The Royal Palms, a 32-room boutique hotel on Rosemont Avenue in Pembroke, garnered inclusion in the Fodor’s 100 Hotel Awards list as the result of the travel publication’s worldwide search.

The hotel’s delighted owner Nicholas Weare explained the collection of hotels selected is not listed numerically — the properties which are included can boast equal billing with selectees that last year included The Peninsula in Hong Kong, The Jefferson in Washington and The Dorchester in London.

The news was released this morning after an awards ceremony last night, attended by Royal Palms manager Theresa Harney-Zuill.

Mr Weare pointed out that the Fodor’s list is not one that is generated through advertising, and instead is determined through ‘mystery guests’.

Fodor’s, on its website, quote Arabella Bowen, Fodor’s travel editor in chief: “Here at Fodor’s Travel, we know our travellers have high expectations from the moment they check into a hotel — and so do we.

“Our 100 Fodor’s Hotel Award winners go above and beyond these expectations with their winning mix of service, setting, style, and amenities. We’re confident that a night at any of these properties will be a highlight of the trip.”

The Royal Palms has been owned by Susan and Nick Weare since 1991, and has been a guest property since the early 1960s, although the buildings date back more than a century and were formerly private homes.

The hotel itself is known for its elegant and tasteful decoration — guest have breakfast sitting at vintage cedar tables on elegantly upholstered dining room chairs, surrounded by the verdant and manicured gardens in a room that is almost entirely glass on three sides. The guest rooms are each uniquely decorated by owner Susan Weare, who is responsible for the decoration throughout the hotel.

Mr Weare said yesterday: “It is our staff that lead in service delivery. Royal Palms is just one of many small- and medium-sized properties that are often overshadowed by larger hotels but are nonetheless some of Bermuda’s best product offering the quality and style and choice that visitors to Bermuda are often looking for.

“We are not a stand-alone resort, so for there to be a satisfied guest at Royal Palms or indeed most small and medium properties they will almost always be looking at Bermuda as ‘the resort’ and will wish to take advantage of the wide choice of beaches, dining, tours, cultural attractions, shopping etc that we clearly don’t have but the rest of Bermuda does.”

Fodor’s added: “For the fourth year in a row, the experts at Fodor’s Travel selected the world’s best hotels from their in-person evaluations. This year, the team of experts broke a new hotel-visiting record, logging nights at more than 5,000 properties from Anguilla to Vietnam.”

And Fodor’s explained the 100 properties, which span 43 countries, are broken up into eight categories. “From a beach getaway in Brazil to a country retreat in England, there is a property for every type of experience a traveller is looking for.”

They added: “Europe, which has seen a post-recession resurgence in visits within the last year, dominates as the region with the most winners — 29 — for the second year in a row. The United States, with 20 winners, is the country with the most properties on the list and hot spots London and Paris have three winners located in each city.”

The Royal Palms was also voted the number one hotel in the Caribbean based on guest satisfaction by Travel Advisor in ITS 2014 Travellers’ Choice Awards.