In the first episode of this eye-opening series, Giles Coren and Monica Galetti join the 9,500-strong workforce in one of the world's biggest hotels - Singapore's Marina Bay Sands. This epic hotel caters for one million guests every year, cost £3.5 billion to build and was created as part of a government plan to triple tourist income to Singapore within ten years. The jewel in its crown is the longest elevated infinity pool in the world, the size of three Olympic swimming pools.
In the second episode of this eye-opening series, Giles Coren and Monica Galetti head to the Andean Cloud Forest of Ecuador to work at Mashpi Lodge, a $10-million modernist hotel featuring an extraordinary gondola cable car that 'flies' guests one mile through the jungle canopy at a dizzying height. The hotel was built by a former mayor of capital Quito on the site of what was once a logging station; 70 percent of its staff are locals who used to be loggers or hunters but are now proud conservationists. Guests staying in this gloriously remote place, perched 900m above sea level, are surrounded by one of the last remaining biodiversity hotspots on the planet.
In the third episode of this eye-opening series, Giles Coren and Monica Galetti discover Giraffe Manor, a unique hotel where giraffes, staff and guests all coexist in a 1930s Scottish-style hunting lodge on the edge of Nairobi National Park. But it is at Giraffe Manor that they serve an awe-inspiring breakfast like no other, as giraffes join guests in the hotel dining room.
In the fourth episode of this eye-opening series, Giles and Monica arrive at Royal Mansour, one of the world's most discreet hotels, hidden deep in the heart of Marrakech's ancient Medina. In stark contrast to the developing country it inhabits, the jewel of the city was built with a limitless budget by royal decree to showcase the kingdom to world leaders, billionaires and celebrity guests. Its network of luxurious riads, built by the nation's finest artisans, are kitted out with suede and silk carpets, extravagant chandeliers and open fireplaces lit by personal butlers.
In the fifth episode of this eye-opening series, Giles Coren and Monica Galetti experience the warm embrace of Fogo Island Inn on a rocky, sea-sprayed outpost of remote Fogo Island in Newfoundland. White, angular and perched atop zig-zagged stilts like the local fishermen's houses, it pays homage to the European settlers who arrived from Ireland and Devon to fish cod.
Giles and Monica don their best thermals and extreme weather gear, and travel 200km north of the Arctic Circle to Sweden's Lapland. They enter a magical world of snow, ice, inky blue and pink skies, and Icehotel, a regular feature of bucket lists, now in its 27th year. The hotel's team have given themselves their biggest challenge yet - to run an Icehotel that will stay open 365 days of the year, powered by the sun.
Monica Galetti
Host
Robert Rinder
Giles Coren
Max Shapira
Director
Aidan Woodward