By Richard Fraiman

Yesterday marked the launch of the 46th edition of The Good Hotel Guide. As the Guide’s new owner, I am committed to upholding its cherished values of independence and impartiality. The editorial team, led by Jane Knight, former travel editor for The Times, is unchanged. The team members’ detailed knowledge of hotels and hospitality, and their ability to convey the essence of a place, from five-star hotel to gastropub and intimate B&B, has again done us proud. The 46th edition features a Michelin-starred restaurant with only two guest bedrooms (possibly Britain’s smallest) in Herefordshire, a practically perfect pub in the Cotswolds, and a fun hotel in York with a trainset in the bar and vinyl to spin. Buy the Guide here.

We also revealed our annual list of César winners. The 12 Césars (named after famous Swiss hotelier César Ritz) are given to the hotels, inns and B&Bs considered outstanding in their particular category. This year, award winners include a former motorway service station on the M6, a Grade I listed townhouse where the in-room coffee maker can be found in a doll’s house, a 1950s Scottish youth hostel with loch views that is now a stunning hotel, and Michelin-starred properties in the heart of the British countryside with bird-watching and red squirrel spotting opportunities on the door step. See our Cesar winners here.

Although the Guide’s principles are not negotiable, I shall continue to seek to make improvements for you, the reader. The print Guide is designed for pleasurable armchair browsing and to accompany you on your travels, but it can only ever be a single snapshot in time, while the Guide’s website will continue to evolve and expand. You can now see the Guide’s coveted Editor’s Choice 2023 awards only online, along with other useful information, such as hotels with good wheelchair access, and hotels with tennis and swimming facilities. Recent years have been challenging for the hospitality industry, requiring hoteliers to be ingenious, to adapt to survive. Against a background of rapid innovation, the fluid nature of our website enables us to update, to ensure that write-ups are as current and useful as possible.

Some things may change, but others are constant, and you, our readers, are the bedrock of our operation, as important and valued by us as ever. So please, tell us about your hotel experiences, good and less good. You can file reports with us via our website, here. We respond to every single review that we receive. They are the beating heart of The Good Hotel Guide, the best and most trusted guide to the UK and Ireland’s finest hotels, inns and B&Bs.