Hotels worth traveling for, bound as a book

I want a beautiful book on the world's most spectacular hotels, the ones that are a destination in themselves, where the building is the reason you go. A real publication, image-rich, the kind you linger over.

Take me to the extraordinary ones: a palace hotel on a Venetian canal, an overwater sanctuary in the Maldives, a cliffside retreat in Santorini, a safari lodge open to the African plain, a ryokan in the Japanese mountains, a grande dame on the Paris skyline, a desert hideaway under a billion stars. Choose eight to ten and make each one irresistible.

For every hotel, give me:

• What makes it singular: the setting, the architecture, the feeling of arriving, the signature spaces.
• Stunning photorealistic imagery: the hero shot of the place in its landscape at the best hour, the pool or the view that sells it, a room you would not want to leave, an intimate detail. Several images each, so pictures carry the book.
• The character of the stay: the light, the materials, the moment you would remember forever.
• A few lines of evocative writing that make me want to book it tonight.

Then a closing verdict: if you could spend one night in a single one of these, which and why.

Design it as an elegant travel book: a stunning cover, generous layout, the images given room, quiet typography, the hotels sequenced to build.

The standard: image-rich, breathtaking, one photographer's eye across the whole book, beautiful enough to sit beside the best travel and design books on the shelf, and true enough that someone could plan the trip.