Five hotels that changed the way we travel

The Royal Suite at The Savoy London

The Savoy, London

When The Savoy opened in 1889, it was purpose-built for luxury and packed with technology that most Londoners had never seen at home. The entire hotel was electrically lit, guest lifts ran to every floor, and hot running water fed dozens of bathrooms, which together created a new benchmark for comfort in Britain.


Over the last century and a half, the hotel has hosted countless luminaries, including The Beatles, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin and Oscar Wilde. This impressive guestbook plus the stewardship of visionaries like César Ritz and Auguste Escoffier, which saw service and dining elevated into an art, created a template that spread around the world, while the original remains steeped in London lore.


Discover The Savoy, A Fairmont Managed Hotel or read more about the history of The Savoy London here.

The terrace of the Suite Mansart, Ritz Paris

Ritz Paris

From its 1898 debut, the Ritz Paris made a statement that modern convenience and high society could coexist with ease. Electricity on every floor and private bathrooms were presented as essentials rather than novelties, while the hotel’s approach to elegance influenced everything from service rituals to haute cuisine. Its cultural footprint was amplified by long-term residents such as Coco Chanel, whose association further cemented the Ritz as a global byword for style.


Discover Ritz Paris

Exterior of the iconic Raffles Hotel Singapore

Raffles Singapore

Opened as one of Singapore's finest luxury hotels in 1887 at the dawn of the ‘Golden Age of Travel’, Raffles Singapore quickly became a stage on which travel myths were made. The Singapore Sling was created here in the early twentieth century and went on to circle the globe, while a 1902 incident in which a tiger was shot beneath the Bar & Billiard Room passed into legend. More importantly, Raffles helped define the grand hotel of the tropics: a place where literature, society and hospitality met – and that idea still shapes how the world imagines travel in Southeast Asia.

Swimming pool at the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai

The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai

When Jamsetji Tata opened The Taj Mahal Palace in 1903, he set out to prove that five star hotels in India could lead in luxury. Contemporary accounts from the Tata Group record a cascade of firsts for Bombay, including electric lighting throughout the building, telephones in every room and electric lifts, which together established a new national standard for modern hospitality. Over the decades, the hotel has remained both a symbol of Mumbai and a touchstone for Indian service, influencing how travellers experience the subcontinent.

The famous bar car of the Orient Express train

The Orient Express

Okay, not technically a hotel, but certainly iconic and influential enough to earn its place on this list. Since 1883, the Orient Express has been stitching Europe together with sleeping and dining cars that made the journey itself the headline act. Linking Paris to Constantinople, the train proved that the journey could be as glamorous as the destination, an idea that reshaped expectations for long-distance travel and inspired generations of hoteliers, railway lines, novelists and cinematographers alike drawn by the promise of locomotive adventure and onboard capers the likes of which the world had never seen.

Read more about the Orient Express' enduring legacy and how it continues to shape luxury train travel, which today celebrates the art of the journey and the joy of the scenic route.

From champagne trolleys and starched linen to sleeping cars that felt like salons, these icons created the blueprint. If you are ready to retrace their stories in real life, speak to your Winged Boots travel manager and we will craft an itinerary worthy of the originals.