Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby — Season 1

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.

Giles and Monica 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.

In the third episode, Giles and Monica discover Giraffe Manor, a unique hotel where giraffes, staff and guests all coexist in a hunting lodge on the edge of Nairobi National Park. It is the operational headquarters of Tanya and Mikey Carr-Hartley, fourth generation Kenyans who also own three satellite luxury lodges and camps throughout Kenya and east Africa. 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. Monica meets head chef David Kisevu and goes food shopping with him in Rongai. Giles and Monica fly to the remote outpost of Sasaab Lodge, a six-acre plot set within 82,000 acres of land owned by Samburu tribespeople. The Samburu are the hotel's landlords, and the hotel offers local people employment - up to 75% of the hotel's staff are Samburu. Giles and Monica follow their new co-workers back to their village to find out how the hotel has impacted tribal life.

Giles and Monica arrive at Royal Mansour in Marrakesh. In 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 and to billionaire 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. The hotel prides itself on its incredible attention to detail, creating an absolutely flawless guest experience. Monica works with executive housekeeper Laurence, who intriguingly teaches her to how to 'show love to curtains'. Giles is introduced to the hotel's 1km of underground tunnels, which ensure absolute discretion - to the guests, it looks as though every whim is fulfilled as if by magic.

Giles and Monica 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 that arrived from Ireland and Devon to fish cod. A cod-fishing moratorium was put in place in the 1990s, and the island's population subsequently shrank as families moved away in search of other work. Giles and Monica meet founder Zita Cobb. Her family has lovingly folded its rich heritage into a unique retreat for guests from all over the world. Giles is initiated as an honorary Newfoundlander by the inn's housekeepers, who rope him into a community boat race. Monica spends time with local guide Norm, who reveals how to grow the perfect potato. Monica and Giles both help to put on a traditional Fogo Inn 'wedding scoff'. Above all, they tell the poignant story of the fight to revive the island.

In the sixth episode 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.