We’re excited to announce the winners of our third annual Experts’ Choice Awards. This year, 24,000 outstanding hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions around the world have earned the award. For the first time this year, we are also announcing destination winners in several categories, including best emerging destination, best budget destination, and best overall destination.
Experts’ Choice is the only award that aggregates the advice of professional travel writers. Our 2018 award winners have been selected on the basis of over 1 million reviews from 85 publications.
The Seychelles, one of 50 TripExpert new destinations
We’ve been busy since our 2017 awards season, adding 50 new destinations on three continents, including Normandy, Cape Cod and the Seychelles. We’ve also incorporated a number of new publications, including Departures, Monocle, and The Telegraph.
It’s encouraging to see the philosophy underlying Experts’ Choice continue to be embraced by travelers and the hospitality industry alike. Meanwhile, problems with user review travel sites (which we’ve written about extensively before) were even more apparent than usual in 2017.
TripAdvisor not only managed to be gamed by a writer who made a non-existent shed the top-rated restaurant in London, but was forced to apologize for deleting reviews by a woman who was sexually assaulted by staff at a resort in Mexico. Why not turn instead to a source that brings together the trusted advice of people whose job it is to review hotels, restaurants, and attractions?
More consumers are looking for critical consensus — think Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic — to make informed decisions and TripExpert delivers.
Help us grow our movement. If you’re an award winner, join the more than 2,000 past winners who have shared their press release or Experts’ Choice badge (read more below). If you’re a traveler, tell your friends about how much more sense it makes to go with the advice of professionals.
Our winning venues cover 124 countries and span a wide range of establishments, from luxury hotels to highly recommended hostels and from Michelin-starred restaurants to food trucks. What they have in common is expert consensus that they’re among the best in their respective categories.
Experts’ Choice is highly selective. Over 400,000 hotels, 1.5 million restaurants, and 300,000 tourist attractions were considered for the award; about 2.5% of hotels, 0.5% of restaurants and 1.5% of tourist attractions were selected.
As in previous years, hotels in Europe were the most critically acclaimed. This year, restaurants in North America performed especially well, picking up over 5,000 of the approximately 8,000 awards.
This year, for the first time, we awarded Experts’ Choice to destinations. From February through April, we announced winners in eleven categories. Follow the links to coverage of each destination below.
Experts’ Choice is awarded to hotels, restaurants, and attractions that both have a TripExpert Score of 70 or more and are in the top 10-20% of comparable venues in the same destination. The TripExpert Score is calculated based on how many of our 85 source publications have recommended the venue and what they have said about it. A number of adjustments are made, for example to account for the fact that newly opened venues may not yet have been widely covered in the press.
Our scoring system is objective and impartial; the TripExpert team makes no decisions about whether particular venues will receive the award.
If your establishment has been awarded, we will notify you via email. We’ve prepared a press release for each winner, which we encourage you to add to your website and share on social media.
You’re also eligible to display our electronic and hard copy “Experts’ Choice” badges and certificates. To get your badge, click “Venue Support” from your venue’s page on TripExpert page. Badges and certificates, including hard copy versions, are delivered to you free of charge.
If there’s anything we can help you with, please contact Chris Blume.
Hipmunk is one of our favorite travel planning tools. We’re pleased to announce that it’s now even better: on its award winning web and mobile apps, you’ll find TripExpert-powered reviews for tens of thousands of hotels.
Hipmunk is the latest company using our Expert Review API, which provides data for reviews from 70+ travel guides, magazines and newspapers.
Clicking the TripExpert logo on Hipmunk hotel results will take you to full coverage.
“TripExpert gives us the fun facts and insider tips that let our users know what it will truly be like to stay at each hotel,” said Steve Vargas, Hipmunk’s Director of Product. “Since they’re written by industry experts, the reviews not only give really interesting details, but they also have a more objective quality than user reviews. This makes them super easy to digest and to trust. ”
To learn more about the partnership, see our press release or read coverage on the Hipmunk blog.
We’re pleased to announce the winners of our second annual Experts’ Choice Awards. 7,000 of the world’s best hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions have been honored with the award, which is based on reviews in top travel media.
Last year, we debuted Experts’ Choice as a new type of accolade that reflects the views of expert reviewers. In the past 12 months, we’ve added hundreds of thousands of new reviews from travel guides, magazines and newspapers. We’ve also added coverage for over 100 new destinations on four continents. TripExpert is now a more comprehensive guide to the best places to stay, the best restaurants to dine at, and the top sights to see.
The reaction to our first round of awards was overwhelming. Both our users and our featured venues were relieved that there is now an alternative to user reviews, which our research shows are subject to abuse and often unreliable.
To be eligible, venues must have a TripExpert Score of at least 70. The score is calculated based on reviews in our 70+ source publications; learn more about how it is calculated. In addition, venues must typically be in the top 10% of similar venues in the relevant destination. (Some adjustments are made to these thresholds in certain cases. For example, in some beach destinations, 100% of the resorts are world class and have received the award.)
Over 1,000 venues now proudly display our “Experts’ Choice” badges on their websites or at their places of business. If you’re a winner, we’d love for you to join them. Click “Venue Support” from your TripExpert page for a selection of embeddable badges and to request free certificates to be delivered to you. We’re also happy to work directly with your PR or social media team. Please contact me if you need any help.
We are very pleased to announce the winners of our 2016 Experts’ Choice Awards. This year, we are recognizing over 5,000 of the best hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions around the world.
Experts’ Choice is an entirely new kind of award. It is based on reviews written by professionals for major travel guides, magazines, newspapers, and other respected publications. At TripExpert, we bring together these reviews and provide a snapshot of what the experts think are the best places to stay, eat, and visit.
How are the winners chosen?
Experts’ Choice Awards recognize businesses that have outperformed their peers, as reflected in reviews from our 70+ source publications. In general, winners have received a TripExpert Score in the top 30% of comparable venues. (In some destinations with a very large number or quality of venues, more than 30% receive the award.)
In calculating each venue’s TripExpert Score, we take into consideration how many publications have recommended it, what they’ve said about it, and what score or rating they’ve given it. Our algorithm also makes a number of important adjustments; for example, to account for the fact that outstanding but relatively new businesses may not yet have been extensively reviewed.
Our research shows that aggregating professional reviews produces much more reliable results than user review sites.
Who are the winners?
Our 5,000 winners cover four continents and over 80 countries, and include hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions. The hotel winners range the full spectrum of lodgings from major luxury hotel chains to five-room family-owned boutiques; our restaurants range from Michelin-starred fine dining establishments to food trucks and “hole-in-the-wall” eateries. In the tourist attraction category, there are museums, parks, historical buildings, and just about anything else that’s worth visiting.
Although Experts’ Choice winners are diverse, they all share one thing: they have received high praise from expert reviewers. Some of our winners have been recommended in as many as 30 different publications, often including not only travel guides and magazines but also local, national and international press.
To find Experts’ Choice winners, look for the badge on TripExpert.com.
What happens next?
We will be publishing a series of posts over the coming months profiling some of our winners. If your business has won the award, we encourage you to add one of our Experts’ Choice badges to your site, which can help you convert visitors into paying customers. We are also happy to work with you to prepare a press release or other media material. Please contact Chris Blume.
Congratulations to all the winners!
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