Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Hotel? In Osaka, There Is.

Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Awards dropped last month, and in them, Patina Osaka was named the No. 1 hotel in the world. In fact, it showed up with a perfect score: 100 out of 100, which is a huge deal.

It’s the equivalent of a gymnast scoring a 10 on execution at the Olympics, which last happened in 1992. It’s a perfect game, which Major League Baseball hasn’t seen since 2023. In the T+L universe, only one other hotel, resort, or spa has managed to claim this score in the past 10 years (andBeyond Bateleur Camp, in Kenya’s Masai Mara).

Before I pile on with a whole host of reasons why this is [Meryl Streep voice] groundbreaking, I’m Maya Kachroo-Levine, the hotel expert at Travel + Leisure. I’ve been working on hotel awards at T+L (and before that at our sibling publication Departures, RIP) for eight years. I handpick our best new hotels of the year for T+L’s annual It List, which involves scoping (with the help of our discerning reporters) at least 200 new properties each year. I also oversee all of our hotel news coverage in the magazine and online, and T+L’s ever-growing stable of hotel reviews.