New Zealand destinations top international travel survey
Source: NZ Herald
02 May 2008
Two New Zealand tourist sites have topped a big internet survey of the world’s 100 best travel destinations.
Milford Sound, the main tourist attraction in Fiordland, was voted the most popular worldwide destination with its beautiful mountains and scenery.
The nearby tourist town Queenstown, noted for extreme sports packaged for tourism, was second-favourite.
The poll, released yesterday by internet travel advisory service TripAdvisor, voted the Greek island of Rhodes as the top European location.
Experts said despite the current economic crisis, rising fuel costs, environmental concerns and airport chaos, travelling was still as popular as ever.
“What the destinations have in common is a something special that makes them truly exceptional in the eyes of travellers around the world,” TripAdvisor European communications manager, Ian Rumgay, said.
“Despite dire predictions about economic downturns, rising fuel costs, environmental concerns and airport chaos, travellers continue to beat a path to destinations such as these that have that ‘X factor’.”
The locations were determined by an analysis from the website - the world’s largest online travel community - that is visited by about 25 million users a month.
The website’s inaugural travellers’ choice survey, it combined input from travellers’ favourite places, popular hits from the website’s six million registered users as well as analysis of forums and summaries from about 15 million reviews.
It showed Italy was the most popular country with seven cities in the top 25 European destinations - the southern city of Amalfi the highest ranked at 15th on the worldwide list.
Other European locations to make the top 20 include Siena, in Italy (15), Dingle in Ireland’s south-west (18) and the Belgium city of Bruges (20).
The top 20 travel destinations:
1. Milford Sound, New Zealand
2. Queenstown, New Zealand
3. Philipsburg, St. Maarten
4. Cayo Largo, Cuba
5. Rhodes, Greece
6. Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
7. Cruz Bay, St. John, US Virgin Islands
8. Bridgetown, Barbados
9. Banff, Canada
10. Lake Tahoe, California
11. Salzburg, Austria
12. Cape Town, South Africa
13. Amalfi, Italy
14. Bath, England
15. Siena, Italy
16. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
17. Hamilton, Bermuda
18. Dingle, Ireland
19. Lake Louise, Canada
20. Bruges, Belgium
