Downtown Denver Hotel Takes Home Hotel of the Year Award

The Hotel of the Year is in Denver, according to a new ranking.

On April 9, Esquire announced that the Populus in downtown Denver is the Hotel of the Year for 2025 in the magazine’s annual Best New Hotels in the World list.

It’s been a big week for the Populus, which was also honored in the Mayor’s Design Awards on April 9, taking home two prizes in one day. (It also won Best New Building in our Best of Denver 2025, released in late March.)

According to Esquire, the magazine’s team traveled thousands of miles around the globe to find the 42 hotels that made the cut for 2025. The Populus stood out from the pack in part due to the hotel’s sustainability goals.

The hotel, which opened in the fall of 2024, was designed by architects at Studio Gang to mimic the bark of an Aspen tree. The Populus bills itself as “carbon negative,” as the team behind the hotel planted trees in Colorado to offset the carbon generated by construction. The hotel has a myriad of other sustainability initiatives like composting, paperless check-in and check-out, and plenty of local and recycled materials used throughout the space.

“Traditionally, hotels are pretty bad for the environment, but every gesture at this curvy, revolutionary property has been created with the idea of honoring nature,” Jeff Gordinier wrote for Esquire. “That spirit happens to lead to a beautiful and restorative experience.”

The Populus has two restaurants, Pasque and Stellar Jay, in addition to a ground-floor coffee shop. The hotel is designed with both luxury and the environment in mind; rooms start at $299 per night.

If Esquire is right, the price may be worth it.

“We can’t guarantee that spending the night in a tree-hugging hotel will help you sleep, but it certainly won’t hurt,” Gordinier concluded. “Populus represents two things at once: a casually luxurious place to stay and a positive step forward.”

Denver also recognized that positive step forward during the Mayor’s Design Awards, which evaluate projects in the city for excellence in architecture, urban design and placemaking.

This year, the Populus took home the top award in the Innovation category, dedicated to projects that “push the envelope on sustainability, wellness and/or overall design quality.”

The Populus is also popular among Denver residents, who voted to give the hotel the People’s Choice Award as part of the Mayor's Design Awards ceremony.