Latest news with #TravelAwards
Time Out
13 hours ago
- Time Out
Australia just cracked a list of the top 10 countries on Earth for travellers – but here's who beat us in 2025
We know Australia's great, and we're happy to hear more than 20,000 travellers agree. In the latest Telegraph Traveller Awards, we were voted among the ten best countries on Earth for 2025 – but a few countries dared to outrank us. Here's the list… Only five countries have ever been crowned the 'world's best' since the awards launched in 1998, with New Zealand reclaiming the top spot this year. Our friends across the ditch have held the number one position for the past decade, except when they were briefly dethroned by South Africa in the last readers' poll in 2023. This year, Australia was voted the sixth-best country on Earth, which is a slight dip from our previous fifth-place finish. However, The Telegraph describes Australia as 'a picture of reliability when it comes to the Travel Awards,' having consistently ranked either fifth (twice), eighth (twice) or sixth (three times) in the past 11 years. So, who outranked us in 2025? Japan, India, South Africa and Greece made up the top five – all destinations Aussies are obsessed with too. Another coveted category in The Telegraph Traveller Awards is the 'best cities on Earth', with Sydney making a huge leap from eighth place in 2023 to third in 2025. Our Emerald City has held a firm spot in the global top ten every year since 2014 – now only trailing Seville and Cape Town in the race for number one. New Zealand Japan India South Africa Greece Australia Peru The Maldives Costa Rica Botswana 😂 A scientific study just ranked Australia as the world's 7th funniest country
Time Out
6 days ago
- Time Out
This is officially the best country on Earth, according to The Telegraph
Get your passports ready, guys: New Zealand has just been named the best country in the world in 2025, according to The Telegraph. Reclaiming its crown in this year's Telegraph Travel Awards (after briefly being dethroned by South Africa in 2023), the Land on the Long White Cloud is back at the number one spot. The win comes after more than 20,000 Telegraph readers casted their votes and shared their recommendations. So why has New Zealand captured and kept our hearts? Well, the country's landscapes are nothing short of cinematic — the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed here, after all, with the sky-high, snow-capped peaks and rolling, green vineyards, black sand beaches and fjords all helping create otherworldly backdrops. Exploring its outdoors is alone worth the flight. Milford Track, Tongariro Crossing and Routeburn Track are bucket list-level treks for hikers, but New Zealand also offers adrenaline-fuelled attractions like bungee-jumping, skydiving, jet-boating and more. If it gets your heart racing, it's probably available somewhere on the islands. But it's not all about the scenery and action. New Zealand is consistently ranked as one of the world's best places for its quality of life, safety and progression. Its coastal surroundings are great places to watch the wildlife (why not seek out some whale-watching?) and an excellent source of seafood. And it's a place proud of its Indigenous culture, with New Zealand's Māori communities and Māori haka traditions are embedded in the country's national identity. All sounds pretty incredible right? Check out our roundup of the best things to do in New Zealand, but make sure to also read on for the rest of the top 10 when it comes to the Telegraph's Travel Awards for 2025. These are the top 10 countries in the world, according to The Telegraph New Zealand Japan India South Africa Greece Australia Peru The Maldives Costa Rica Botswana
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Daily Mail
Southern city finally dethroned as best in the US by offbeat Southwest metro
Santa Fe is hot in more ways than one. The New Mexico city ranked as the best US city in the 2025 Travel + Leisure World's Best Awards, unseating former champ, Charleston, South Carolina. Santa Fe landed in the number one spot among readers' 15 favorite cities. Additionally, Santa Fe scored as the number 19 city on readers' list of their 25 favorite cities in the world. Santa Fe is the only US city featured on the list of winning international destinations this year. 'Readers raved about the inventive New Mexican cuisine and the destination's natural beauty. Sitting at 7,000 feet, Santa Fe is at the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range and enjoys over 300 days of sunshine per year,' Travel + Leisure senior editor, Elizabeth Cantrell, said in a statement. 'We're number 1! This award belongs to all of Santa Fe,' said Santa Fe Mayor, Alan Webber, in a statement. 