2020s

Djoko Tjandra is arrested in Malaysia in July after eleven years as a fugitive and jailed in Indonesia for bribing a police officer and a prosecutor

Henri Chenot retires, appointing Dr George Gaitanos

Pavillon Ledoyen reaches six stars — the most Michelin-starred independent house in the world

Chenot Palace opens at Weggis on Lake Lucerne, carrying Henri Chenot's method

Hyatt launches Destination by Hyatt from the Two Roads acquisition

Banyan Tree launches Garrya

Namron Hospitality is formed in Malaysia

The Connaught Bar named World's Best Bar; again in 2021

Kalesma opens at Mykonos in the form of a Cycladic settlement

Capella opens on the Chao Phraya at Bangkok

Forestis opens above Bressanone on the Plose

The Opus opens in Dubai in Zaha Hadid's cube with a void cut through it

José Padilla dies on 18 October

Zero Bond opens at 0 Bond Street in October, with photography banned

La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich opens on 8 January after a two-year restoration by Philippe Starck

Dream Island opens on 29 February — roofed against the Moscow winter, and carrying none of the DreamWorks characters it was conceived around

Signiel Busan opens at Haeundae LCT in June, the second and so far the only other

Brasserie Мост closes on Kuznetsky Most, ending the house that began as the club The Most

The port explosion of 4 August damages the Saint-Georges again, along with most of the buildings on this page

Gucci Osteria Florence takes a Michelin star under Karime Lopez

The Ritz London closes for the first time since 1906, then sells to Abdulhadi Mana Al-Hajri in March

Museum Hotel Antakya opens on stilts above the archaeology it was built to protect

HOTEL THE MITSUI opens in Kyoto on land the family held for 250 years

Zén Singapore takes three stars

Tao Group acquires Hakkasan

SA Hospitality buys back Sant Ambroeus's original Milan address

IHG launches Vignette Collection for independent hotels

Accor launches Emblems Collection

Centara launches Centara Reserve at Samui

Karl Lagerfeld Hotels announces its first house in Macau, after the designer's death

Capella Group launches Patina with a house at Marina Bay

Beaumier is formed from a group of French Alpine and Provençal houses

Niva opens in Georgia

Mantera opens in Russia

Azumi Setoda opens in a 140-year-old merchant house on Ikuchijima

Madame Rêve opens in the former central post office of Paris

Rosewood takes the Villa Magna in Madrid

Matild Palace opens in Budapest in an 1902 palace

Airelles opens Le Grand Contrôle inside the grounds of Versailles

Manzherok opens in the Altai ⚑ watch entry, admitted on the register's own terms

Galataport opens in Istanbul with the world’s first underground cruise terminal, returning 1.2 km of Bosphorus shore to public footfall after roughly two centuries

Dassault launches the Falcon 10X on 6 May

GHA DISCOVERY is rebuilt in November around DISCOVERY Dollars, a spend-based currency rather than points

JOALI BEING opens on Bodufushi on 15 November with Areka at its centre — a wellbeing programme built on Mind, Skin, Microbiome and Energy, the microbiome being a pillar no other protocol in this register uses

The Set Hotels rebrands as The Set Collection — a representation company that owns none of its members, supplying them the GDS chain code TS

Alila Hinu Bay opens at Mirbat — the second Alila in the country and the quieter half of Dhofar

Six Senses opens at Shaharut, into a desert market a domestic group had already made

Josun Palace opens at Gangnam, the Luxury Collection’s debut in Korea

Le Commandant Charcot enters service — the only luxury passenger ship that is a polar icebreaker

Il Borro Tuscan Bistro opens on Berkeley Street, London, on 12 November

Café Lapérouse opens at the Hôtel de la Marine, Place de la Concorde

Joali Being opens on Bodufushi on 15 November with the Areka wellbeing centre

Palazzo Fiuggi reopens as a medical retreat on 21 June after a €30m rebuild

Kisawa Sanctuary opens on Benguerra Island, 3D-printed from sand and seawater

Casa Cipriani opens in the Battery Maritime Building, New York

Our Habitas opens at AlUla, built to be dismantled without trace

White Desert opens Echo in Antarctica, its cabins modelled on a space station

Grand Lisboa Palace opens on Cotai under SJM, fourteen months after Stanley Ho died

Resorts World opens on the Las Vegas Strip, the first new resort there in a decade

Bentonville's population reaches 58,000 from 36,000 in 2010, with more cranes per head than any other American city

Biologique Recherche replaces Chanel at the Ritz Club

Lanserhof at The Arts Club opens in Mayfair

Alpha Dhabi takes a major interest in Nammos

Accor buys Paris Society outright on ~€250m of revenue

Artfarm buys the Groucho Club for £40m in August

Il Tornabuoni opens in Florence in a fifteenth-century palazzo

The De Santis family opens Passalacqua at Moltrasio on Lake Como

Borgo Santandrea opens on the Amalfi cliffs, rebuilt from a 1960s hotel

Battersea Power Station opens to the public in October, its chimneys rebuilt to look the same

