MICHELIN Key Hotels Across Australia, New Zealand & Africa

After more than a century rating restaurants, the MICHELIN Guide introduced a parallel distinction for hotels: the MICHELIN Key. Awarded as one, two or three Keys, it recognises the world's most exceptional places to stay. At the first global reveal in October 2025, the Keys reached Swain's core regions for the first time, and the results read like a shortlist of the properties we know best.

What a MICHELIN Key means

MICHELIN inspectors assess hotels on five criteria: excellence in architecture and design, the quality and consistency of service, the property's personality and character, value for the price, and its contribution to its setting and community. One Key marks a special stay; Two Keys an exceptional one; Three Keys an extraordinary destination in its own right.

Oceania

The inaugural Oceania selection recognised 63 hotels across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and French Polynesia — 35 in Australia and 19 in New Zealand among them. Lizard Island Resort, on the Great Barrier Reef, took the only Australian Three Keys. Among One Key honourees were Brisbane's The Calile, Sydney's The EVE and Auckland's The Hotel Britomart. The list leaned toward the design-led lodges and resorts that define luxury travel in the region.

Africa

Africa's first selection put South Africa firmly on the map with 27 Keys, around half of them in and near Cape Town. Two Greater Kruger safari lodges, Londolozi and Royal Malewane, earned the top Three Keys. Cape Town's Two Key hotels included Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Ellerman House and Cape Grace, while One Key went to the likes of One&Only Cape Town and The Silo.

Why it matters for travelers

The Keys are useful precisely because they judge the whole stay, not just the restaurant — design, service, character and sense of place. For a luxury traveler they offer an independent shorthand for properties worth building a trip around, and they confirm what specialist operators have long known about the lodges and hotels across Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific and Africa.