Prince Gallery hotel - Tokyo, Japan

The sky definitely isn’t the limit at the Prince Gallery Tokyo Kioicho. Only the second Japanese property from Starwood’s Luxury Collection, the 250-room bolthole located in the capital’s Kioicho district offers views beyond the area’s manicured gardens and parks to Mount Fuji and beyond from every angle. 

Occupying the top seven floors of the new Tokyo Garden Terrace mixed-use development, the hotel’s elevated position has explicitly influenced US-based Rockwell Group’s design of the space, and combined with references to nature, allusions to levitation are ever-present. An expansive bar is framed by a kaleidoscopic glass waterfall installation by Japanese artist Mari Noguchi, and backs on to a soaring nine metre-high floor-to-ceiling window for a scene that feels remarkably cinematic.

Further up, the hotel’s in-house Japanese restaurant — one of four — continues the crystalline motif, here led by a theme of ice and water manifested via transparent sake cellars and opaque teppanyaki griddle and sushi counters.

For an escape from the city’s unrelenting mania at street level, a spa — complete with hot bath facilities, a pool and yoga studios — offers peaceful respite in a space where sculpted woods and translucent materials evoke mist and flowing water.