Forbes Traveler has come up with a list of their 2008 list of 400 of the world’s best hotels and resorts, based on seven criterias including service, room & bathroom, decor, food & beverage, public areas & facilities, sports & recreation, and location. You can see the full and 300 word reviews for each property in the list here - www.forbestraveler.com/forbes400

A board of 79 luxury travel experts participated in the selection of the 400 properties that comprise the list, including Peter Greenberg, travel editor of  ”The Today Show” on NBC; John Mariani, food and travel columnist at Esquire; Erik Blachford, CEO of TerraPass, Inc.; Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet Publications; Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso; George Morgan-Grenville, CMO of Abercrombie & Kent; Todd English, chef/restaurateur and Rocco DiSpirito, chef/author; and Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.

I went in expecting to find a ranked list of 400 hotels. Not so. They broke up the 400 hotels into geographical categories, without ranking any of them. So, basically, what you have is a list of 400 very good hotels - the world’s best, but you won’t be able to tell which ones are the first among equals.

So, there’s a list of the best New York hotels, which includes The Carlyle, Four Seasons Hotel, Gansevoort, Mandarin Oriental, The Mercer, both Ritz Carlton’s in Battery Park and Central Park, St. Regis, Trump International, Hotel Plaza Athenee, The Lowell, and The Peninsula. But they don’t tell you which is the best of the lot. Photo courtesy & copyrights - Gansevoort Hotel Group.

Forbes’ explanation for this letdown isn’t really convincing, but its understandable. The Forbes Traveler 400 is more than a horse race between the world’s best hotels. It’s a valuable resource for trip-planning. Our reviews are comprehensive, up-to-date and as bias-free as we can make them. For every hotel, we reviewed the rooms, service and overall experience, and also presented the particular highlights that define a property. Having a personal butler, for example, isn’t necessary for some travelers; they want to know about the Michelin-starred restaurant or world-class spa. 

Understandable, yes, but still a letdown because they’re touting it as a list, which by definition needs to be ranked. Otherwise its just a bunch of hotel reviews. Good reviews of great hotels no doubt, but still not a ranked list. Which is, not to put to fine a point on it, what one expects when you read the title.

Posted on October 15th, 2008 by PLing
Filed under: Hotels