'People who visit our city feel the hospitality and magic of Santa Fe. It's in the history, culture, art, food and architecture of our community, from the air we breathe to the mountains that surround us.' He added: 'Most important, it's in the people. Our hospitality industry and tourism team are great ambassadors for Santa Fe. So, let's toast Santa Fe: We're number 1 — it's official.' Randy Randall, TOURISM Santa Fe Executive Director, said to be singled out as the top city destination in the entire country is an 'extraordinary achievement.' 'This honor is indeed gratifying and recognizes not only the uniqueness of The City Different, but it also underscores the diligent and hard work of our hospitality partners, who welcome and care for our visitors on a daily basis,' he said. A few Santa Fe resorts also appeared on lists of best hotels and spas. Bishop's Lodge, Auberge Resorts Collection, took the number 2 spot on the list of top resorts in the west and Ten Thousand Waves was number 15 on the list of best domestic US spas. Travel + Leisure also compiled a list of the '5 Favorite Santa Fe Hotels of 2025,' highlighting The Inn of the Five Graces, Four Seasons Resort Rancho Encantado Santa Fe, La Fonda on the Plaza, Hotel Santa Fe The Hacienda and Spa and Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi. 'I love the mix of cultures and I think that's what's interesting,' said local Sotheby's realtor Katherine Blagden. 'You have all the Pueblo people and the Native American flavor as well as Spanish land grant families going back 500 years. And then you've got the Anglos so you kind of have a cultural mix.' Blagden adds that Santa Fe is also a cultural hub. 'It's world class culture, art, opera, the desert, coral chamber music,' she told the Daily Mail. 'The food is also amazing, there's restaurants all over town. There are a lot of neat art festivals, like the folk art festival. There are Spanish crafts like straw appliqué on crosses and tin work and jewelry.' Meanwhile, Charleston fell to third place on the list, after 12 straight years of being named Travel + Leisure's top US travel destination. Voters had long praised the Holy City's historic charm and Southern hospitality, calling it 'quaint and charming.' Rounding out the rest of the list in order were New Orleans, Louisiana, Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Alexandria, Virginia, Honolulu, Hawaii and Greenville, South Carolina. The bottom half of the list included New York, Asheville, North Carolina, Chicago, Illinois, Taos, New Mexico, San Antonio, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, Boston, Massachusetts and Aspen, Colorado. If Santa Fe is too pricey, a number of spots across the US have been named as affordable vacation spots. The Outer Banks, a line of islands off the coast of the US state of North Carolina, famous for open-sea beaches, state parks and shipwreck diving sites, costs around $177 per day, which means a week-long stay would cost approximately $1,237. Helen, Georgia, was also named as an affordable vacation destination. Costing an average of just $1,297 weekly per person, this southern town is known for its Bavarian architecture and 'authentic German fare.' The town is known for it's river tubing, biking, and wine tastings at nearby wineries. Other destinations included on the list were Sedona, Arizona, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Telegraph
11-07-2025
- Telegraph
The 10 best countries on Earth (according to you)
The Telegraph Travel Awards are a diverse and wide-ranging phenomenon which help to take the temperature of the travel industry. Across 20 categories, their broad gaze takes in everything from cruise operators and ski specialists to the top-performing airlines. And in all cases, the results are underpinned by the opinions of you, the readers. Among the most coveted of the awards is your favourite country on the planet. It is a category both hotly contested and static in its results – since the first awards in 1998, only five countries have taken the title. As a readership, you are consistent in your choices, and loyal to your favourites. This does not mean, of course, that the final list does not make for fascinating reading. The top 10 for 2025, unveiled below, contains a few old friends, and a raft of the usual suspects, but also a couple of relative newcomers and intriguing variables. Other countries, meanwhile, have fallen away. The top 10 is analysed here – though you can scroll down for the full ranking. These are the countries that – as far as you are concerned – are the best the globe has to offer. Who is anyone to say you are wrong? 