View SlideshowMethodology
How We Conduct the World’s Best Awards
A questionnaire developed by the editors of Travel + Leisure, in association with Harris Interactive, was made available to Travel + Leisure subscribers at www.tlworldsbest.com from January 16, 2006, to March 21, 2006. In the February and March 2006 issues of Travel + Leisure, subscribers were invited to participate; a select group of subscribers also received an invitation via e-mail. Travel + Leisure subscribers were asked to enter their complete name (as it appears on the mailing label), as well as their five-digit ZIP code, at www.tlworldsbest.com before completing the survey. Only responses from subscribers whose personal information as entered at www.tlworldsbest.com exactly matched Travel + Leisure's subscriber file were counted in the final tally. Respondents were permitted to complete the survey only once. To protect the integrity of the data, after March 21, 2006, respondents were screened by Travel + Leisure and responses from any identified travel-industry professionals who completed the survey were eliminated from the final tally of votes. The survey Web site, www.tlworldsbest.com, was maintained, monitored, and kept secure by Harris Interactive, which collected and tabulated the responses and kept them confidential.
The scores are indexed averages of responses concerning applicable characteristics. Respondents were required to rate hotel spas on four characteristics; hotels, islands, and airlines on five characteristics; and cities, cruise lines, and tour operators on six characteristics (see below). In the "hotel" category, respondents could also rate properties on additional optional characteristics; these ratings were not included in final scores. For each characteristic, respondents were asked to rate a candidate on a scale of 1 to 5, where "5" means excellent and "1" means poor. Required ratings were then averaged, creating an overall score. A minimum number of responses was necessary for a candidate to be eligible for inclusion in the World's Best Awards listings. Some companies were rated in both the "cruise lines" and "tour operators and safari outfitters" categories, and some properties were rated in both the "destination spas" and "hotel spas" categories; in both cases, companies and properties have different scores for each category. For car-rental agencies, respondents were asked to select the company they prefer to use when traveling.
These were the categories and characteristics:
- For hotels: rooms/facilities, location, service, restaurants/food, value. Optional: for business, for families.
- For destination spas: accommodations/ambience, treatments, service, food, value.
- For hotel spas: ambience, treatments, service, value.
- For cities: sights, culture/arts, restaurants/food, people, shopping, value.
- For islands: natural attractions, activities/sights, restaurants/food, people, value.
- For cruise lines: cabins, food, service, itineraries/destinations, activities, value.
- For tour operators and safari outfitters: staff/guides, itineraries/destinations, activities, accommodations, food, value.
- For airlines: cabin comfort, food, in-flight service, customer service, value.
BUSINESS HOTEL METHODOLOGY
In our 2006 World’s Best Awards survey, we asked T+L readers who had traveled for business to rate top hotels on how well they cater to business travelers. The highest-ranking properties in major cities around the globe are listed alphabetically within each region.
WORLD'S BEST VALUES METHODOLOGY
Rankings are based on reader evaluations collected in the 2006 World's Best Awards survey. Scores are indexed averages of evalutions for the characteristic "value." Readers were asked to rate candidates on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 means "excellent" and 1 means "poor." Scores are rounded to the nearles hundredth of a point; in the event of an exact tie, properties share a ranking. For hotels, some geographic regions appear only in applicable price categories.
