighten awareness rather than impose form, allowing us to experience a truer connection to place. Built from the earth, cooled by breeze, and warmed by sun, these designs blur boundaries between comfort and conscience, reminding us that true sustainability isn’t about minimizing impact, but deepening belonging.
