February 15, 2017
THE END OF YEAR LISTS
2016 is in the books, and as another year closes, we are inundated with hundreds of lists. The top 10 best movies of the year, the 20 worst posts on Facebook, etc, etc. For the most part, these are a light look back on the last 52 weeks, but there are sometimes some very useful nuggets of information to be found, if you can be bothered sifting through it all. We've done some of that work for you, bringing together some of the more useful lists for international travelers.
It's impossible to get an official figure for how many hotels there are in the world, but an educated guestimate made in 2012 put the figure at approximately 187,000 worldwide. Assuming that this figure has only grown in the last 5 years, there will now be more than 17.5 million guest rooms on offer. Making an informed choice about where you should stay would be an almost impossible task, were it not for the internet and the rises in user-reviewed sites. Having had their reviewers do all the legwork, it's simply a case of listing the top 10 or 20 reviews by popularity, and even easier for us to gather all of them together. So, here are the best rated hotels in the USA, Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa and the UK.
It’s fine when you're sending journalists out to review a luxurious 5-star hotel experience. Curiously enough, there is less enthusiasm when it comes to reviewing the worst hotels. There is, however, no such thing as bad publicity, and one enterprising company with hostels in Amsterdam and Lisbon is proudly claiming the title of the worst hotel in the world. Hans Brinker Hostels make a joke out of their somewhat questionable quality levels, but they know that their clientele isn't looking for 100% Egyptian cotton sheets and perfect room service. Just as long as they’ve got somewhere vaguely secure to pass out in, they're happy - something that cannot be said of a certain other high-profile hotel owner who has been in the news recently. Things were bad for him last year - they seem destined to only get worse.
Even the best hotel's efforts can be missed if you've had a miserable time getting there. It's not just the destination that is reviewed, but also the airline that gets you there. The best and worst airlines, as well as the best and worst airports, of the last year are also reviewed. If you're looking for inspiration, these are the top 20 travel books of the last year, and of course there is a list for the best travel-based apps available.
There were also some fun lists, a selection of which we provide here: the most bizarre requests made to airline workers, the weird things people have asked staff to leave in their hotel rooms, the 10 strangest things people have tried to smuggle through US customs over the past 12 months, and 2016's most ridiculous failed Kickstarter travel campaigns. Enjoy!
