Our Experts’ Choice awards are are based on recommendations from leading travel media. Winners are determined by taking into account placement in published “best of 2018” lists, as well as the quantity and quality of reviews for hotels, restaurants and attractions. We’re pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s award for best North American destination is New Orleans.
“The most unique city in America”, proclaims Fodors, and our experts agree. The Big Easy is celebrating its 300th birthday this year, making a city already known for is festivals and celebrations an even more exciting destination in 2018. Dubbed the “ultimate melting pot” by The New York Times on its list of 52 Best Places to Go in 2018, NOLA is a vibrant and enchanting oasis of diverse culture, food, music, art, and nightlife in the American South.
Wrapping up its third century, the “jubilant city”, featured on Frommer’s Best Places to Go in 2018, is particularly festive this year, with over 160 dazzling festivals, each with a tricentennial theme. Beyond Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, the city’s most popular and well-known parties, New Orleans offers endless opportunities to soak up its unusual and fascinating charm.
Creole cuisine, with influences from “Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and indigenous peoples” is another enormous draw to New Orleans (The New York Times). Travel + Leisure calls food in NOLA a “daily celebration,” and with Big Easy delicacies like beignets and po’boys, it’s always time to celebrate.
This year, on it’s Go To List 2018, Fodors highlights “hot newcomers like N7 and Turkey and the Wolf” that are keeping gastronomy in New Orleans fresh and exciting, “alongside 100-year-old decadent Southern dining rooms and po’ boy stands.” Cochon and Bayona, with TripExpert scores in the 90’s, are other outstanding options for Louisiana fare.
N7, new to the NOLA restaurant scene
Visitors to New Orleans will never be short on entertainment in this city known for frivolity. Bourbon Street is, of course, a can’t-miss, but Travel + Leisure recommends venturing beyond the obvious for the real “cultural depth” of the city. The Bywater district, with “its galleries, clubs, and restaurants,” is a trendy neighborhood worth spending some time in, according to Frommer’s.
City Park, TripExpert’s top-rated NOLA attraction, and Audubon Nature Institute also make the cut on US News & World Report’s Best Things To Do in New Orleans. Audubon’s facility includes the Audubon Zoo, the Audubon Aquarium, and the Audubon Insectarium. The North Rampart Street cable car line extension, new riverside parks, a burlesque opera, and Tango Fire, from the New Orleans Ballet Association are generating buzz this year. And don’t forget to sit back and enjoy some world-class jazz music, found just as often on street corners as in classy bars. As Lonely Planet explains, “Live music isn’t an event: it’s as crucial to the city soundscape as streetcar bells.”
The Great Lawn at City Park
New boutique hotels in New Orleans are recommended by Fodors for their “historic charm, modern comfort, and sense of place.” The Henry Howard, a beautifully restored mansion with Southern style, stands out for its friendly and cozy character, while The Quisby, located in central city, is a well-run hostel for the modern age. TripExpert recommends Windsor Court Hotel, Hotel Monteleone, and The Roosevelt New Orleans, A Waldorf Astoria hotel — our top three picks in New Orleans.
Last year, British Airways launched NOLA’s first direct connection to Europe in decades, making the Big Easy is even more accessible to visitors from abroad. With that “classic appeals like jazz, Mardi Gras, and Creole cuisine” that Fodors likes and up-and-coming restaurants, new hotels, and tricentennial events galore it’s no wonder that New Orleans is 2018’s Trip Experts’ Choice Best North American Destination.
Vogue sings New Orleans’ praises, and we couldn’t say it better ourselves: “the sultry, enchanting French-founded Crescent City feels like a mystical mix of tipsy euphoria and subtle seduction.” By “honoring the old and welcoming in the new and different,” NOLA has become a delightfully peculiar destination, a hub of culture and merriment ideal for a 2018 getaway.
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.
About the winners
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.
Destination 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.
Information for winners
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, pleasecontact 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.
Award criteria
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.)
Information for winners
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!
TripExpert features the world’s largest database of expert travel reviews. Until now, we’ve sourced reviews from print and online publications, primarily travel guides, magazines, and newspapers. Today we are pleased to announce that we’re taking the first steps towards expanding our coverage by including reviews from select individuals.
Our Expert Advisors Program allows leading travel agents, hotel concierges, and other travel professionals to contribute to TripExpert. In addition to writing their own reviews and advice, Expert Advisors can maintain a profile on TripExpert.com, where they can show off their expertise and promote their services.
Seasoned travel professionals have exceptional knowledge of their favorite destinations and topics. Like the writers for our source publications, these are people whose job it is to evaluate and recommend hotels, restaurants, activities and excursions. Until now, there has been no centralized repository for their knowledge. As our catalog of Expert Advisors grows, you’ll be able to search for an advisor who covers the places you’re traveling to, and see their insider recommendations.
We’ve so far welcomed a handful of invited Expert Advisors into the program. In the coming weeks, you’ll start seeing their reviews alongside our existing publication reviews on TripExpert and our partner sites. We’ll be adding other new features, including the Expert Advisor Directory, as the program grows.
If you’re a travel professional interested in participating, head over to the Expert Advisors Program page to sign up.
