From characterful city addresses to intimate retreats shaped by design and personality, Vietnam’s boutique hotels are offering a more individual way to travel. The Best Boutique Hotel of the Year nominees celebrate places where thoughtful details, distinctive identity and genuine hospitality come together to create stays that feel personal from the moment we arrive.
Some hotels impress us with scale. Others stay with us because of character.
Perhaps it begins with a lobby that feels unlike anywhere else. A room filled with thoughtful details. A favourite corner discovered over morning coffee, a conversation with someone who remembers your name, or simply the feeling that every element has been considered with purpose.
Mai House Saigon Hotel
Boutique hospitality has always been about something more personal.
It is less about following a familiar formula and more about creating a world with its own point of view. Design, art, gastronomy and service become part of a larger story, giving each stay a personality that travellers can recognise, remember and return to.
This is the charm of a hotel with a sense of self.
Following a successful first season, Gourmet Vietnam Awards returns in 2026 for Season 2, continuing its celebration of the people and places bringing new energy to Vietnam’s culinary and hospitality scene.
Hotel Royal Hoi An Danang
This year’s Best Boutique Hotel of the Year nominees reveal how diverse and expressive contemporary hospitality in Vietnam has become.
Some bring individuality to the heart of the city, offering a more intimate perspective on urban travel. Others draw inspiration from architecture, local character and carefully considered interiors. Across different destinations, each approaches hospitality with its own rhythm, atmosphere and interpretation of what makes a stay memorable.
Some are elegant and understated. Others make a stronger statement through design and creative energy. And some possess that particularly elusive quality of feeling immediately familiar, even on a first visit.
The Best Boutique Hotel of the Year 2026 nominees are:
Meritel Hanoi · Hotel Royal Hoi An Danang · Mai House Saigon Hotel · Hilton Garden Inn Hanoi · Fusion Original Saigon Centre · Mia Saigon - Luxury Boutique Hotel · Rêve Ho Chi Minh City, Vignette Collection by IHG · KiN Hotel Thi Sach Edition · Bạch Suites Saigon · Bach Place Da Lat
Fusion Original Saigon Centre
Ten hotels, ten distinctive expressions of personality and place.
For us at Epicure Vietnam, this category is about more than intimate scale, beautiful interiors or a distinctive address.
A memorable boutique hotel has a point of view. It creates an atmosphere that feels considered yet effortless, giving travellers the sense that they have discovered somewhere with its own story rather than simply another place to stay.
KiN Hotel Thi Sach Edition
Because sometimes the hotels we remember most are not necessarily the grandest.
They are the ones that could never be mistaken for anywhere else.
GOURMET VIETNAM AWARDS 2026 SEASON 2
The story continues.