10. Botswana 2023 position: 10th There is a longstanding affinity between The Telegraph readership and Africa; one which speaks of adventurous journeys on a fascinating continent, and safari trips where wildlife roars on vast savannahs. The data behind The Telegraph Travel Awards suggests that the relationship has cooled just a little in the past two years – you voted three African countries into your collective top 10 in 2023 (and one of them to the top of the table), but only two have made the cut in 2025. That Botswana is one half of that pair, and that it has stood still in 10th, says much about the unchanging aspect of its appeal. It is, of course, a revered destination for flora and fauna, the Okavango Delta shimmering as one of the planet's foremost expanses of wetland – crocodiles in the shallows, leopards on the shore. And if those creatures do not change their spots, why should you change your opinions? 9. Costa Rica 2023 position: 9th There was perhaps a time when Central America was seen as too removed from the beaten path for Telegraph readers to consider. Perhaps it still is; you have to scan all the way down to 55th place in this table to find the Central American destination that holds the second-highest place in your affections (Mexico), and to 71st for the third (Panama). But Costa Rica is an outlier. It has been on an upward curve in these awards for more than a decade, rising from 24th in 2014 to a ninth place in 2023 that it has retained this year. There is no mystery to this. With a double coast – one stretch of seafront on the Pacific, the other on the Caribbean Sea – it has beaches galore. In San José it has a capital which sings with history. And the 5,436ft-high Arenal is as perfect a symmetrically shaped volcano as you could ever wish to see. Happily, it is dormant. Costa Rica is anything but. 8. The Maldives 2023 position: 3rd Trouble in paradise? In the last six editions of The Telegraph Travel Awards, you have ranked the Maldives as either your second or third-favourite country, never lower – so a drop to eighth is comparatively precipitous. There could be various reasons to explain this. The Indian Ocean archipelago is rarely viewed as a low-cost playground, and in a time of inflation and soaring costs, heads may have turned to sunny alternatives – Dubai, Thailand, even Saudi Arabia – where the quality of seafront accommodation is just as high. That said, talk of a Maldivian decline may be exaggerated. Even in eighth, the island nation is still, by far, your favourite corner of the earth for beach-based relaxation; you have to look to 18th for the next country generally regarded as a pure sun-and-sand destination (Mauritius); to 31st for your top Caribbean hotspot (Barbados). As you were. 7. Peru 2023 position: 25th As a readership, it is surely fair to say that, when it comes to travel, you know what you like – and like what you know; eight of the countries you voted into your top 10 in the latest Telegraph Travel Awards featured in the same elevated list in 2023 (and a ninth was one place outside the elite, in 11th). Peru is a clear exception to this rule. While its 2023 ranking (25th) was its lowest in a decade, it had not breached the top 10 since 2014, so its return to the upper echelons here is a surprise. But only a small one. Perhaps its upsurge can be attributed to a renewed post-pandemic wanderlust, but this splendid slice of South America is never far from the collective holiday bucket list – Machu Picchu an enigma on its Andean bluff, Colca Canyon just as grand – but nowhere near as visited – as its US cousin, Lima a capital full of food and flair. The big question may be: why only seventh? 6. Australia 2023 position: 5th As with the ruthless accuracy of its cricket team 's fast bowlers, or the heat of its summer while Europe shivers in winter's grip, Australia is a picture of reliability when it comes to The Telegraph Travel Awards. In the past 11 years, it has polled either fifth (twice), eighth (twice) or sixth (three times, including this latest iteration) in the tally of your favourite countries. For two of those years, its borders were all but closed to international tourists – but the pandemic may as well not have happened for all its apparent impact on your desire to go Down Under. Maybe this is because, with the distance involved, Australia is a dream destination whose attractiveness is immune to global events. Or perhaps it is that Sydney (highly rated in the city version of this list) is a metropolitan superstar, and Uluru is unique. Either way, Australia may not be a neighbour, but it is definitely a good friend. 