Diriyah opens At-Turaif and Bujairi Terrace — a district built low-rise, in the Najdi vernacular, and laid out to be walked

Sea Breeze rises on the Caspian: the developer of Crocus City building a resort city twenty minutes from the Baku he was born in

Régine Zylberberg dies

Katara Towers open at Lusail for the World Cup — the crossed scimitars of the state seal, holding Raffles and Fairmont in one building

Crystal Cruises ceases trading; Abercrombie & Kent relaunches the name in 2023

Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley opens in March — his first house outside Paris

Zulal opens in Qatar, carrying the Chiva-Som method into traditional Arabic medicine

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection sails its first voyage aboard Evrima after four years of delay

Aman announces Aman at Sea, a 50-suite yacht by Sinot

Aman New York opens in the Crown Building on Fifth Avenue

Banyan Tree AlUla opens in the Ashar valley

Estelle Manor opens at Eynsham Hall in Oxfordshire

The Hotel Pennsylvania is demolished after 104 years

La Tour d'Argent reopens on 29 August after a 17-month renovation

Paris Society takes over the operation of Maxim's in November

Mohari buys Tao Group for £441m

Trilantic sells the Pacha nightclubs and hotels to FIVE for ~€320m, keeping Lío

Meliá gathers its most distinctive houses into The Meliá Collection

Core: moves to 711 Fifth Avenue in September — 60,000 sq ft, lobby by Peter Marino

Bawe Island opens off Zanzibar

Bulgari opens in Tokyo on the top floors of the Yaesu tower

FIVE Holdings buys the Pacha clubs and hotels for a reported €302.5m

Anton Pinsky takes the Dovlatov at Esto-Sadok and reopens it as the Pinskiy Boutique Hotel — 39 rooms, with Loona on the ground floor ⚑ year of reopening to confirm

The House of Versace declines to renew the Gold Coast licence; the Medusa tiles are removed and the hotel reopens as the Imperial

Azabudai Hills opens in Tokyo

The Karl Lagerfeld Macau opens — the only hotel in the world wholly designed by him, four years after his death

Both founders leave Ultima’s executive management on 21 December with immediate effect; Petar Krstic, six years with Aman and lately the opener of Aman New York, takes over

Six Senses Southern Dunes opens in November — the first house of the whole Red Sea project, and the point at which the destination stopped being a press release

The Ned Doha opens in the brutalist Ministry of Interior of the 1970s — a house made by converting an organ of state

FIVE buys Pacha — a hotel company and a nightclub become one business

The Sursock Museum reopens after the port explosion wrecked it

UNESCO inscribes 54 Persian caravanserais — and leaves out the Abbasi at Isfahan because its materials are too new, that is, because it is still a hotel

MSC launches Explora Journeys — a mass-market operator building a luxury brand rather than buying one

Gucci Osteria Seoul opens on 28 March, the fourth house

Café Lapérouse opens at Raffles London, The OWO ⚑ since closed

Mohamed Al-Fayed dies on 30 August

Var-Matin reports Saint-Tropez restaurants quoting a €5,000 minimum spend at booking and screening guests against spend databases; the mayor calls the practices despicable

Explora Journeys sails its first ship, EXPLORA I, for MSC's luxury line

Aman charters a private jet for its own guests

Raffles London opens in the Old War Office on Whitehall

Michel Guérard dies at Eugénie-les-Bains on 18 August; the death is announced on 19 August

The Plein Hotel opens in Milan

Ruinart opens the Pavillon Nicolas Ruinart in October — lounges, a champagne bar, a dining room and a terrace

Beiersdorf agrees to buy Clinique La Prairie's Montreux real estate

De Gourcuff and Paris Society convicted over the Longchamp licence; suspended sentence, February

Three restored coral houses — Jokhdar, Al-Rayyis and Kedwan — open as heritage hotels in Al Balad

Jokhdar, Al-Rayyis and Kedwan open as heritage hotels in restored coral houses at Al Balad

The Wolseley Hospitality Group announces its move into hotels

Sharaan by Jean Nouvel is cut into the sandstone at AlUla ⚑ opening announced

The Lana opens in Dubai, Dorchester Collection's first house in the Gulf

A Valencia court annuls Roselló's Space trademark in favour of the Matutes family

Palazzo Versace Macau opens in Cotai, beside the first Karl Lagerfeld hotel

The Lana opens on 24 April at Marasi Bay — Dorchester Collection’s first house in the Middle East and Asia, with 39 residences managed rather than licensed

