Best Hotels for Solo Travellers

Solo travel is not a compromise — it is a choice. The freedom to move at your own pace, eat where you want, linger in a gallery until closing, or spend an entire afternoon in a hotel spa without negotiating with anyone: these are the privileges of the independent traveller. The hotels in this collection understand that distinction. They are not merely tolerant of solo guests; they are designed, in many ways, for them — with bars worth sitting at alone, dining rooms where a single table is never an afterthought, and service that reads individual needs without being asked.

The cities that reward solo travel most generously appear repeatedly in this guide: Tokyo, where the culture of omotenashi hospitality makes every solo guest feel personally attended to; London, where the grand hotel tradition includes the art of the solitary dinner; Paris, where eating alone at a good restaurant is considered entirely civilised; and New York, where the city itself is the entertainment. Beyond the cities, we include wellness retreats in Bali and Kyoto where solo immersion is the entire point — places that invite you to arrive alone and leave transformed.

What unites every hotel in this collection is a quality we call solo-readiness: the combination of communal spaces that invite spontaneous connection, rooms that feel like genuine sanctuaries rather than storage units, and staff who understand that the solo traveller is not lonely but deliberate. Whether you are a first-time solo traveller or a seasoned independent explorer, these twenty hotels represent the finest places in the world to travel alone — and to love it.

Every hotel in this collection was assessed against four criteria specific to solo travel. First, solo-readiness: does the hotel have a bar worth sitting at alone, a dining room where a single table is treated with the same care as a table for four, and communal spaces that invite connection without pressure? Second, location quality: is the hotel in a neighbourhood that rewards independent exploration on foot? Third, service intelligence: do staff read individual needs without being intrusive? Fourth, room quality: is the room a genuine sanctuary — not merely a place to sleep, but a space where an evening alone feels like a pleasure? Hotels scoring highly on all four criteria appear at the top of this list.