Best-of list · Bar Guide
Hotel bars and standalone bars serve different purposes and attract different crowds. Here's how to choose between them — and the world's best.
The short answer
6 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
The hotel bar carries a reputation it does not always deserve. For every overpriced lobby bar dispensing mediocre Negronis to jet-lagged business travellers, there are three hotel bars with cocktail programmes that outperform anything within walking distance. The challenge is knowing which kind you're walking into — and understanding why certain hotels have made their bars into genuine destinations rather than amenities.
The great hotel bar has structural advantages that standalone bars cannot replicate. It has a captive audience of international guests who bring a specific type of curiosity — they are in a new city, they want to understand it, and they have nowhere else to be. The best hotel bars exploit this by hiring bartenders who function partly as cultural ambassadors, recommending the neighbourhood as much as the menu. The worst hotel bars ignore this opportunity entirely and serve the same cocktails you could get at any Hilton in the world.