Hotel La Compañía Enters the Top 5 in Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Awards

Hotel La Compañía Casco Antiguo has entered the Top 5 best city hotels in Central and South America in Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Awards, earning the No. 5 position with a score of 97.08. The recognition comes from one of the travel industry’s longest-running reader-voted awards. In 2026, more than 207,000 Travel + Leisure readers participated in the World’s Best Awards survey, casting approximately 661,000 votes across hotels, destinations, airlines, cruise lines, and other travel experiences around the world.

For Hotel La Compañía, the result places a distinctly Panamanian property alongside some of the most established names in Latin American hospitality. The regional ranking includes hotels in Panama City, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Cusco, Bogotá, Santiago, Quito, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires. Hotel La Compañía appears ahead of properties including W Bogotá, The Singular Santiago, Four Seasons Hotel Bogotá Casa Medina, Rosewood São Paulo, and Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Buenos Aires.

The recognition also puts Casco Antiguo in an unusual position. Two Panama City properties appear within the regional top five, reinforcing the historic district’s growing presence within luxury travel in Latin America. At Hotel La Compañía, that connection to place begins with the building itself. The property occupies a historic site whose story reaches back to 1688, with its Spanish, French, and American wings reflecting different periods of Panama’s history. Original masonry, archaeological remains, courtyards, arches, and restored structures remain visible throughout the hotel, allowing the past to stay present without defining the experience entirely.

The hotel extends well beyond its 88 rooms and suites. El Santuario, 1739, American Bazaar, Luigi’s, Hari’s, Exilio Bar, and Capella Rooftop create a dining and social circuit across the three wings, while the courtyards, wellness spaces, retail, and rooftop give guests different ways to experience the property throughout the day. That breadth matters in a reader-voted award. Travelers may first notice the architecture, but their final impression is shaped by the entire stay: the welcome at arrival, the room, the service, the quality of a meal, the atmosphere of the courtyards, a drink above the rooftops of Casco Antiguo, and the small details that determine whether a hotel is simply impressive or genuinely memorable.

Travel + Leisure’s 2026 results place particular emphasis on hotels with character, strong interiors, a clear connection to their destination, and service that gives travelers a reason to return. Those qualities have been central to Hotel La Compañía since its restoration, where the history of the site, contemporary hospitality, and the daily life of Casco Antiguo meet within the same address.

The No. 5 ranking arrives during a period of growing international recognition for the hotel. Together with its recent distinctions from MICHELIN and Condé Nast Traveller, the World’s Best Awards result adds another independent measure of how travelers are responding to the experience being created in Panama. For Hotel La Compañía Casco Antiguo, a score of 97.08 is ultimately more than a position on a list. It reflects thousands of individual moments that guests carried with them after leaving, and places the hotel firmly among the leading urban stays in Central and South America.