WAN is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2012 WAN Hotel of the Year Award is the Oval Partnership-designed Innhouse in Kunming, China. This stunning eco-guesthouse is designed to act as a self-contained community for travellers and offers 17 luxury suites in a series of L-shaped forms, cupped by leafy natural foliage and intimate courtyards.

For our 2012 Hotel of the Year judges, Gregoir Chikaher, Director and Global Hotels & Leisure Sector Leader at Arup, Luis Zapiain, Head of Hospitality at HKS, and Miguel Ruano, Vice President of Design & Engineering at InterContinental Group, the winning submission ticked all of their boxes.

Zapiain explains that The Oval Partnership’s Innhouse project ‘covered all the bases of what we were looking for: innovation, experience for the guest, use of material, the way it sits on the land, and the image it gives for China as an emerging country in the travel market’.