A Sedona luxury hotel that gives vacationers a front row seat to nature was declared one of the five hotels in the world with the best architecture.
Ambiente, A Landscape Hotel was among the hotels selected by the Michelin Guide as a nominee for its Michelin Architecture and Design Award.
The family-owned Sedona hotel was nominated along with Desert Rock Resort in Saudi Arabia, The Maybourne Riviera in France, Mandarin Oriental Qianmen in China and The Lindis in New Zealand.
The winner will be selected on Sept. 18.
"We’re thrilled to be in the running," Jennifer May, co-owner of Ambiente's developer and operator Two Sister Bosses, told The Arizona Republic. "Just to be in line with those properties is a feather in our cap. We’re amazed and thankful."
Ambiente is no stranger to high accolades from the Michelin Guide. It was among the first Arizona properties included in the guide, receiving a Two Key designation.
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The atriums at Ambiente resort in Sedona are designed to blend in with the surrounding natural landscape.
Why Michelin loves Ambiente in Sedona
The Michelin Guide praised Ambiente, designed to blend in with the natural world, for its "defiantly contemporary" aesthetic in a region where most hotels' designs use colors and textures inspired by the desert surroundings.
But it wasn't just the aesthetic itself that Michelin commended, also complimenting the hotel for how it was "carefully tailored to the landscape and traditions of its setting."
Blending the hotel in with the landscape was important to creating an environment where guests can feel a reconnection with their partners and with nature, May said.
"They work in concrete jungles and work in high rise buildings, man-built-out environments," May said. "But there’s something healing about Sedona. We wanted to bring the outdoors into the room."
How Ambiente was developed
The story of Ambiente's architecture and design began with May's family's work in developing Mariposa Latin Inspired Grill, a fine dining restaurant on the edge of Sedona's red rock landscape.
Mariposa is famous in part for its panoramic views of the surrounding buttes. It's one of six Sedona restaurants operated by chef Lisa Dahl, whose Dahl & Di Luca Ristorante Italiano was named one of Tripadvisor's best restaurants of 2024.
May and her family's dentist, George Moore, lived on the land where Ambiente is now. May recalled that he told her father, developer and Army veteran Michael Stevenson, of his vision of a hotel along the red rocks on his land. Moore asked if Stevenson would be interested in buying the land to build a hotel; he believed in him because he thought he did a good job with the design of Mariposa.
Stevenson's development company purchased the land for $2.5 million in 2015, documents from the Coconino County Assessor's Office showed.
Every room at Ambiente has a view
An early design of the hotel envisioned a standard big-box hotel building along the land. But May said when she and her family walked along the property's landscape of pinion pines and red rocks, they realized only about half the rooms of a theoretical big-box building would have an outstanding view of the landscape.
Their goal was for every single room at Ambiente to have an outstanding view.
So they came up with the idea of breaking up the rooms into separate, cube-shaped units called atriums, putting them on stilts to preserve the landscape and angling them toward the view while also preserving guest privacy.
Ambiente has 40 atriums, each one made from glass and steel. As the hotel was developed and designed, it was decided that each atrium would include a rooftop patio with a day bed and fire pit.
The patios are popular with guests for sunrise and sunset viewing and stargazing, May said.
"When you come in to stay in an atrium, it was designed to be a dark and moody environment, to feel like you were tucked in to your own nature theater and you’re watching nature outside," she said. "The sunsets and the sunrises and the lightning crashing aross the red rocks during the monsoons. These are the things we love about Sedona."
Beyond the landscape hotel experience, what keeps guests coming back for repeat visits is the high level of service from the hotel's staff, who aim to treat every guest like rock stars regardless of who they are, May said.
"Anybody can build a beautiful property. You can walk in and feel like everything is put together nicely," she said. "But ... having the staff be friendly and warm to them is what makes people come back to the property."
