Five years ago, I decided that it was time that hotel properties and the managers who work tirelessly to deliver an impeccable guest experience deserved their own awards. After all, watching the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Emmy’s are great on television, so why not ‘The Mogels’?

Each year, my travels take me to a number of different properties. Since the onset of these awards, I’ve visited hundreds of different hotels and resorts across the world. Through calendar year 2019, with the commitment to time-intensive asset management responsibilities through my consulting practice, I clocked only 23 unique stays from which I’ve assembled this year’s award recipients. Even with this decrease in actual properties visited in comparison to the previous four years, there were ample choices for award winners.

Even with my asset manager role, another key reason for the year-over-year decrease in hotels visited is that I’ve started going on cruises. And therein lies a vital lesson unto itself that can have dire consequences for your property if you aren’t careful. Hotel stays are a young person’s game. Or, in my case, as my wife and I reach our septuagenarian peaks, while we will have a strong desire to see the world and experience its innumerous wonders, our zest for hopping about from planes and trains to automobiles is rapidly waning.

Thus, cruises represent a more convenient and less jarring means by which to see multiple destinations. Significantly for you, if your primary feeder demographic is of the elderly variety, you must take immediate actions to promote and endear your property to the next generation. If you don’t, then you may well encounter a sizeable ‘die off’ of base support as your current customers slowly switch over to the cruise industry.

Anyway, back to the awards! Know that the following hotels are not presented for backscratching purposes; they offer exemplary lessons for you all which can be applied to your own little slice of hospitality. One other short note, each year ‘The Mogels’ highlight different features worthy of recognition. Thus, award categories vary and everything is all in good fun.

Best New Hotel: Having worked at the original Montréal Four Seasons (at the time named Le Quatre Saisons) some 30 or more years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by the new Four Seasons Hotel Montreal. The property follows the current trend of combining residences as well as traditional hotel rooms. Room design is exceptionally efficient with all of the latest electronic gadgets. MARCUS Restaurant with its multiple bars on the lobby floor (located one above the street entrance) reflects the current trend towards informal dining. Service, housekeeping and valet were what you would expect from Four Seasons – unequivocally perfect. One disadvantage if traveling with your significant other is that an upscale department store directly links the lobby and they deliver purchases straight to the hotel!

Best Small Hotel: Properties with fewer rooms can learn much from Stockholm’s Bank Hotel. Every guestroom is a jewel box of efficiency – quiet and comfortable yet modern and distinctive with unique original art. There is even a book provided that outlines all of the art within the property! The ground floor, street-facing bar is well stocked, as is the rooftop equivalent. Expeditious room service, a ‘one button’ champagne request built into the home screen of the television, staff that seem to know your name instantly, housekeeping with turndown gifts and funky in-room printed materials complete the picture.

Best Hotel Restaurant: The Garden Restaurant in Dublin’s Merrion Hotel would be considered a quintessential example of modern hotel dining – comfortable yet still entirely upscale. But turn right instead of left off the lobby and you’ll enter Patrick Guilbaud. For those readers who have never been to a two-star Michelin restaurant, the first step is to ignore the prices. It’s 40 euros for a glass of wine and you’ll need two or three to get through the two-plus hour dinner. If you have a recent lottery winning safely tucked in your 401K, you can opt for a selection of DRCs in the ten-thousand-a-bottle range, with the sommelier assuring me that they can met most vintage year requests. No words can do justice to the menu, food creativity, taste profile, service or ambiance. Moreover, on a midweek night, Chef Guilbaud greeted every guest in their own language.

Best Bar: By anyone’s guesstimate there are probably more bars per capita in Ireland than any other destination on earth. Thus, it was no surprise that the winner in the category of best bar would come from that country. However, the bar at Adare Manor would be a standout in any location. To begin with, the location and décor is the basement of a castle with the bar carved into a stone grotto. Dark lighting and a fireplace large enough to roast a small cow complete the picture. A drink menu with hundreds of whiskey selections is curated by an incredibly knowledgeable master while the cocktails are unusual and exceptionally tasty. Fortunate for me, this bar is not nearby to my condo in Toronto as I would fast become a regular.

Best Restaurant Relaunch: Position a resort on top of a mountain with soaring views of the water some 2,000 feet below and you have a built-in advantage for any property. The Villa Eyrie Resort located near Victoria, British Columbia levered this location to reinvent Alpina Restaurant, its signature dining outlet. With a modern look, the resort’s German-trained executive chef has created a masterful Alps-meets-Pacific-Northwest menu that would surpass gourmet standards anywhere on the globe. The regional wine list features perhaps the world’s largest selection of British Columbian wines, providing exceptional value and taste profiles that compare favorably with US West Coast standard bearers.

Best New Hotel Lobby: In keeping the de rigueur of embracing the local community, the Hyatt Regency Savannah provides a clear-cut example of how a lobby can be repurposed to meet this standard, and all within any other brand toolkit. The dramatic ‘hollowed out’ lobby of many Hyatt properties built in the 1970s and 1980s was a recognized architectural touchstone. In Savannah, however, this property reimagined its lobby with an open restaurant featuring a wood-fired pizza oven, massive glass windows facing out to the river (previously blocked by meeting rooms), dramatic sculptures and plenty of welcoming seating throughout. The effect is more of an expansive living room than that of a traditional hotel lobby.

Property of the Year: Imagine a hotel that is so perfect you need to drive more than an hour from a microscopic airport or three-plus hours from an international one, and it is worth every minute. Ashford Castle in County Mayo, Ireland ticks off every box. Apart from the flawless guestrooms, multiple dining options, superbly personalized service, a to-die-for spa and immaculately massive grounds, they have assembled a compendium of experiences for every age group. Quite literally, you can throw your car keys away for a week or more and never do the same activity twice. In reinventing the concept of the destination hotel, and doing it with such grace, humility and pure hospitality, Ashford Castle is my unanimous selection for this prestigious award.