5. Greece 2023 position: 11th There is little about the European summer at which Greece does not excel. Its islands, strewn across Ionian and Aegean waters, are glorious oases in those precious high-season weeks of July and August – restaurant tables arranged along harbour walls, the catch of the day on the specials board, carafes of local vino going down nicely in the afternoon heat. This image is repeated from Kefalonia to Karpathos. As is a visible history, dug into hillsides from the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis to the ruins of Knossos on Crete. The only real puzzle is why this Hellenic vision of heaven has not found full favour with you, the readers: fifth place in the 2025 Telegraph Travel Awards is the first time Greece has been voted one of your top 10 favourite countries in more than a decade. Only you can explain this oddity, but the data suggests that you are doing so in increasing numbers. 4. South Africa 2023 position: 1st The 2023 edition of The Telegraph Travel Awards threw up one or two unexpected results – including a rare appearance for Rio de Janeiro among your top 10 cities. But the most notable was South Africa's success – ascending to the throne as your favourite country, and in doing so, breaking a run of seven successive coronations for the previous winner. If this wonderland at the bottom of a spectacular continent has failed to keep the crown in 2025, it has hardly escaped your minds entirely. Fourth position maintains South Africa's decade-long streak in the top 10, and acts as a reminder that few countries have quite as much to offer to travellers: one of the planet's most beautiful cities in Cape Town (also highly ranked in these awards' cities poll), wondrous wines in the Cape vineyards, the road-trip delights of the Garden Route, the safari sensation that is Kruger National Park. 3. India 2023 position: 8th If there are any concerns about visiting India – the distance involved, the heat, the flickers of war on its north-western border which caused the Foreign Office to update its travel advice in May – then they are not apparent in this list. The largest country of the Asian sub-continent has jumped considerably in your collective opinion since the Covid crisis dissipated; from regularly polling in the mid-teens for much of the 2010s, it has reached a dizzying elevation here in 2025. India's ranking of eighth in 2023 was the first time it had been named in your top 10 countries in more than a decade. Its climbing a further five places is indication of its splendour as a destination – Delhi awash with history, Mumbai revelling in its Bollywood vibe, Agra the frequent star of the show thanks to the Taj Mahal, Goa a beach break from it all. Where to begin? The choice is almost endless. 2. Japan 2023 position: 4th With the exception of 6,000 miles, 14 hours' flying time, and the widths of Europe and Asia, nothing comes between The Telegraph readership and Japan. Since 2015, the Land of the Rising Sun has finished no lower than fourth in the voting for your favourite countries. Its return to second (also achieved in 2019) feels like a correction of a two-position slip in 2023 that was surely the result of a Covid-enforced absence from the planet's travel plans. There is so much to love about a holiday in Japan that it is impossible to sketch more than a brief outline here, but any trip should take in the neon districts of Tokyo, the tranquil temples of Kyoto, the war echoes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and, of course, the fabulously fast shinkansen trains that link said places. Then again, you can also make for Sapporo's ski resorts. No wonder Japan attracts so many of you to its side. 1. New Zealand 2023 position: 2nd And so the world settled back onto its axis, and the baffled expressions were wiped away. New Zealand's rank in this list has generally been a binary sequence – a repetition of the number one that had gone uninterrupted for more than a decade until the 2023 results sparked a sudden drop to… second. As with many things, the blame here can surely be apportioned to the pandemic, and the way it kept Australia's near-neighbour closed off from the rest of the planet until well into 2022. Now that a relative normality has resurfaced, New Zealand is – to borrow a football expression – back on its perch. Will you, The Telegraph readers ever tire of it – of the fjords cut into the west flank of the South Island; of the vineyards that flutter around Marlborough; of Aoraki/Mount Cook in its snowy might; of the dining scenes in Auckland and Wellington? You might. But then, you probably won't.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Travel Trailblazers: Top Global Finalists Shortlisted for Trip.com Group's Tourism Innovation Awards
