Marriott hotels

More than thirty, and they are not all alike. This page is the four where the hotel keeps its own name: The Luxury Collection, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio and Design Hotels. The rest are built to a standard you can recognise anywhere, which is the point of them: Courtyard, Sheraton, Westin, Residence Inn, Four Points.

Marriott's top tier, alongside Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis. It is a small brand, a bit over a hundred hotels, and most of them are landmarks: the Gritti Palace in Venice, the Grande Bretagne in Athens, the Alfonso XIII in Seville, Cala di Volpe in Sardinia.

Not quite. Marriott files it one rung below the luxury tier, as upper upscale, and it is far bigger than The Luxury Collection at close to four hundred hotels. Some are as good as anything Marriott owns. Others are simply characterful city hotels at a normal price.

Rank and size. The Luxury Collection is small, expensive and mostly grand old hotels. Autograph Collection is three times larger and much broader, taking in everything from safari camps to converted banks. Tribute Portfolio is the same idea again, a step further down in price.

In more than seventy countries. The largest single group is in the United States, then Greece, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, with clusters in India, China and the Gulf. London has more than any other one city.

Yes. Open any hotel on the list for live rates and availability, then pay by card or with crypto.