NEW YORK—Condé Nast Traveler this week announced the winners of its 31st annual Readers’ Choice Awards, ranking the best hotels, resorts, cities, islands, airlines, airports, and cruise lines in the world. The Readers’ Choice Awards are the longest-running recognition of excellence in the travel industry. This year, the publication received a recording-breaking number of responses from nearly half a million readers who rated their travel experiences to provide a full snapshot of where and how guests travel today, including the 50 Best Hotels in the World.
The 2018 results are all about comfort. Readers stayed closer to home than ever before, pushing more cities like Chicago, Charleston, and Nashville to the top of the lists. They favored the Caribbean and domestic islands in the southeast, like Hilton Head, Amelia, and Kiawah. The properties that impressed them most were smaller and less flashy than in years past, and the publication’s small-cruise-ship list is longer than it’s ever been, suggesting that the right kind of less is more.
