Even the non-spiritually inclined will agree that Big Sur is a power spot, with its cliffs overlooking the Pacific exerting a dramatic energy. The designers of Post Ranch Inn made full use of this force, positioning grand tubs with views that seem truly infinite, especially at night, when it feels like you’re floating just beneath the stars. Those staying in the cliffside Ocean Houses can get even closer to them in outdoor soaking tubs, built for two.

Few hotels offer a close encounter with Manhattan’s iconic skyline like this sustainably-minded property in DUMBO. High above the cobblestone streets, the best seats are in the 2,000-square-foot Riverhouse, a two-bedroom, glass-walled suite. You could take in the view from the loft’s hammock, but more inviting is the chiseled stone bathtub with its unobstructed sight lines of the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge and the gleaming skyscrapers that make up this intoxicating concrete jungle.

Coqui Coqui is a chic parfumerie-meets-residence housed in a restored 19th-century hacienda that caters to all five senses. That philosophy extends to the guest rooms, especially in the L'Epicerie suite, where two freestanding bathtubs occupy a colossal bathroom lined in Carrara marble, vintage vanities and plush velvet drapes. Coqui Coqui’s home-grown bath oils are just as transporting, as you might find yourself steaming in an olfactory paradise of rosas frescas, sandalwood, or coconut.

It was on this estate on Jamaica’s northern coast that British author Ian Fleming penned James Bond into existence. Today, the two guest rooms within the coconut tree-shaded resort’s Fleming Villa, aptly named 008 and 009, allow you to roll out of bed and into your own tropical garden, complete with an outdoor shower and an emerald clawfoot tub. Lather up with soaps made with intoxicating herbs and botanicals, dry off in a batik robe, walk a few yards and watch the sunset over Oracabessa Bay.

The two Karl Lagerfeld-designed suites at the legendary Hôtel de Crillon, built by the architect who designed Versailles, are among the most extravagant in the city, homages to the designer’s affinity for 18th-century antiques. The most astonishing flourish is in the bathroom: a two-ton bathtub carved out of a single block of Carrara, with the same wavy Arabescato marble also adorning the vanity, and walls—entirely appropriate for a home that Marie Antoinette is said to have frequented.

In Lisbon’s old quarter, an 18th-century building has been reimagined by noted local architect Manuel Aires Mateus as a minimalist six-room hotel. With its limestone walls and stairs, high ceilings and pale wood flooring, Santa Clara 1728 exudes a cloistered serenity. In each of the white-tiled bathrooms, a curvaceous pink limestone bathtub occupies the center; throw open the glass doors and flood the space with light and fragrance from the garden before sliding into the tub to take your soak.

For the skiers chasing the world’s best powder in Niseko, in Japan’s Hokkaido prefecture, Zaborin offers an aquatic antidote to a long day on piste. An elegant ryokan with views of Mt. Yotei, Zaborin was inspired by the words za-zen (“sitting zen”), za-bo (“to sit, to forget’) and rin (“small forest”). The hotel does, indeed, sit serenely among the trees. And a perfect spot for contemplation is in one of the 15 villas’ private onsen, which face the forest and whose water is drawn from a spring.

Near Ubud in Bali’s spiritual center, John Hardy and his wife, Cynthia, created a jungle ecotopia from a few Javanese wooden bridal homes and curvilinear bamboo structures built into grottoes on the Ayung river. It’s hard to step away from this enchanted forest of spring-fed pools, technicolor gardens and open-air houses, many of which have all-day soaking situations. The best is at Riverbend house, with two natural spring plunge pools and a copper tub for butterfly watching and moon bathing.

In a vertiginous city like Hong Kong, the energy of the metropolis feels as palpable in the sky as it does on terra firma. And the Upper House, which sits 49 floors up in the energetic Central Business District, offers bathing guests an eye-level look at the surrounding skyscrapers. The bathrooms in the corner Upper Suites—minimalist, blond-wood cocoons—are flooded with natural light; in the center, an enormous limestone tub occupies a glass-walled corner overlooking Victoria Harbour.

There are few better ways to take in the opulence of this sandstone-walled Jodhpur retreat—built in 1943 by Maharaja Umaid Singh and now owned by his grandson, Gaj Singh—than in the Indo Deco-inspired bathtubs of the palatial suites. Carved stone bathtubs framed by curved Deco mirrors put guests center stage in the immense bathroom. When you’re ready to mount the bath’s black marble pedestal and slide into the suds, it’s likely the staff will have topped them with rose petals.

Afternoons in the 350,000-acre Grumeti Game Reserve—home to lion prides, elephant herds and millions of migrating wildebeest—are primetime for retreating from the heat of the day, watching the occasional storm roll in. When all of this unfolds, there is only one place to be: at the reserve’s Singita Faru Faru lodge—specifically in the Calles Suite 1, where the bathroom’s enormous soaking tub faces a busy watering hole and a parade of giraffes, zebras, warthogs and other animals come to drink.

Tucked away on Hamilton Island, one of the 74 islands next to the Great Barrier Reef that make up the Whitsundays, Qualia has all the aspects of an island paradise within its 60 low-slung, wood-and-timber private pavilions scattered along a hillside and by the water’s edge. But the rooms to book are the Windward Pavilions, which sit closest to the water and where an enormous oval bathtub might almost make you feel like you’re slipping into the surrounding azure waters.

A windswept speck sitting between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, the agrarian King Island mostly stays off the traveler’s radar. It’s this solitude that makes Kittawa Lodge so alluring—and a bath within one of the resort’s cottages so appealing. In the slate-walled bathrooms, a black-stone tub sits before a glass wall facing the coast’s rugged grass-topped sand dunes and the Tasman Sea beyond it. Keep an eye out for red-necked wallabies, sea eagles, or wild peacocks strutting into view.