Shortlisted nominees include Las Vegas' the Afterlife show at the Sphere, London's ABBA Voyage, Giza's Grand Egyptian Museum and Tokyo's teamLab Borderless Final top ten award winners to be announced end July, with a total prize pool of USD $1.4 million SINGAPORE, July 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Meet the future of travel – Group has released the top contenders for its Tourism Innovation Awards, as the selection process enters the final stages to select outstanding projects driving tourism growth globally. Notable international projects in the running include the Afterlife show at the Sphere (Las Vegas), ABBA Voyage (London), Azabudai Hills teamLab Borderless (Tokyo) and the Grand Egyptian Museum (Giza). First announced at the Group's Envision 2025 Global Partner Conference, the global awards aim to honour and spur outstanding innovation in tourism across fields like sustainability, technology and cultural heritage. Based on Group data, the top nominated projects have been a strong catalyst for tourism, driving an average of 51% increase in destination orders and 42% increase in destination search volume, measured year-on-year within the first three months of opening. Trailblazing the Path of Tourism Innovation One of the top-voted international projects on the list is the Afterlife show at the Sphere in Las Vegas, widely popular for its immersive audiovisual experience that has redefined the boundaries of live entertainment. Using the Sphere's unique 16K LED dome screen as well as state-of-the-art technology, audiences are immersed in a sensory experience that transcends reality. Likewise, the ABBA Voyage concert in London has earned a spot on the nominated list for blending ABBA's classic music with virtual technology to create an immersive performance for music fans. Also making the list is the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, which has attracted global visitors since its soft opening last year. The museum's vast collection of over 100,000 ancient artifacts, innovative architectural design and use of holographic technology make it a strong contender for the awards. Other noteworthy projects on the nominated list are teamLab Borderless, an immersive digital art museum in Tokyo's Azabudai Hills and the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, which has attracted many gaming enthusiasts to explore its interactive showcase of the evolution of video games. Innovative, Impactful and Potential for Sustainable Growth Shortlisted projects are assessed using an evaluation framework consisting of three components, the first being data that demonstrates the project's driving effect on destination popularity. This includes the project's social media influence, as well as bookings made on The second is public voting, which took place from May 26 to June 30. Lastly, the projects will be scored by a panel of judges consisting of industry experts from international tourist organisations and authorities such as the European Travel Commission, Global Sustainable Tourism Council and World Travel & Tourism Council. Public voting and expert scoring will evaluate the shortlisted projects across these three core criteria, a reflection of the award's objective to support innovation and development in the tourism industry: Innovation – breakthroughs in technology application, travel experiences, local cultural expression and cross-sector collaboration Sustainability – positive contribution to environmental impact, employment and community development Scalability – potential and feasibility of replicating the project's model in other destinations "Travellers seek authentic, meaningful experiences and are increasingly aware of their environmental footprint. These projects show how innovation and sustainability can go hand in hand to drive growth while preserving culture and the environment. By spotlighting them, we aim to inspire others across the sector to bring forward bold, transformative ideas that will shape the future of Travel & Tourism," said Virginia Messina, Executive Vice President of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and one of the expert panel judges. More details on the top nominated projects can be viewed here. Winners will be announced at the end of the month and the final ten outstanding contributors will each receive a USD $60,000 prize. About Group Group is a leading global travel service provider comprising of Ctrip, Skyscanner, and Qunar. Across its platforms, Group helps travellers around the world make informed and cost-effective bookings for travel products and services and enables partners to connect their offerings with users through the aggregation of comprehensive travel-related content and resources, and an advanced transaction platform consisting of apps, websites and 24/7 customer service centres. Founded in 1999 and listed on NASDAQ in 2003 and HKEX in 2021, Group has become one of the best-known travel groups in the world, with the mission "to pursue the perfect trip for a better world". Find out more about Group here: Follow us on: X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Group
