Best hotels in Cornwall 2023: Luxury stays and family holidays

It’s official: Cornwall is where it’s at. The county is so popular for staycations these days that plenty of places are fully booked from May right through until October.

It wasn’t always like this, though. Not so very long ago (and, having lived most of my life in Kernow, I should know), Cornwall was the undisputed champion in seasonal boom-and-bust – packed to the gunwales for two muggy, traffic-jammed months of summer, and deserted for the other 10.

But things have changed out west. B&Bs have gone boutique. Country pubs and village cafes have gentrified. Celebrity chefs have set up shop. Dawn French has moved here. We’ve got our very own lunar landing station in the shape of the Eden Project.

And these days, Cornwall has some really good hotels. Not just quite good, but seriously good. Tell your-friends-about good. And then wonder whether actually you shouldn’t have told them after all, in case they actually decide to stay there, and then they tell their friends about it, and then the place is completely booked out so you never actually get to stay there again.

But don’t fret about it: Cornwall’s secret is out. Here are of our favourites, which means you get to stay there, and then blame us for telling everyone about them, and ruining everything. Don’t mention it. You’re welcome.

Neighbourhood: St Mawes

Owned by hotelier Olga Polizzi, this is one of Cornwall’s longstanding luxury choices, established back in 1998 in a former 1940s yacht club on the seafront in chi-chi St Mawes. It’s pitched somewhere between an upscale Italian villa and a chic Riviera hotel – rooms are a blend of nautical navy-blues, shipshape stripes, seashell lamps, sculptures and bay windows with delightful water views. Outside, there are terraced gardens filled with palms and subtropical plants – ideal for sundowner cocktails – and on the ground floor, a bistro with crisp white tablecloths and French windows onto the seafront. Bellissima.