Is Amangiri America’s Most Extraordinary Hotel?

Amangiri sits in Canyon Point, Utah, a few miles outside the town of Page and within reach of some of the most significant landscapes in the American Southwest. Lake Powell, Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and the Navajo Nation are all within an hour’s drive.

The resort itself covers 600 acres of high desert at an elevation of around 3,700 feet, with 34 suites arranged around a central pavilion that was designed to work with the existing rock formations rather than impose on them.

The architecture, by the firm Marwan Al-Sayed with Wendell Burnette and Rick Joy, has been discussed in design publications since the hotel opened. Rightly so.

The concrete and stone palette pulls from the surrounding canyon walls, the rooflines follow the horizon, and the central pool, which is the image most people have seen before they arrive, looks precisely as good in person as it does in photographs.

All 34 suites have private outdoor spaces and canyon views. The entry-level Terrain rooms are generous by any normal measure, around 1,100 square feet, with soaking tubs positioned to face the desert and outdoor showers that feel considerably less exposed once you remember there is nothing out there to expose yourself to.

The Mesa suites add private pools. The Canyon suites go further still, with plunge pools and outdoor daybeds positioned at angles that were clearly chosen based on where the light hits at specific times of day.

The short answer is less than you think and more than you expect.

Amangiri’s activities programme is built around the landscape. Guided hikes into slot canyons that require a specialist to navigate safely. A private Navajo guide through Monument Valley at sunrise, one of the most singular experiences available anywhere in the American West.

Helicopter flights over Lake Powell that take around 20 minutes and permanently rearrange your sense of the region’s scale. Stargazing on the resort’s private platform, in skies that rank among the darkest in North America. Hot air balloon flights over the canyon country at dawn.

The spa, called Aman Spa, is one of the better resort spa facilities in the country, with a circuit that includes flotation pools, steam rooms, and treatment rooms designed around the same spatial logic as the rest of the property. A morning there, before the day heats up, is one of the better uses of time the resort offers.

It is also entirely acceptable to do very little. The pool. The terrace. A book. The light changing across the canyon walls through the afternoon.

Amangiri is part of Aman Resorts, the group founded by Indonesian-born hotelier Adrian Zecha in 1988 with the opening of Amanpuri in Phuket.

Zecha’s founding logic has remained consistent across every property the group has built since: a small number of suites, a remote or privileged location, a staff-to-guest ratio that makes conventional hotel service look perfunctory, and an architecture that responds to its setting rather than ignoring it.

Aman now operates around 35 properties worldwide, each built on the same framework, and has accumulated a following of repeat guests, known informally as Aman junkies, who plan their travel almost entirely around the group’s portfolio.

Amangiri opened in 2009 and was one of the group’s first significant moves into the American market. The name translates from Sanskrit as peaceful mountain, which is either on the nose or exactly right depending on your tolerance for resort poetry.

The site in Canyon Point was chosen for its position within reach of the Colourado Plateau’s most significant landscapes while remaining isolated, and the three-architect team of Marwan Al-Sayed, Wendell Burnette, and Rick Joy spent considerable time ensuring the built structure worked with the existing rock formations before a foundation was laid.

The result is a building that appears, from certain angles, to have grown out of the canyon floor rather than been placed on top of it.

Page, Utah is not a major hub, which is half the point. The closest airports with regular service are Las Vegas (around four hours by car) and Phoenix (around four and a half hours). Both cities have direct flights from most major US airports. The drive from Las Vegas through the Arizona Strip and across the Colourado River at the Glen Canyon Bridge is one of the better approaches to any hotel in the country. Amangiri also operates charter flights directly onto the Page Municipal Airport for guests who prefer not to drive.

The honest answer is that the category is almost impossible to settle. The United States has extraordinary hotels of very different kinds: The Carlyle in New York for a certain idea of urban refinement, Little Palm Island for tropical seclusion, The Lodge at Sea Island for a particular vision of Southern hospitality. Amangiri is not competing with any of them.

What it does, it does better than anywhere else in the country. It takes one of the most spectacular landscapes on the planet and creates a structure that makes you feel you are inside it rather than looking at it through a window.

That is a very specific achievement, and it is harder than it looks.

Whether that makes it the most extraordinary hotel in America depends on what you are looking for. If you want a hotel that changes how you think about where you are, Amangiri is a strong argument.

Do Not Disturb builds itineraries across the American Southwest, including multi-night stays at Amangiri combined with Monument Valley, Zion, and the wider canyon country. Get in touch to start planning.