Amar Lalvani is named president and creative director of Hyatt’s Lifestyle group at the Standard closing

Mandarin Oriental opens at Shatti Al-Qurum on 3 June, the brand’s debut in Oman

The St. Regis Red Sea opens at Ummahat in January, the first island resort of the destination

Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve opens at Ummahat in May

Shebara opens in October, the first house Red Sea Global operates itself

Bab Samhan opens at Diriyah in December, the anchor house of a district the register had held without one

The Chedi Hegra opens on 4 December inside a UNESCO site, in the former Hejaz Railway station

The MICHELIN Guide arrives in Doha in December and awards two stars on the first night, to IDAM and to Jamavar

Stella di Mosca opens on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, interiors by ACPV — the first ultra-boutique of the period after the international brands left

Maidens Hotel opens in Khamovniki in November, in a converted telephone exchange — the first house of the new period to take a position rather than a flag

Mantera Supreme Seaside takes its first guests at Sirius on 25 December — 400 rooms, eleven restaurants, eleven pools

Mandarin Oriental opens at Shatti Al-Qurum on 3 June, the group’s debut in Oman

Orient Express announces Silenseas, to be the largest sailing ship in the world

Le Grand Tour begins running through France

SUJÁN JAWAI is ranked 43rd in the World's 50 Best Hotels — the only hotel in India on the list

Desert Rock opens in Saudi Arabia, cut into a mountain by Oppenheim

L’Orangerie receives a Michelin star, widening the estate’s starred dining system

Swire retires the name The House Collective and renames its Houses Upper House

Mohamed Umar Maniku dies in Singapore on 30 August

Jack Penrod dies on 3 February, aged 85

Hakkasan's original Hanway Place closes permanently in February

FZN Dubai takes three stars on 23 May — Frantzén the only chef holding three three-star houses

ADMO Lifestyle Holding acquires Nammos Group in March

Mohari separates Hakkasan Group out again in September

DIAFA takes a strategic stake in Azumi in October

Patrice de Colmont dies on 11 October, aged 77

Louis Vuitton moors The Louis in Shanghai — a thirty-metre ship holding a two-floor exhibition, a café and, last of all, the shop

Billionaire Porto Cervo is rebranded Twiga Porto Cervo

Hyatt completes the disposal of the Playa real estate by 30 December for about $2 bn, keeping fifty-year management agreements on thirteen of fourteen properties

Mandarin Oriental takes the Lutetia and the Conservatorium from early in the year; the house the collection began with is rebranded under another name in January 2026

The MICHELIN Guide arrives in Saudi Arabia in December, covering Riyadh, Jeddah and AlUla at once — ⚑ no stars are awarded in the first selection, and the register does not report any

Just Cavalli Milano reopens as JustMe under new management

Novikov reopens the address as Brasserie Kuznetsky Most, with Kaifuso in the old club basement

UNESCO welcomes adaptive-reuse guidelines for the Persian Caravanserai sites — heritage returning to its original function

The Oberoi Rajgarh Palace opens in November after the restoration of a 350-year-old palace near Khajuraho

The Louis opens on West Nanjing Road on 27 June, built as a cruise ship

The Waldorf Astoria reopens after eight years with 375 rooms of its original 1,416

Orient Express La Dolce Vita begins running on Italian lines

DIAFA acquires the Caring group for £1.4bn in April — Ivy, Caprice, Birley

Langosteria's parent restructured as Buonocore Hospitality Group in spring

Maybourne splits on 9 July: Regis Maybourne keeps Claridge’s, the Riviera and Beverly Hills; Constellation keeps the buildings of The Connaught, The Berkeley and The Emory

After Giorgio Armani’s death the group signs a worldwide exclusive joint venture with Mohamed Alabbar’s Symphony Global — twenty years, plus ten

Rosewood Doha opens at Lusail Marina in January, by the Qatari architect Ibrahim Jaidah

Capella opens at Miyagawa-chō on 22 March, inside a working geiko district

A comprehensive renovation of Al Bustan Palace begins — the reason to hold the building’s genealogy rather than let its current operator define it

Alba at Raffles Doha is promoted to a Michelin star in the second Doha guide, which expands to forty-four restaurants

Crowne Plaza Petra reopens in January after thirteen years closed — a reopening, not a new house

Sofitel management of the Winter Palace and the Old Cataract ends on 30 April — ⚑ the register separates the houses from their former flag and treats the current operator as unresolved

Oberoi opens Naila Fort near Jaipur, a fort of 1849 restored as a private residence let whole rather than by the room

Four Seasons Yachts takes its maiden voyage from Lisbon in January

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal closes at the end of January, at sixteen years

Wynn Al Marjan Island is announced as the first casino resort in the Emirates ⚑ not yet open