Just for the love of it

IN an edited extract from his new book, Hotel Heaven: Confessions Of A Luxury Hotel Addict, Matthew Brace reveals his top ten romantic hotels.

Frangipani time ... for tropical romance, hop on the first flight to Koh Samui and check in to the Sila Evason Hideaway.

QUICK quiz: what is the world's most romantic place? Hands up for Paris? Venice? Central Park in spring, shopping on Fifth Avenue? Courchevalle on skis at New Year with beef carpaccio and grappa for lunch?

How about sultry summer samba dancing at the feet of Corcovado in Rio, or ice-climbing in the Scottish Highlands in bright red gaiters and snug gloves?

Maybe whale-watching from the Mornington Peninsula? Perhaps a hammock on your own beach at Negril, in Jamaica?

Or sitting on the slopes of Iceland's Hekla volcano on midsummer's eve drinking Rekya vodka in the balmy glow of the midnight sun?

Although I can recommend all of these, and a hundred more, choosing that special romantic destination is a tough call.

One thing that may help you make up your mind is the proximity to an equally romantic luxury hotel.

A decade of luxury-hotel reviewing has taught me the painful truth that while thousands of hotels swear blind they are heart-flutteringly romantic, only a handful are actually telling the truth.

What these select hotels share is a magical, almost indefinable, romantic spirit.

It's partly because of their natural surroundings, but mainly it's achieved by the inspired vision of the designers, owners, managers and staff who, I feel sure, are all diehard romantics.

I made it my mission 10 years ago to find hotel heaven, to discover just how luxurious and romantic a hotel could be.

I set my own strict criteria. Above all, establishments had to be memorable for all the right reasons – for their class, character, finesse, imagination and uniqueness – and had to have that undeniable romantic spirit.

It's been an arduous, 10-year assignment, as I am sure you can appreciate, globetrotting from five-star suite to five-star suite all in the name of research, but I can now, with some confidence, offer my picks for the world's most romantic hotels.

Two of them are here in Australia. The Observatory Hotel, in Sydney, stands alone and removed from the rest of the glitzy, peacock-like city hotels.

Its owner, Orient-Express Hotels, Trains & Cruises, has taken the best ideas of the first Golden Age of luxury hotels and fused them with the demands of modern travellers. It's chic, elegant and romantic, all at the same time.

Down in Melbourne, they do romance slightly differently. Out go the classic furnishings and in come sexy, hot-pink Swan chairs and dramatic lighting at the Prince Hotel, in St Kilda.

A red-pink curtain behind a cantilevered, matt-black reception desk leads the eye soaring up 15m to a distant ceiling.

Guests dine in the beautifully theatrical Circa, and scamper through the corridors to sit on aubergine chaise-longues and spin around in the Swan chairs.

For tropical romance, hop on the first flight to Koh Samui and check in to the Sila Evason Hideaway. After a day or two blissed out there, my partner and I lay like discarded towels on the daybed by the pool in our private villa.

We had to flip a frangipani flower to see whose turn it was to crawl to the phone to ask our butler to bring a spicy Thai salad and more Singha beers. My partner threw herself in the pool and took so long to surface that I thought she'd fallen asleep on the bottom.

I joined her, and we floated hand-in-hand, gazing up at birds in the opalescent sky.

Another paradise is Yasawa, in Fiji, a beautiful, sexy, romantic beach resort for beautiful, sexy, romantic adults.

There are no kids running around demanding ice creams, sticking their inquisitive fingers into crabs' claws and getting their feet skewered by sea urchin spines.

Yasawa means "heaven" in Fijian, as does Lomalagi – the name of the resort's honeymoon suite – so lovebirds in that suite can quite legitimately tell their friends that while on holiday their temporary address translated to Heaven, Heaven, Fiji Islands.

A world away in Venice, true romantics know to head for the Londra Palace – specifically, the top-floor suite with the terrace, which is the perfect place for a marriage proposal.

Pop the question at dawn, as the first rays of sun wash the Campanile, in St Mark's Square, with warm, yellow light, and you can launch the cork from a bottle of Prosecco across the terracotta rooftops.

Or wait until noon, when the bells of San Zaccaria, Basilica San Marco and all the other churches in Venice go off at once and the air is filled with their echoing music.

I've saved the best for last: a minimalist, white limestone-walled temple on Bali's south east coast, called The Bale.

No other hotel I know can so rapidly induce a state of tranquillity. Each of the 29 private villas boasts a huge, inviting bed on a raised dais, a freshwater pool and manicured gardens shaded by frangipani trees.

The Bale must tap a low-calcium aquifer somewhere, for the pools have the softest water. It's like diving into wet silk.

TOP 10 ROMANTIC HOTELS

1. The Bale, Bali
2. Londra Palace, Venice
3. Sila Evason Hideaway, Koh Samui
4. The Observatory, Sydney
5. Club at the Legian, Bali
6. The Chedi, Oman
7. Yasawa, Fiji
8. The Prince, Melbourne
9. Amanjena, Morocco
10. Sunset Tower, Los Angeles

The Sunday Telegraph