HOSHINOYA Nara Prison named to National Geographic's new hotel list and wins an EDIDA 2027 design award

Hoshino Resorts said October 13 that HOSHINOYA Nara Prison, its hotel built inside the former Nara Prison, has been named to National Geographic's Best New Hotels List 2026 -- the inaugural edition of the magazine's Best of the World Collection -- and, in a separate release the same day, that the property has won the Japanese Social Design Project award at the ELLE DECO International Design Awards (EDIDA) 2027.

National Geographic's list, according to Hoshino Resorts, recognises properties for "truly unforgettable guest experiences," and the company said the Nara property's selection was credited to its design, its architectural heritage and "a thoughtful conversion of the former landmark facility," along with the on-site Nara Prison Museum.

The EDIDA judges, Hoshino Resorts said, praised the hotel for "balancing architectural preservation with luxury hospitality" and credited the project with contributing to sustainable cultural preservation of the building, which is designated a National Important Cultural Property.

HOSHINOYA Nara Prison opened June 25, 2026, with 48 rooms inside the Meiji-era former prison, which Hoshino Resorts says has 112 years of history. The operator frames the project as creating a "cycle of heritage," in which tourism revenue helps fund the preservation of the site it occupies.

Two independent juries -- a travel magazine building a new annual list, and a design magazine's long-running international award -- recognising the same property on the same day gives the hotel's debut a notable amount of outside validation only four months after it opened. It is also a specifically Kansai story: a heritage conversion on this scale, inside a National Important Cultural Property, is the kind of attraction a region uses to pull travellers beyond its best-known stops -- and the kind of recognition a hotel group leans on while it is still building awareness for a new property.