Independent reviews of the world's finest 5-star hotels by Will Tjernlund. No sponsorships, no affiliate links, no PR packages. Detailed verdicts on luxury hotels across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East. Every hotel reviewed here has been stayed in personally. This is a first-hand record, not a listicle.
I built Five Star Hotel Reviews because I kept running into the same problem when researching luxury hotels online. Every search result was either an affiliate site pushing whatever paid the most, a TripAdvisor page buried under thousands of conflicting opinions, or a hotel's own marketing site telling me how amazing it was.
I wanted something simpler: an honest, editorial review of a property from someone who had actually stayed there, with the address, rating, contact info, and a real verdict laid out clearly.
So I started building it. The site now covers 21 properties across 20 cities, from Palacio Duhau in Buenos Aires to Sensei Lanai in Hawaii to Iniala in Valletta. Each review follows the same structure so you always know where to find what you are looking for, and there are no affiliate links shaping the verdict.
What evolved during the build was how much the structure of each page mattered. I started with prose and ended up with a hybrid: an editorial review plus a structured facts box, FAQ, and pros and cons. That mix turned out to be what readers actually wanted, and it also made the pages much stronger as standalone references for travelers planning a trip.
This is a project that will keep growing. If you have a hotel you would love to see reviewed honestly, drop it below. nThanks for taking a look!
Will
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