American Travel Surveys Reveal Expensive Tastes

Here are some places we traveling Americans like, in spite of--or perhaps because of--their prices:

* Las Ventanas al Paraiso, an ultra-luxe 61-room Mexican hotel at the southern tip of Baja California. Opened in 1997. Brochure rates: $350 and up.

* The Lodge at Koele, a 102-room golf-adjacent resort on a former pineapple plantation on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Brochure rates: $400 and up.

* New York and San Francisco.

* The beachfront Four Seasons hotels on Maui (the Four Seasons Hualalai) and the Big Island of Hawaii (the Four Seasons Wailea). Brochure rates: $475 and up at Hualalai, $310 and up at Wailea.

Exactly why we like these places and who likes them most is harder to say. We’re talking about informal survey results, not rock-solid scientific data. Still, in the latest trio of travel polls, the names above were among the high scorers.

One set of poll results is from the Zagat (pronounced “Za-GAT”) survey, the outfit best known for the restaurant reviews it began compiling in 1979. It expanded to hotels in 1987. In November, Zagat completed a biannual survey seeking the best-loved lodgings in the United States. (The resulting 268-page paperback, “Top U.S. Hotels, Resorts & Spas,” costs $12.95.)

Zagat’s world: The company’s list of 50 most-favored hotels runs heavily toward the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton brands. Among the 11 U.S. hotels that scored 28 of a possible 30 on the Zagat scale, one finds the Four Seasons hotels of New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Beverly Hills and Philadelphia, along with the Ritz-Carltons of Buckhead (Atlanta) and San Francisco. Among the other top scorers: the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, the Peninsula of Los Angeles and the Windsor Court Hotel of New Orleans.

The Four Seasons Hualalai and Wailea hotels and the Lodge at Koele were Zagat’s three top-ranked resorts in America.

Zagat respondents chose New York as the “best U.S. city to visit.” It drew 33% of the vote, beating San Francisco (30%), New Orleans (5%), Chicago (5%) and Boston (3%), among others--though Zagat’s people reported spending $261.35 per night on lodging in New York, more than anywhere else in the country.

Survey skeptics will ask: Who are these Zagat contributors? And what are their qualifications?

The answer: They are volunteers, and their willingness to participate is all Zagat asks. In some cases--about 900--respondents are travel agents who were encouraged by the publishers to pitch in. But the selling point for many Zagat followers is the populist nature of the exercise; most of the respondents are not professionals in the travel field, and chances are they got “ordinary” treatment.

Tim and Nina Zagat, a husband-and-wife team of attorneys, began their surveying as a sideline more than two decades ago and built it into a large enterprise. They say there were nearly 20,000 contributors on this edition, up from 13,000 in 1998. Among this year’s crop, about half were 40 to 59 years old, and about a quarter were in their 30s. Only 15% were older than 60, and 12% were younger than 30.

The surveys indicate a fair amount of road time--on average, respondents logged 30 hotel nights per year--and a preference for the sort of upscale lodgings a traveling executive might frequent. Each hotel’s overall score is the combined result of separate assessments of rooms, service, dining and public spaces/facilities. (For some of the most-visited hotels, the Zagats note, as many as 265 different travelers’ experiences went into the lodgings’ numerical ranking.)

Meanwhile, the two heaviest hitters among glossy travel magazines have completed their annual anointing of favorites. Travel & Leisure polled readers for its September issue; Conde Nast Traveler did the same for its November and January editions.

There’s not a lot of information available about the voters in these polls. Conde Nast says it counted 25,998 respondents; Travel & Leisure doesn’t say. But whoever they are, it’s clear these readers have expensive tastes.

The Conde Nast results: San Francisco was the favorite U.S. city, besting New Orleans; Charleston, S.C.; Santa Fe, N.M.; and, in fifth place, New York. (L.A. did not place in the top 10.) The magazine has been polling readers since 1988. On Conde Nast’s 100-point scale, San Francisco scored 83.1.

Among foreign cities, Conde Nast readers liked Sydney, Australia, best. Among tropical islands, they liked Maui. Among Latin American resorts, they liked Las Ventanas al Paraiso.

In fact, Las Ventanas, rated 89.7, outscored all other resorts in the continental U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. But it was surpassed (at least in the estimation of Conde Nast readers) by the Lodge at Koele, which scored 93.1 under the category of Pacific Rim Resorts, and by the Four Seasons Maui at Wailea, which scored 90.6. For further evidence that the world of ultra-luxe hotels is small, look at the next runner-up in Conde Nast’s Pacific Rim category: It’s our old friends at the Four Seasons Hualalai on Hawaii’s Big Island, with 87.4.

Among European resorts, Conde Nast readers liked Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland; among Asian resorts, the Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay in Bali, Indonesia; among Asian hotels, the Regent in Bangkok.

The Travel & Leisure results: At Travel & Leisure magazine, which has been polling readers for six years, the favorite city worldwide is San Francisco, followed by New York and London. (Los Angeles is absent again.) The favorite island: Maui, followed by Bermuda and Kauai.

Among lodgings worldwide, top finisher (for the second year in a row) was the Oriental in Bangkok. It scored 89.9 on the magazine’s 100-point scale, finishing just ahead of Amandari in Bali, Indonesia, and the Lodge at Koele (the top vote-getter in Hawaii).

T&L; readers’ top hotel in the continental U.S. and Canada was the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla. In Latin America, they favored Las Mananitas (Cuernavaca, Mexico) and ranked Las Ventanas at No. 5.

*

Christopher Reynolds welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012 or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.