Conde Nast Traveler’s Hot List is back with its 2020 edition, despite the strange conditions the world finds itself in. It is, of course, the first time that the Hot List has been released during a global pandemic and, as its editors readily admit, they never imagined that they’d be announcing winners without knowing when anyone would be able to visit those places that excelled during the appraisal by this acclaimed lifestyle travel magazine.

Nonetheless, the 2020 Hot List is here to help people dream about their future vacation destinations. Even better news is that three Greek hotels appear on the list, which includes a total of 76 hotels and 10 cruise ships and their itineraries from around the world.

All three of the Greek honorees offer markedly different experiences of Greek lifestyle and culture.

Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens: The Athens Riviera delight

“A triumphant return from a legendary hotel brand, perfectly re-calibrated for now,” said Rachel Howard, who wrote the review in CN traveler. The Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel in Athens first opened in the late ’60s and was a favorite getaway destinations for celebrities, such as Brigitte Bardot, and for sheikhs, presidents and wealthy ship owners.

Located on the shore of the Lemos Peninsula in Vouliagmeni on the Athens Riviera, the hotel was tastefully renovated and reopened its doors to the public in 2019. The prevailing interior colors are white, earth tones, and blue. The complex has two wings, each with a style of its own: the Nafsika wing hosts sea-facing rooms and the main swimming pool, while the Arion wing is home to the hotel’s impressive spa, where customers are offered treatments based on the healing powers of Greek herbs.

The hotel’s location is ideal; it offers a quiet and relaxing setting with a view out over the Saronic Gulf, and yet is still barely 30 minutes from the city center and the Acropolis. The clientele is, as you’d expect, an elite group, made up, as Howard notes, of international jetsetters from America, Greece, Russia, and elsewhere, many of whom come with their families. There are also social media influencers who favor the pool for their photo shoots.

What’s so special, you might ask, about the pool? Well, it comes with underwater speakers and a floating olive grove.

The price for a double room starts at around €500.

Visit the hotel website here.

Parilio Hotel, Paros: Beaming with quiet confidence

Located less than a kilometer from famed Kolymbithres Beach, and only a 10-minute taxi ride from the village of Naoussa on the island of Paros, Parilio Hotel is an example of typical Cycladic architecture, on an archetypal Cycladic island that has maintained its traditional charm.

On the CN Traveler website, the hotel is described as “a clutch of precise, white-washed cubes.” A hotel already existed on this plot of land when couple Antonis and Kalia Eliopoulos bought it, and they decided to renovate that structure. Athens-based studio Interior Design Laboratorium was put in charge of the remodeling. Today, the new hotel displays a combination of Greek island and desert aesthetics that provides a peaceful and elegant setting.

Reviewer Emma Love writes that the hotel is “understated but with a razor-sharp finish, an amazing place to flop.” The contrast between the simplicity of the decoration, mainly comprised of large urns and concrete cactus pots, and the sophistication of amenities – for example, the upper-level rooms have a hot tub on the balcony – make this place “a quietly confident hotel with head-turning appeal that it doesn’t feel the need to shout about.”

The price for a double room starts at around €250.

There’s more information available on the hotel website.

Dexamenes Seaside Hotel, Kourouta: experience a stay in a wine tank

Tucked away in the middle of watermelon fields, olive groves and vineyards, Dexamenes Seaside Hotel in Kourouta, Peloponnese, is a remarkable example of industrial style design.

The hotel is made up of two rows of concrete wine storage tanks constructed in the 1920s that have been converted into what is an example of truly innovative design. The family of the hotel’s owner Nikos Karaflos had bought the tanks when Karaflos himself was only 16, but he saw the potential in them immediately. Today, with the help of Athens-based architects K-Studio, each individual tank has been turned into a guest room, thus fulfilling a vision Karaflos had for many years.

“The look is minimalist yet tactile with steel, canvas, wood, glass, and terrazzo set off by the thick, wine-stained walls that no decorative effect could ever replicate,” writes reviewer Aoife O’Riordain. The renovation was carried out by staying true to the site’s personality; some rooms even overlook the two large steel silos present on the site, offering visitors who stay in them an exciting and “slightly intimidating” experience, as described in the full review found here.

Dexamenes Seaside Hotel is located a stone’s throw from Kourouta Beach and less than 40 kilometers from the site of Ancient Olympia, which hosted the first Olympic Games. Most of the visitors staying at the hotel are either design and architecture aficionados or Athenians longing for a break from the city. The hotel often hosts events such as wine tastings, poetry readings and holistic retreats.

The price for a double room starts at around €150.

To find out more, check out the hotel website.

The websites of these hotels have the additional information you’ll need to continue your vacation planning. As CN Traveler writes, “We have a feeling that, when the time comes and it’s safe to travel, we’re all really going to need these hotels (…), and they’re going to need us, too. It will be worth the wait.”