conde nast traveler – Family Travel Blog

Quick insights on travel with kids in the Caribbean

While my household and I wrestle with The Virus That Will Not Die, I’m longingly reading pal Wendy Perrin’s recent dispatches from the Caribbean, where she’s currently traveling with her family.

Wendy is the Consumer Travel News Editor at Condé Nast Traveler and the magazine’s resident Web 2.0/social media expert thanks to her excellent Perrin Post blog and active adoption of Twitter.

She’s on business travel in the Caribbean for the June issue of the magazine, but as a typically multi-tasking parent, she has her family along to try to get some quality time with them in between calls to travel writer duties.

Just like Benji Lanyado at the UK’s Guardian used Twitter to help with a Paris trip, and the lively folks over at National Geographic Traveler‘s Intelligent Travel Blog like to talk Twitter, Wendy gave a shout-out to her Twitter stream for family-friendly ideas during stops in Anguilla, St. Barts and St. Martin/Sint Maarten.

She was rewarded with winners like a stop at The Butterfly Farm in St. Martin.

She’s been blogging and tweeting her Caribbean experiences, and she pulls no punches (even about one barfy kid on the ferry from St. Martin, bless his heart) plus I can really relate to those annoying technical glitches that interfere with blogging when you travel.

As I snivel and blow my nose here in Texas, I am somewhat comforted that I am neither a barfy kid nor his semi-harassed Mom on a Caribbean ferry.

I know that’s cruel, Wendy, but thank you anyway for the vicarious Caribbean visit!

Need even more island inspiration? The Traveling Mamas blogged about family spring break in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos.

What did 32,633 readers choose as the best in travel? Answers here.

This is the 21st year of the Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards, one of the year’s biggest events for the magazine (full results will be listed in the November print issue.) Readers gave collective feedback on 9,168 hotels, resorts, cities, islands, cruise lines, airlines and car rental agencies.

Thanks to Consumer Travel Editor Wendy Perrin, I was flown to New York City (on JetBlue – hurray for seatback TV and satellite radio plus legroom!) to live-tweet the event on my Twitter stream (here are the awards-related tweets on Twitter’s search engine, using “#rca08” which is a “hashtag” used to track a single topic.)

Not all winners were announced at the ceremony (only those who were able to send representatives to the event) but here is the complete list of awardees by poll ranking and here they are on a Google Map. I’m confining this post to those announced the night of October 15, as I typed like a maniac and grappled with a few WiFi and power issues. My blogging compadres from Jaunted were also there somewhere, but I missed them in the crush.

Since I’m interested in how tourism organizations use social media, I’ve also included URLs to any official blogs that I could find.

Cities

Best City in the Americas: Buenos Aires and here is Argentina’s promotion portal blog (other city finalists were Quebec City, Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.)
Best City in the United States: San Francisco (16 years in a row! I mean, I love that city too, but not sure it’s 16 years worth of awesome. I did find a foodie blog and a green travel blog tied to the city’s tourism efforts. Other finalists were New York City and Charleston.)
Best City in Asia: Bangkok, with official blogs by photographer Eugene Tang and a Traveller’s Blog (other finalists were Chiang Mai and Hong Kong.)
Best City in Europe: Florence (other finalists were Rome, Salzburg and Venice.)

Islands

Best Caribbean/Atlantic island: Bermuda (other finalists were St. Barts and St. John.)
Best Pacific Island: Maui (other finalists were Kauai and Bora Bora.)

Hotels

Best US hotel: The Peninsula Chicago (other finalists were the Elizabeth Pointe Lodge, Amelia Island FL and the Stephanie Inn, Cannon Beach OR.)
Best Asian hotel: The Oberoi Udaivilas, Rajasthan India (other finalists were the Peninsula Hong Kong and another Oberoi property, the Amarvilas in Agra, India.)

Resorts

Best Resort in Asia: Four Seasons Tented Camp Golden Triangle in Chiang Rai, Thailand (er, no, this is not really a camp for kids, and when I did a currency conversion of their rates from Thai baht into US dollars, I saw a figure of $2,152.89 per night, not including tax or tips. Wow.) Other finalists were the Four Seasons Bali at Sayan and the Oberoi Vanyavilas, Rajasthan.
Best Resort, Atlantic Ocean: The One&Only Ocean Club, Bahamas (with an annoying all-Flash Web site that drove me nuts auto-playing music and not providing distinct URLs for each property.) Other finalists include Pink Sands, Bermuda and The Reefs, Bermuda.
Best Resort, Mexico: A tie between the One&Only Palmilla and The Tides, Riviera Maya
(the other finalist was the JW Marriott Resort and Spa in Cancun.)
Best Resort, Caribbean: The Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman (other finalists were Curtain Bluff, Antigua and Petit St. Vincent Resort, Grenadines.)
Best Resort, Hawaii: The Four Seasons Maui at Wailea (other finalists were, um, two other Four Seasons properties….at this point I’m wondering, are there NO awesome places that aren’t chains? OK, it was the Four Seasons Hualalai on the Big Island and the Four Seasons Lana’i The Lodge at Koele.)

Cities

Islands

Hotels

Resorts

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