29 Jan 2026
Words Tim Crooks Informer

what's cool in The INDUSTRY

Copacabana Palace
Rio de Janiero, Brazil

You can’t say Brazil’s sexiest city doesn’t know how to party. Over two million people gravitate to Rio’s iconic Copacabana Beach for New Year’s — called Réveillon — a potpourri of live music, fireworks, samba and cultural rituals that see revellers don white to honour the sea goddess Lemanjá. One of the top places to witness this marvel is the five-star Belmond hotel Copacabana Palace — a beachfront beauty for over a century that has welcomed guests including the late Princess Diana. Here you can feel like royalty yourself, while seeing in the New Year in style at Copacabana Beach’s most regal hotel.

belmond.com/hotels/south-america/brazil/rio-de-janeiro/belmond-copacabana-palace

Aman New York
New York, United States

Arguably the most anticipated ball drop outside the natural world, the Times Square Ball’s iconic descent is watched by a million revellers in person. This quintessential New York New Year's tradition started in 1907, and is now a televised extravaganza featuring live performances and a confetti drop (1,400 kg of the stuff) watched by over 175 million Americans and an estimated one billion worldwide. Aman New York will get you up close and personal to this spectacle of Americana, but it doesn’t come cheap — their least expensive rooms for New Year’s start around AU$15,000 per night. Pay it off next year.

aman.com/hotels/aman-new-york

The Edgewater Resort & Spa
Rarotonga, Cook Islands

Part of Accor’s Sofitel brand since 1992, the Metropole is arguably Vietnam’s grandest hotel. Opened in 1901, the Metropole has hosted some of the most famous people of the 20th century: actors Charlie Chaplin, Michael Caine, Roger Moore and Jane Fonda (while protesting The Vietnam War), authors W. Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward and André Malraux, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, rockstar Mick Jagger, brainiac Stephen Hawking and politicians too many to list (though we’ll namecheck our own Paul Keating who, in 1994, became the first Aussie PM to visit Vietnam). In 2019, the Metropole hosted the second summit in the blossoming bromance between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

edgewater.co.ck