A world of travel for 2010

There's never been a better time to stay in the UK, with a flurry of hotels and private houses opening this year including the

Next year Coworth Park Country House Hotel & Spa will open in the summer near Ascot, with Fox Linton-designed interiors with smoked oak floors, cashmere and mohair textiles and a biomass boiler fuelled by burning willow (www.dorchestercollection.com).

Also in Surrey, Brooklands Hotel — sister to Bovey Castle — should be a stunning property when it opens on 1 March. It's less a themed hotel for petrolheads, more a luxurious venue. With a nod to the Art Deco era of the motor racing circuit's heyday, the façade will be four storeys of glass with the original route of the race track running through the lobby marked out with riven quartz and honed granite. There will be outdoor hut tubs overlooking the adjacent Mercedes-Benz racetrack. But it's not all high-tech style. The spa will have a distinctly new-agey sounding meditation room with waterbed(www.brooklandshotelsurrey.com).

Cornwall can almost compete with London for new hotel openings and this looks set to continue: the Cornwall Hotel, Spa & Estate opens in February in Tregorrick, near the Eden Project, in a restored 19th-century manor house with a spa with a spectacular chemical-free infinity-edged pool and retractable glass walls opening up onto the sub-tropical walled garden. There will be state-of-the-art, eco-chic luxury homes available to buy (£145 per night for a double room, www.thecornwall.com).

In London, the W Leicester Square premieres in the summer with a white stucco and filigree exterior which will be lit up like a Christmas tree by night as different colour lights are projected on to it (£316, www.whotels.com). On Battersea's "Left Bank", the five-star Hotel Rafayel opened at the weekend with environmentally sound measures including recycling rainwater from the roof, banning plastic bottles, electronic newspapers — even the beds are recycled (£145, www.hotelrafayel.com).

Overseas, three designer-led hotels are set to open in Dubai, despite the emirate's much publicised financial troubles: Tiger Woods Dubai, featuring the Al Ruwaya golf course designed by the equally troubled world number one golfer, is Lebanese designer Elie Saab's first boutique hotel. It also features a signature restaurant by three-Michelin-starred chef Guy Savoy.

The world's first Armani Hotel is set to open in eight floors of what will be the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai, in January, with Armani Casa interiors. A lavish Palazzo Versace Hotel is also due to open on Dubai Creek next year with Arabian-fusion architecture, its own marina and lushly landscaped gardens.(www.dubaitravelmarket.co.uk).

Jumby Bay, Antigua's exclusive 300-acre private island resort, has just reopened this month after an 18-month, $28 million refurbishment with a new Sense spa befitting such luxury (previously only in-room treatments were offered), 28 new suites and a couple of new private homes worth a cool $22 million apiece (www.jumbybayresort.com).

Nicaragua is set to be the next big Latin American destination. Tourism has been increasing steadily in the past few years, with new hotels including the boutique Contempo, which opened in the summer with marble bathrooms and canopy beds.

The all-suite Orquidea del Sur hotel on Yankee Beach followed in September, with an infinity pool and spa, while the remote Corn Islands, off the coast of Nicaragua, offer indulgent isolation (www.tailormadeexplore.co.uk). Not to mention a five-star hotel in Managua from Spanish chain Barcelo, which is also rolling out more hotels in neighbouring Costa Rica next year.

Peru is also set to increase in popularity with a host of new hotels and cultural attractions. In Lima, the New Museo Larco opens next September, Orient Express has started work on Palacio Nazarenas, a luxury hotel and spa in a former convent in Cuzco, while in October Casa Andina opens a new hotel in Chincha, between Paracas on the coast and Nazca, home of the intriguing Nazca Lines (www.peru.info).