The appeal of Villa Sal is almost too simple to effectively describe. It’s not one but two villas, set in the seaside town of Lagoa on San Miguel in the Azores, the Portuguese islands in the middle of the Atlantic almost a thousand miles due west of Lisbon. And they get right to the point, looking straight out to sea from a south-facing clifftop setting.

Safe to say we’ll never feature a hotel smaller than Cyprès Si Haut. Whether it’s a one-room hotel or a one-bedroom guest house is purely academic — what matters is the privacy afforded by this treehouse, perched four meters high in a stand of pines and larches in Corrèze. There’s a Jacuzzi on the balcony, a sauna, and room service that arrives via a pulley contraption, so you never have to touch the forest floor.

Spoor 62 is a masterfully designed two-room b&b housed in a historic railway station in the countryside outside Bruges. It’s clear that great care went into restoring the old brick station, a stop on the storied Pullman Express line between Paris and the resort towns of the Belgian coast, and today it positively glows with warmth and an understated countryside glamour.

With just three villas, Vora is scarcely a hotel at all. The color palette is restrained, even by Greek standards, with some earth-tone accents in natural materials set against the cloud-white walls. It’s a substantially more refined look than what you’re used to here, even at the high end — and still the merest glance outside at the majestic caldera proves that nature is in no danger of being overshadowed.

Let the big chains scramble to outdo each other with bigger spas and restaurants, sparkling fitness centers and Olympic-sized infinity pools. An achingly hip little hotel like La Valise in Mexico City doesn’t need any of that. In fact, the three-suite property, located above a shop in a 1920s townhouse in the happening Roma neighborhood, makes a virtue of its small size.

On Lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas is something genuinely surprising: a restaurant, Sister, and a café, Duro, both “Italianish” in concept, and both by the small but highly regarded Duro Hospitality Group. And upstairs from both is Casa Duro, a three-room guest house, or a trio of apartments, by the same owners, where their appetite for Italian culture is allowed to run wild.

Housed in a centuries-old tower that was designed to keep intruders out, the fully restored guesthouse known as Tainaron Blue Retreat now welcomes visitors from around the globe, but not too many of them — there are just three suites, one at the base of the tower, another in its upper section, and a third in the adjoining tower house.

The mountain town of Pontarlier is home to much of France’s pastis and absinthe production, and to La Maison d’à Côté, a truly minuscule bed and breakfast featuring a mere two rooms, spanning the top floor of a 19th-century building in the town center. The décor is somewhat rustic, and extremely eclectic; one room is more historical in style, the other rather more contemporary, but both are stylish and memorable.

Barely a hotel at all, Avalon Coastal Retreat is a stunning modernist three-bedroom house on the east coast of Tasmania, midway between Hobart and Launceston. The sea views through the house’s glass walls are extraordinary, but the interiors give them a run for their money, thanks to the fine work of local architect Craig Rosevear.

Mere blocks from Nijo Castle, Kyo no Ondokoro offers the rare opportunity for Kyoto visitors to call a 150-year-old downtown house their home. Architects Yoshifumi Nakamura and Akira Minagawa have revamped the interiors of this distinctive two-story merchants’ house, resulting in a warm, airy collection of blonde-wood rooms, the two floors separated by a winding staircase.