Where are the world’s most expensive hotel suites? On this luxury travel blog I’m usually discussing the scene in Latin America, but since that whole region is a great value, the prices there don’t make the cut.

The Wall Street Journal recently did a big feature story on the Ty Warner Penthouse at the Four Seasons New York City. If you want to book this lavish suite with panoramic Manhattan views, you’d better be loaded. It’ll cost you $35,000 a night. Don’t even think about asking for a discount and forget any party plans: because of all the expensive furnishings, no more than 10 people are allowed in at one time. Read the whole article to see all the expensive features that go into this price. But for a start, there’s a $120,000 chandelier, Thai silk with gold threads on the canopy bed, and an energy-hogging 850 light bulbs.

This is the most expensive suite in the Americas outside Las Vegas. Some there go for an even higher rate, but are frequently given away free to high-rolling whales with an account of half a million or more. Here are some of the other expensive suites from around the world listed in the article:

Hugh Hefner Sky Villa/Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas – Price per night: $40,000

Bridge Suite/Atlantis, Paradise Island in the Bahamas – Price per night: $25,000

Royal Auite/Burj Al Arab in Dubai – Price per night: $19,000

The Ritz-Carlton Suite/Ritz-Carlton, Moscow – Price per night: $13,900

How does Latin America compare? Well the only suite I can find in our reviews that tops $10,000 per  night is really a house: the four-bedroom Villa Cortez at the One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos, Mexico. It has a top rack rate of $12,000, but that includes a private staff of 12 (with two chefs), the huge private infinity pool pictured below, a big cinema room, a full office, and a prime spot on the beach.

The best suite at the Four Seasons Costa Rica goes for close to $10,000 in high season, but is also a villa with multiple bedrooms.

The top suite is under 5 grand at Capella Pedregal in Los Cabos, Mandarin Oriental Riviera Maya, Ritz-Carlton Santiago, and the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge.

For more information on luxury travel and hotels outside of Latin America, see JustLuxe.com

Travel & Leisure has published the results of its annual readers’ poll in the current hotels issue. All ten of their top hotels in Mexico have been reviewed in detail in Luxury Latin America. We tend to think our correspondents are better informed than most magazine readers since our people have actually been in all of the top hotels in a given area, not just one or two. We tend to use guidebook writers and known experts in the country. Nevertheless, we’re glad to see a 10 for 10 meeting of the minds this time around.

Here are the Mexico hotels and resorts that scored as the best in their poll, with a link to our experts’ detailed reviews.

Esperanza Resort – Cabo San Lucas (pictured above)
Rosewood Mayakoba – Riviera Maya
La Casa que Canta – Zihuatanejo
Hotel Villa Rolandi – Isla Mujeres
Ritz-Carlton Cancun
Four Seasons Punta Mita – north of Puerto Vallarta
Four Seasons Mexico D.F. – Mexico City
Las Ventanas al Paraiso – Los Cabos
One&Only Palmilla – Los Cabos
Tides Zihuatanejo

See our full coverage of the best luxury hotels in Mexico.

Related post: T&L’s best hotels in Central and South America

The annual Travel & Leisure hotel issue is out now, with lots of info on hotel trends and where we’re headed. As usual, the have a top-10 list of hotels for each region, plus some picks for the most notable new hotel openings of the year. I always think these readers’ lists are pretty screwy since only so many people are willing to wade through that long survey—mostly people with plenty of time on their hands instead of a business to run. Plus it’s easy to ballot stuff. But still, since we have reviews of 10 out of the 10, I’m not going to quibble about who should and shouldn’t be on here. These are their top 10 for Central and South America.

