20 amazing bucket list hotels for 2021

20 amazing bucket list hotels for 2021

From a James Bond Jamaica hideaway to a village retreat in Cambodia and a Riviera grande dame, here's our pick of the top world-class, bucket-list hotels for 2021.

GoldenEye

Oracabessa, Jamaica

7

Telegraph expert rating

Music, movies, literature - what cultural pedigree this Jamaican hideaway has! The GoldenEye villa was the home first of Ian Fleming, who wrote his James Bond novels there, overlooking turquoise shallows; then Bob Marley; then finally Chris Blackwell, the Island Records founder, who brought Marley, and reggae, to the wider world. Between them, they have hosted everyone from golden-age Hollywood stars to royalty and rock royalty. Blackwell had so many musicians rocking up (Sting wrote Every Breath You Take at Fleming's desk, and Bono the theme tune to GoldenEye, the 1997 Bond film) that he built cottages to house them, event­ually turning GoldenEye into the laid-back but legendary hotel it is today, adding clapboard villas, beach huts, a restaurant and bar serving Blackwell rum cocktails at the shore.

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Rates provided by

Booking.com

Rajasthan's City of Lakes has many fine Rajput palace hotels, and the most iconic is the Taj Lake Palace. Originally a summer retreat for a big-spending maharana (and, much later, Bond girl Octopussy's all-female lair), the 18th-century palace is