Michelin Keys: When Excellence Gets Rewritten
Michelin Keys Awards 2025 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris
When Michelin unveiled its first-ever Keys this month at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, it wasn’t just launching a new rating system — it was reframing what “the world’s best hotels” actually means.
For over a century, the Star or Macaron told us where to eat. Now, the Key tells us where to stay.
2,457 hotels worldwide received the distinction — one, two or three Keys — each representing a new global benchmark for design, service and sense of place.
But what caught our eye wasn’t just who made the list. It was what came after — four Special Awards that sharpen what “excellence” looks like today, The Design Award, The Wellness Award, The Local Experience Award and the Opening of the Year.
The Design Award: Scale Meets Precision
This year’s Michelin Architecture & Design Award went to Atlantis The Royal in Dubai — one of our favourite hotel experiences of the past year.
From the moment you step inside, it’s clear this isn’t “Dubai Bling.” Yes, it’s vast — six towers of cantilevered glass, linked by air and light — but what surprised us most was its restraint.
Nobu by the Beach at Atlantis the Royal, Dubai
The reception, flanked by enormous aquariums, feels more like an underwater cathedral than a lobby. Upstairs, the Louis Vuitton terrace floats above the city in brushed champagne tones; Nobu by the Beach turns poolside dining into theatre; and everywhere you look, water and reflection soften the geometry.
It blew us away — but not in the usual Dubai way. This is spectacle reimagined through symmetry and stillness: architecture that breathes, not shouts.
Atlantis The Royal, Dubai winner of the Architecture & Design Award
The Wellness Award: Depth, Not Pampering
Bürgenstock Resort, Switzerland winner of the Michelin Keys Wellness Award 2025
In Switzerland, the Bürgenstock Resort took home the Wellness Award. Perched above Lake Lucerne, its Alpine Spa stretches across glass, water and stone — a masterclass in how to make wellness feel architectural.
Where most resorts sell rejuvenation, Bürgenstock designs for it — layering hydrotherapy, medical recovery, and alpine air into a single narrative. It’s wellness as structure, not service.
The Local Experience Award: Connection as Luxury
Morocco, La Fiermontina Ocean, a hotel that’s as connected with locals as it is their guests
In Morocco, La Fiermontina Ocean — part refuge, part cultural bridge — earned the Local Experience Award for how it connects guests with the land and its people.
Built among olive groves on the Larache coast, it’s a place where you’re invited to share a meal with local families, where design and heritage are indistinguishable. Michelin described it as “a property that celebrates Moroccan heritage and supports nearby villages through educational and employment initiatives.” In other words, a hotel that turns hospitality into reciprocity.
Morocco, La Fiermontina Ocean
The Opening of the Year: Small is the New Statement
And in Estonia, The Burman Hotel — a 17-room townhouse in Tallinn — took Opening of the Year. A reminder that impact isn’t about scale, it’s about intention. A hotel can be monumental in spirit without ever being large.
Estonia, The Burman Hotel, Opening of the Year winner
A New Kind of Benchmark
If the Michelin Star once told us that mastery could be measured on a plate, the Michelin Key era tells us mastery now lives in moments: how a space makes you feel, what it contributes to its setting, and whether it lingers after you leave.
The four awards are proof that excellence is evolving — from opulence to depth, from design as statement to design as sensitivity.
Atlantis might have won for architecture, but really, what it represents is alignment: a new kind of precision where hospitality meets emotion, and ambition meets restraint.