You may have heard of the Yelp Elite Squad. Every year, Yelp’s “Elite Council” spends “many a sleepless night” figuring out which “Yelpers” deserve to become part of the Elite Squad, which gives them “shiny profile badges” and access to “epic parties”, according to Yelp. Some of the parties seem worthy of Game of Thrones: at one point, Yelp was forced to send an email to the Elite Squad warning them that some events have “degenerated into frenzied affairs”. On one occasion, a waiter at a steakhouse was “absolutely traumatized by the rabid ferocity with which certain guests attacked his plate of hors d’oeuvres”.
Yelp provides few specifics about the selection criteria for the Elite Squad — it even says that there’s a “certain je ne sais quoi” involved. Although it stresses that number of reviews is only one factor, most elites have written hundreds or even thousands. One member profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about one review a day for 8 years.
Follow our own Elite Pete as he shows what it’s like to try to write enough reviews to maintain that elite status.
Our mission at TripExpert is to bring the experts back into travel. For over a year, we have made professional reviews available on our own site, TripExpert.com. We are excited to now announce the start of the next phase in accomplishing our mission: opening our data to third party developers through our Expert Review API.
The API allows retrieval of about half a million reviews of hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions, sourced from over 60 publications. In addition to review data, the API also makes available the TripExpert Score and our curated review extracts and advice. For more information about the API and its features, visit tripexpert.com/api.
The API has been in private beta for several months, and during this time we’ve been working with three companies that are the first to incorporate our data into their own services:
1. AirFi
Airfi, a Lufthansa company, has made TripExpert-powered city guides available on the inflight entertainment systems of several airlines.
2. Citymaps
Citymaps, the mapping platform that powers NYC’s taxi cabs and the official NYC tourism app, is integrating TripExpert reviews into its app.
3. Jetaport
Jetaport is bringing TripExpert data to its website, which streamlines group bookings for hotels.
Any travel service and any app with local business listings is a potential partner, such as travel meta search sites, mapping applications, and hotel or restaurant booking services. Here are some of the ways in which our data can help your users:
• Travel planning: aid travelers in making better decisions when planning where to go and where to stay.
• In-destination guidance: on the ground, travelers get accurate, concise information from sources they trust.
• Improving your internal ranking methodology: use the TripExpert Score as an input in determining the best places to show to your users.
We hope that developers will use the API to overcome the many deficiencies and limitations of user reviews. In addition to being unreliable and subject to abuse, it’s often difficult for new startups to accumulate enough user reviews in order to provide a satisfying user experience. Our expert reviews can fill these gaps and provide high quality ranking signals.
Here are some examples of cool things that you can do with the API:
• Find reviewers’ advice, customized to your audience: for example, ask the API to return all of the advice for the Four Seasons New York that pertains to room selection or that is applicable to business travelers.
• Find hotel and restaurant awards: want to show your users which restaurants have a James Beard award? Or which hotels have a Travel + Leisure endorsement? This data is also available through the API, and our specialized team stays on top of all our publication release dates so that you don’t have to.
• Track how critical opinion about venues changes over time: for example, use the API to quickly determine which restaurants have recently gained a Michelin star or which attractions have lost favor with a prominent guidebook.
We’d love to speak with you if you think you may have a place for TripExpert reviews. Basic use of the API is free with attribution, and we also offer premium white label solutions to select partners. Please visit tripexpert.com/api for more information and contact details and developer.tripexpert.com for technical info.
There is more to a memorable trip than just a great hotel, which is why we are excited to announce that we’ve expanded TripExpert to cover restaurants and tourist attractions.
Our goal is to provide you with the best possible travel decision-making tools, and these new features will make any trip better. By aggregating reviews from the best professional critics, curating the reviews by hand (we have real people read every review), and passing them through our patent-pending algorithm, we provide accurate, reliable appraisals that you can trust. TripExpert is now the easiest way to find a great restaurant or something to do in your hometown or in major destinations around the world.
Restaurant and attraction reviews will initially be available for 50 cities, with an additional 150 cities to follow by the end of 2015. The professionally-penned reviews are sourced from the Michelin Guide, Zagat, USA Today, Bon Appétit, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post, Travel + Leisure, The Evening Standard, The Independent, and numerous other outlets.
Why are the expert reviews we use to calculate the TripExpert Score more reliable? They’re verified: you know the author’s name and history. They’re less biased: the author’s professional reputation is at stake each and every time they review something. And experts also have more points of comparison: professional critics review hundreds, if not thousands, of venues, which allows them to recommend the best places and provide savvy advice that a regular traveler can’t.
With the launch of TripExpert’s restaurant and attraction reviews, you can be assured of finding the best for any trip you take, whether across the world or across town.
Today we’re thrilled to announce a partnership with HotelsCombined, the world’s leading hotel price comparison website. With this agreement, users of TripExpert can access HotelsCombined’s award-winning aggregation platform to compare and book accommodations from many leading of travel and hotelier websites, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Venere, and Laterooms. Without leaving the TripExpert website, users can now read professional reviews, see the TripExpert Score, and check rates and availability across multiple providers for any of the tens of thousands of hotels on TripExpert.
We’re so confident in HotelsCombined to give our users the best price on hotel accommodations that, from today forward, we’re offering a Best Price Guarantee. If you find a lower rate on your hotel accommodations elsewhere, we’ll refund the difference. For full details, including terms and conditions, visit tripexpert.com/about.
This is another step towards our ultimate goal of providing travelers with the tools and information to consistently have unrivaled travel experiences. When you use TripExpert, you know you’ll find best hotels and the best prices. Guaranteed.
