Whether it’s for business or pleasure, these are the best bases for your next urban adventure.

It is at this time of year that we are confronted with endless unwanted invocations to up our game and be the new you. But what was wrong with the old you, the one who was in action but three weeks ago? Did it really need trading in for a better model? Did it take a new calendar year to give up spirits with lunch/cake for breakfast to rise from the lazy chair and get to the gym? One resolution we can get behind is to travel better, ideally more often. And why not, when there are so many star-scrapingly good new hotels opening all over the world, especially in cities? Aside from everything else, you’ll get a much better Instagram picture on a hotel balcony than you ever will all damp and sweaty at SoulCycle. Here are the best places to reconnect with the old you.

The Line has much to offer: its in-house radio station, for instance, or the library curated by local institution Idle Time Books. But the thing that hits you straight between the eyes is its architecture. It is housed in the former Neo-classical First Church of Christ Scientists, complete with pediment, fluted columns and pews. Designed by New York studio INC Architecture & Design and Sydell Group, the 110-year-old building has been repurposed with some style. The 220 rooms are spacious and make use of original features while importing still more, the tappable parquet floor, for starters. But it isn’t merely the guest rooms that are the draw, the Line also has five food and beverage outlets, by celebrated chefs Mr Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore and Mr Erik Bruner-Yang of DC’s Maketto. And a 24/7 fitness facility in which to sweat it all out in the morning.

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Capella is an interesting architectural confection, being a blend of both traditional Shanghainese and Western styles. The hotel is made up of 22 rows of Shikumen lanes, which are themselves made up of 200 two-storey houses that were built in the 1930s and now form 55 villas. This type of architecture is as rare as hen’s teeth in this expanding metropolis of glass and steel. The hotel’s interiors follow the same heritagey path, too, with the addition of minibars and all the usual five-star tech. It pays to leave the comfort of your room, though, as the hotel hosts chef-maestro Mr Pierre Gagnaire of Sketch fame’s only mainland Chinese outpost, Le Comptoir, which serves breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner on its elegant terrace, from where you can retire to the Auriga Spa for some R & R.

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The hôtel particulier that Grands Boulevards occupies was built on the eve of the Revolution and something of the Sun King remains today. Perhaps it is the endless glass cupboards, the plethora of marble or the canopies that hang louchely over the beds. Whatever it is, we like it. We also like the fact that it is not a museum. All the rooms come with espresso machines and organic coffee, handy amenity kits (who hasn’t forgotten their toothbrush?) and a vanity mirror that turns into a television. What is better is its location, a mere 15 minutes from the Louvre and even less to the Place de la République. The latest hotel from the Experimental Cocktail Group, unsurprisingly it has a top-notch restaurant by Mr Giovanni Passerini, which brings together both France and Italy in one place (yes, that means beef tartare followed by spaghetti vongole, hurray), something not even the Sun King managed.

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Italian jeweller Bulgari has been dispensing coloured stones since 1884, so it knows a thing or two about making a dazzling impression, as has been amply demonstrated since it moved into hotels in 2004. Its latest, which launches alongside Milan, Bali and London, opened last month in Dubai. It is the most expensive hotel in the city by some margin. What is surprising, however, is that, in this city of skyscrapers, it is totally low-rise. Its 101 Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel-designed rooms reach to just four floors, although the hotel occupies 13 hectares. In essence, it feels like you are walking around a village on the Med. Unlike a village on the Med, however, there is a green onyx spa with a traditional hammam and cabana-lined pool, and a beauty salon. Oh, and the restaurant, an Italian number under the tutelage of chef Mr Niko Romito, overlooks the marina. Now if that isn’t a city hotel with all the bases covered, we don’t know what is.

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If confirmation were needed that Wicker Park is the most kinetic neighbourhood in the Windy City, it is found in the opening of The Robey Hall, the second hotel in the group, and a masterpiece of post-industrial cool. Housed in the reassuringly named Hollander Fireproof Warehouse, one of many industrial properties getting a facelift in this part of town, it comprises 20 loft-style guest rooms, which all have a lounge, workspace, bathroom and sleeping areas. The real attraction, though, is the lobby, which, like the rest of the place, is a hymn to modernism written by Parisian design firm Delordinaire, and features a 27ft-long workbench that hums with locals pretending to work during the day and those committed to more alcoholic pursuits come nightfall. If your business is 24/7 pleasure, you can head to either of the two restaurants, which serve modern American and Latino-inspired food respectively, or the rooftop cocktail lounge Up & Up, a name that sums up this resurgent space.

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When the German chef Mr August Kettner moved with his Belgian wife, Ms Barbe Marie Thérèse Dubois, to Soho in 1867, the beau monde smirked. How could the pair desert General George-Eugène Haussmann’s Paris for the sub-fusc backstreets of London? And to set up a grand brasserie, too. The folly of it! In the space of a few years, the couple were laughing because their restaurant had become an institution that drew characters as diverse as Sir Winston Churchill and Mr Oscar Wilde. By the beginning of the 21st century it was a little frayed, a little down on its luck, and a decade later, Soho House & Co has stepped in (its original club backs on to Kettner’s). There are 33 bedrooms with original Georgian floorboards and fireplaces, along with the complimentary cocktail tray, roll-top baths the size of the QE2 and handsome service you now expect from the group. Down below, you will find the listed dining room much as it was, with its vast mirrors and plasterwork like icing on a wedding cake. When guests are finished, they can head to the Piano Bar or the Champagne Bar for a post-prandial sharpener.

The west end of Munich might not be the most prepossessing neighbourhood in the city, but Roomers is certainly the most electric hotel at the moment. Even before you arrive, the porte-cochere seems to shine out like Gatsby’s light on the dock, its 2,000 lightbulbs and giant picture windows a sign that you have arrived somewhere special. Amsterdam-based design studio Concrete has done the interiors, including a cosy lobby-cum-lounge with a curved central bar that doubles as a check-in desk, and all the spacious 281 rooms. The guest rooms are all in the mid-century style and many have deep-soak baths along with the standard-issue showers. It is a place to wallow in. Before the wallowing starts, however, we reckon it is worth swinging by the Japanese-style Izakaya restaurant for its hybrid Japanese and South American food, in particular the king crab with karashi-su miso.

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For more travel recommendations, go to MR PORTER’s Style Council