Lucknam Park was named Winner of Best UK Hotel of the Year at the 2025 Travelling for Business Awards, confirming the Wiltshire estate as the definitive English country-house experience.
The arrival alone justifies the title: a mile-long avenue of beeches and limes drawing guests towards a Palladian mansion that has stood since 1720, set in 500 acres of listed parkland six miles from
Bath. What follows sustains the promise. Individually designed rooms and suites layer antiques and fine fabrics over deep comfort; Michelin-starred dining at Restaurant Hywel Jones has held its star for the better part of two decades, an almost unheard-of consistency; and the award-winning spa, equestrian centre, cookery school and well-being house turn a stay into a small world of its own.
What voters rewarded is how effortlessly the grandeur wears. Lucknam Park delivers five-red-star polish without a whisper of stuffiness - staff greet returning guests like old friends, dogs are welcomed with enthusiasm, and the estate absorbs everything from board-level retreats to milestone celebrations with the same unflustered grace. For the entrepreneurs and senior leaders of this readership, it has become the answer to a specific question: where can a team think clearly, dine memorably and sleep properly, an easy reach from the M4 corridor and
Bath's original wellness heritage?
The wider industry has noticed too. Accor selected Lucknam Park as the first flagship of its new
Emblems Collection - global recognition that
this corner of Wiltshire represents the international gold standard of independent luxury.
The 2025 category saw Lucknam Park take the title ahead of Finalists Gleneagles and Heckfield Place - a shortlist of Britain's most admired estates, making the victory sweeter still.
The estate rewards working stays in particular. Exclusive-use gatherings take over the house entirely; the cookery school turns team-building into something genuinely useful; and the well-being house adds guided restoration to the agenda - all orchestrated by staff practised at making a board retreat feel like a house party. Bristol and Heathrow sit within practical reach, yet the avenue's first hundred yards erase any sense of the working world.
As the Travelling for Business Awards look towards 2026, Lucknam Park sets the benchmark for British hospitality: three centuries of house, a mile of trees, and a welcome that explains, better than any brochure, why the English country house remains the world's most copied hotel idea.
