The latter can pass in a flurry, but days in a resort gently bob like an inflatable alligator around a lazy river as the pool waits for its Slim Aarons moment – whether that pool is the one overlooking the river bed at Sabi Sands’s AndBeyond Tengile River Lodge or the beachside one fringed by palm trees at The Brando in French Polynesia. And while a hotel can create its own world almost anywhere, for a resort, location is everything: a criterion that almost everyone in our awards scored well on.