Four Seasons Resort Carmelo – Uruguay
Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt – Argentina (pictured above)
Explora Patagonia – Chile
Alvear Palace Hotel – Argentina
Victoria House – Belize
Hotel Monasterio – Peru
Four Seasons Buenos Aires – Argentina
Hotel Oro Verde Guayaquil – Ecuador
Blancaneaux Lodge – Belize
Turtle Inn – Belize

I have a feeling this list will look very different two years from now, with many superior upstart resorts replacing some of the old guard coasting on name recognition. We shall see…

Ask a group of luxury leisure travelers or entrepreneurs what there biggest pet peeve is with luxury hotels and a majority will spit out one thing without having to think about it: getting charged for wireless Internet access. Yet like airlines that know they’re pissing off their customers with fuel surcharges and baggage fees, the big luxury chains keep at it anyway because they’re addicted to the additional revenue. Corporate travelers pay it without blinking because it’s not their money—the company is covering it. So in hotels with lots of business travelers, the hotel chains figure the aggravation to some is less painful than giving up the revenue from others.

HotelChatter just put out its annual hotel Wi-fi report and it’s still uglier than one would expect at the high end chains. Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, and Ritz-Carlton are still charging a fee universally. In some of the markets we cover, that would seem to put them at a clear disadvantage. While Four Seasons Mexico City and the Starwood chain St. Regis hit up every customer for Internet access, Las Alcobas , Habita, and Condesa df do not. The Ritz-Carlton Santiago makes you pay extra to check your e-mail. The Aubrey does not.

And if lovely Casitas del Colca in Peru can include Internet access in the rates, even though they rely on a satellite signal, surely those hooked into city cables can manage. It’s included in the rates at some of the best hotels in Latin America, like Banyan Tree Mayakoba in Mexico, Turtle Inn Belize, Faena Hotel + Universe in Argentina, and Cliffs Preserve in Chile. Even Royal Palm Hotel on the Galapagos Islands includes it in the rates.

As these examples show, the hotels in Latin America are way ahead of the pack in treating Internet access the way it should be treated—like hot water. It’s an essential part of our life now, for better or worse, so treating Wi-fi as some kind of special amenity is just ridiculous. Installing and maintaining a system is a cost of doing business, the same as supplying air conditioning or new flat-screen TVs. If Red Roof Inn and La Quinta can manage to make it work cost-wise, surely the Four Seasons can.

It’s time for them to free the signal and stop acting like it’s 1999. If you agree, look beyond the international chains and try an independent or domestic chain hotel. As the examples above show, they’re more likely to be run by service-oriented managers rather than hamstrung drones answering to bean counters a continent away.

Banyan Tree Mayakoba

When luxury hotels do battle trying to one-up each other, the guests reap the benefits. Some amenities come and go—remember when suites had to have a fax machine? Others become so popular that they get folded into the requirements for AAA 5-diamond awards, like having three phones in the room or a shower stall separate from the bathtub.

According to this story in the Wall Street Journal, the real competition is taking place in the bathrooms. One new development has already popped up in the new St. Regis in Mexico City: a TV embedded in the bathroom mirror. It sounds kind of silly now, but maybe later we’ll be going, “Remember when you couldn’t watch the news while you shaved?”

The article says the Four Seasons group is making these embedded TVs and digital clocks standard in all new renovations and new hotels. You can expect a hotel owned by Kohler to set the tone on this, so they’re not holding back.

The American Club, a resort hotel in Kohler, Wis., owned and operated by kitchen and bathroom furnishings maker Kohler Co., is scheduled to complete the first phase of room renovations May 1. The renovations include revamped showers with multiple showerheads, including an overhead “rain” shower, two body sprays attached to the wall and a hand spray. Some higher-priced rooms include a “flipside handshower” that changes the spray pattern with a flip of the shower head, and one room features a large soaking tub for two people with a tiny-bubble massaging feature and chromatherapy.

You can see my favorite bathroom in this video tour of Casitas del Colca in Peru. Heated floors, big tub, indoor shower and outdoor shower. It barely edges out my second favorite one: the Banyan Tree Mayakoba, pictured at the top.

What gets you jazzed up in new hotel bathroom developments? What aspect is the most important to have?