Hotels and resorts are like organic creatures: they keep evolving and changing. So what was true four years ago may not be true today.

Because of this, we are continually updating and rewriting our luxury hotel and resort reviews when there’s a new wing added, a big renovation, or a name change.

On the last count, we just posted an all-new review of Viceroy Riviera Maya, formerly Tides Riviera Maya (pictured above). Same parent company, same great service, but an upgrade on some of the amenities to bring it up to the company’s highest level brand.

Upgraded with soft lighting and sleek furniture, the high-ceiling, thatched-roofed accommodations evoke the feel of a romantic jungle retreat adorned in native textiles and warm woods. Ideal for honeymooners, the enormous bathrooms with fine touches of locally made soap are complete with indoor and outdoor showers and his-and-hers sink and closets. The airy bungalows-situated oceanfront, ocean view or nestled in the jungle-feature small private plunge pools and a patio with elegant chaise lounges and handmade crochet hammocks ideal for curling up with a book.

We also recently posted an all-new review of Llao Llao, perhaps the best-known resort in Patagonia.

In Costa Rica, we posted a new review of the best hotel in San Jose proper: Hotel Grano de Oro.

Sometimes a great colonial building hotel doesn’t have the room or the reason to change, however, and they just stay great. I didn’t feel any need to change the reviews in place for Hotel Dario or La Gran Francia in Nicaragua. In a good way, they’re timeless.

Follow the individual country links here for detailed reviews of the best luxury hotels in Mexico, Central America, and South America.

.....#24 on TripAdvisor, behind the Howard Johnson's....

There’s no doubt that TripAdvisor has been a boon for travelers and a great motivator for poor hotels to get their act together. Unfortunately, any service with this much power is just begging to be gamed. Scott McCartney of the Wall Street Journal ran a great piece last week called The Big Flaws in Hotel Rankings.

It’s a pretty balanced article that focuses only on the review system itself, and how different those reviews can be between TripAdvisor and the others. Some alternatives (Expedia, Hotels.com, and Priceline) only let people who have booked the hotel through them write a review. So you can’t be a competitor posing as a past guest and write a negative review. You also can’t pump up your own review from the inside. But they don’t have as many reviews—or readers—as the dominant player.

Still, as Arthur Frommer commented at the end, “Hotels are so dependent on reviews that of course they will generate their own. They would be crazy not to.”

So look at these reviews, but don’t take them as gospel. The person writing it may travel in a whole different style than you, their priorities may be different, and they just plain might not know what they’re talking about. After all, who has stayed in enough hotels in a specific city to tell you which ones are the best?

Our writers have, so you can trust them to not only describe that hotel or resort with an experienced eye, but to compare it to all the others as well. Most of our contributors are experts in the region: guidebook writers, expatriate writers, and freelancers who have returned to the country a dozen times or more for assignments. See a rundown on our Luxury Latin America contributors page.

You don’t have to take our word for it—check the TripAdvisor reviews too if you want—but do so with a skeptical eye. Because are the best hotels in Buenos Aires really places called Glu, Duque, and Mine? We’ll tell you to start with #4 on that list: Algodon Mansion. Then maybe check out #9 (Fierro Hotel), #12 (Four Seasons Buenos Aires), and #13 (Park Hyatt Palacio Duhau).  Follow this link for a list of the rest of the best hotels in Buenos Aires and Argentina.

Luxury auto brands lead the pack, and Coach tops Prada, but Hilton leads the pack when it comes to hotels.

The Luxury Society and Digital Luxury Group just published the results of a research initiative to answer a key question: “Which were the most-searched for luxury brands on search engines in the United States in 2011?”

Automotive brands came out on top, with 6 of the top-10 overall being car brands. BMW was #1, Audi #2, and Lexus #7 overall. (USA’s Cadillac came in at #10.)

The hotel results were a bit odd, probably because it depends on how you define a luxury brand. I would consider most of the following to be routine business hotels rather than luxury hotels, but that’s me. Aspirational consumers probably feel differently. Still, it’s surprising to see this list missing true luxury brands like Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, Banyan Tree, Rosewood, and Aman Resorts. I suppose their U.S. footprints are just too small to make an impact in a country where the majority doesn’t travel internationally—ever.

But hey, Armani showed up at #47, so searches and mindshare are not necessarily related. See the full article here.

6.  Hilton Hotels

15. Sheraton

17. Wyndham

21. Renaissance

24. Westin

26. W Hotels

29. Intercontinental

42. Loew’s

48. Omni Hotels

50. Fairmont

The study was based on 470 million searches. In percentage terms, hotel searches were 13% of the total, behind cars and fashion.

With a big drop in visitors due to a natural disaster, we’re still forging ahead and highlighting a new property in Argentina: LUMA.

They haven’t had it so well this past year in the normally lovely Argentine region around Bariloche. Last June a volcano erupted so forcefully in nearby Chile that the ash closed the San Carlos de Bariloche airport for seven months solid—until just a few weeks ago. But then it shut back down again a few days later when the winds changed direction.

Eventually the nearby volcano will stop its burping and the natural beauty of this area will draw visitors back again, including to the less crowded Villa la Angostura area.  We’ve featured quite a few intimate hotels from this area and are happy to add another worthwhile one for you to consider: LUMA Casa Montaña. This is an Italian style mansion on a lake, with just 8 elegant rooms for guests. With personalized service, a terrific view, and excellent meals, it’s the kind of place you check into and then don’t want to leave. A hands-on owner who understands upscale hospitality helps too.

You feel the passion and the commitment that is poured into this hotel. And when they tell you to make yourself at home and to feel free to explore every nook and cranny of the place as if it were your own, you get the sense that they really mean it.

See our full review of LUMA in Villa La Angostura, Argentina.

The January issue of Condé Nast Traveler has their Gold List, which contains the top hotels in each region based on reader surveys. I don’t tend to trust reader surveys very much since ball0t-stuffing is so rampant. As one experienced hotel PR agency person once said to me, “Most people who are going to take an hour to fill out a magazine survey are the ones who have a vested interest in who wins.”

In regions where there isn’t a whole lot of high-end competition, however, the best hotels—or at least the ones that are the best-known—tend to bubble to the top. This year EVERY hotel cited for South America has already been reviewed by Luxury Latin America. Here’s the full list, with direct links to our detailed, professional reviews.

Alvear Palace – Argentina
Four Seasons Buenos Aires – Argentina
Palacio Duhua Park Hyatt – Argentina
Cavas Wine Lodge – Argentina

Kanantik Reef & Jungle Resort – Belize

Hotel Fasano Sao Paulo – Brazil

Hotel Salto Chico – Chile

Sofitel Santa Clara – Colombia

El Silencio Lodge & Spa – Costa Rica
Four Seasons Costa Rica
Lapa Rios Ecolodge and Wildlife Refuge – Costa Rica
Xandari Resort & Spa – Costa Rica

Hotel Museo Casa Santo Domingo – Guatemala

Hotel Monasterio – Peru
Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel – Peru
Libertador Palacio del Inka – Peru

Four Seasons Carmelo – Uruguay

Sure, there are some great luxury hotels and resorts missing from this list that we could argue are better than some on here, but these are all fine places to stay for sure. Read our reviews to see which ones are right for you on a future vacation.