All hotels have been designed by someone, of course, but there’s a big difference between those where the owners actually hired a cutting-edge architect or Montblanc pencil-wielding design team and those who simply went to the local flea-market for furniture that looks ‘rustic’. In the quest for your hard-earned travel money, hotels are trying every trick in the book to lure you in, and amazing design can often win over capricious punters who are looking for something “wow”. We’re not vouching for the air-con, the staff, the size of the bathtubs or whether or not the lift doesn’t rattle, but we can say these hotels will have you Instagramming your holiday stories till your homebound jet screeches to a halt on the local runway.

Il Sereno, Lake Como, Italy

Most things around Lake Como look old (with the possible exception of George Clooney), but award-winning designer Patricia Urquiola went off on a bit of a tangent when she dreamed up this lakeside hotel which rises up from the shoreline like the world’s best-looking multi-storey car park. That, of course, is under-selling what amounts to a pretty stunning piece of architecture – a building that Bloomberg reckoned was Europe’s most luxurious new hotel. Grab the 2,000 sq-ft penthouse suite if you can, obviously. What To Instagram: The view across the swimming pool from your tent-like sun-canopy, yonder lake and mountains adding some non-subtle context. serenohotels.com

Alila Yangshuo, Guilin, China

Lesser writers would be unable to resist the myriad “sweet” puns this eye-catching hotel affords, given that it used to be an actual sugar mill, but that would be profligate when we have just 100 words and need to mention things like the jaw-dropping, tooth-like mountains in the distance, the lush interiors created by China’s acclaimed Horizontal Space Design, and the Alila’s incredible underground spa, accessed by a huge, spiral stairway which looks like it was made from enough concrete to resurface the M25. Long sentence, that, but grammatically – spot on. What To Instagram: Forget swimming, that industrial-looking pool is for standing in front of while you get a shot of the old sugar mill. alilahotels.com