Zurich Hotels

A string of small boutique hotels has popped up in the last decade, all with a strong focus on design, sleeping comfort, and generous bathrooms—think large bed covered with a fluffy down comforter and soft pillows, looking onto an outsized flat-screen TV that invariably includes video games and a selection of movies, and a white-tiled bathroom with black slate floors and lots of mirrors. On our list this includes the hotels Seefeld, Widder, and Zürichberg.

Another passion taking over the city—in fact the country—is the trend toward so-called "wellness" vacations. Putting a new spin on the 19th- and early-20th-century tradition of the Swiss sanatorium—where convalescent patients from all over the world came to Switzerland to cleanse their lungs with Alpine air—hotels here are, if they have the space, adding pools, saunas, steam rooms, and special areas for such ministrations as hot stone massage, cosmetic treatment, or body wraps.

Smaller venues like the Hotel Seefeld have simply added a cosmetics studio to cover their customers' skin-care needs, while the upmarket houses cover everything from full-body peels, sports massages, and ice wraps (Park Hyatt) all the way through to the comprehensive spa services of the Dolder Grand Hotel, which also includes kotatsu footbaths, an aroma pool, indoor and outdoor whirlpools, and, if you're still not feeling like a whole new you, there's even a clinic complete with a team of doctors for cosmetic surgery.