Switzerland has more five-star hotels per capita than almost anywhere in the world. It has also, frankly, more five-star hotels that feel exactly like every other five-star hotel in the world, the same marble lobbies, the same vague modern art, the same generic spa menu. Finding the ones that are genuinely distinct takes time. Here are five I trust completely.

1. Bürgenstock Resort, Lake Lucerne

The Bürgenstock sits on a cliff 500 metres above Lake Lucerne and has been there in various forms since 1873. The current resort, rebuilt after a decade of renovation and reopened in 2017, is the most ambitious hotel project Switzerland has undertaken in a generation, a clifftop village of five buildings connected by tunnels and funicular, with an Alpine Spa tunnelled directly into the rock.

What makes it extraordinary is scale without grandeur. The pool seems to float over the lake. The spa is genuinely dark and quiet in a way urban spas cannot replicate. Guests often arrive for two nights and quietly extend.

2. The Chedi Andermatt

Andermatt was a forgotten garrison town until a Qatari developer arrived with ambitions and an architect (Jean-Michel Gathy, who designed Amanjiwo). The Chedi, opened in 2013, brought Asian minimalism to the Alps and made it work. The long pool under timber and stone, the Japanese restaurant, the library bar with its single malt list, all of it has a calm authority you rarely find.

The surrounding Andermatt Swiss Alps resort continues to develop around it, which will eventually feel crowded. Go now, while the town still feels like a discovery.

3. Badrutt's Palace, St. Moritz

The Palace is not subtle. It is the original grand hotel of the Alps, opened 1896, still family-owned, still the address in St. Moritz. John Badrutt essentially invented ski tourism, and his palace remains the centrepiece of a resort that invented winter leisure.

I include it not because it is the most interesting hotel on this list, it is the most traditional, but because there is a particular experience of Swiss Alpine luxury that it alone represents in its pure form. If you want to understand what this whole world is built on, a night at Badrutt's is the answer.

4. Villa Honegg, Ennetbürgen

Small (23 rooms), Art Deco, impossible view. The infinity pool at Villa Honegg with Lake Lucerne below became famous on Instagram before the hotel had any reason to be on Instagram. The photograph that circulates widely does not lie, it is genuinely that pool, genuinely that view. But the hotel beneath the photograph is also genuinely good: quiet, well-run, and intelligent about what it offers.

Dinner is excellent. The wine list punches above its weight. Book the Attic Suite if you can.

5. Waldhaus Flims, Graubünden

The Waldhaus is the dark horse on this list, a grand 19th-century forest hotel in Flims that most international visitors overlook in favour of St. Moritz or Verbier. It has been in the same family for four generations and shows it in the best possible way: nothing is performed for show, nothing is replaced before it has truly earned replacement, and the staff have the relaxed confidence of people who know their house.

The spa, the forest walks directly from the door, the dining room with its original ceiling, all of it has a character that no amount of renovation budget can manufacture.

All five of these properties feature in Alpina's Swiss Wellness Grand Tour. If you would like to stay at any of them, or build a custom itinerary around two or three, the enquiry form is the right place to start.