When I joined Traveler in the fall of 2019, approximately 27 years ago, the magazine was just coming out with its 32nd annual Readers' Choice Awards. Times were good, travel was booming, and Singapore Airlines was ranked as the best in the world, as it had been so many times before. Then, as you are probably aware, the world changed.
What I think is wonderful about this year's RCAs is that they're the most “normal” edition we've had since I've been here. Yes, COVID-19 is still a threat, and travel faces other challenges, including the ongoing flight cancellations and airport snarls stemming from the global gyrations of the past three years. But you all are most definitely out there and traveling again, in a way that just wasn't possible during the last two years of voting. And clearly you've been refamiliarizing yourself with the hits: You still love Singapore—both the airline, which retains its top spot, and the city, which has also climbed to No. 1. In the States, Chicago is still ranked the best big city and Charleston, South Carolina, the best small one.
But you've also been patronizing new classics: The Rosewood Villa Magna, the centerpiece of a wave of exciting development in Madrid over the last couple of years, topped the Spain list, and The Tasman, a Luxury Collection Hotel, which opened last December in the heart of Hobart, Tasmania, did the same in Australia. Other spectacular properties that debuted in the months before the pandemic, like the Fife Arms in Scotland and the Rosewood Hong Kong, also paced their categories. We love what we love, but the world of travel is dynamic and ever-changing: Whether it's a time-tested favorite or a new kid on the block, there's always something fresh to discover.
You can—and should—peruse the Readers' Choice Awards here at cntraveler.com, but in my view there is no better way to experience the list and the many stories we have to tell about these destinations than in the pages of the magazine, which offers a singular kind of immersion into all that is both timely and timeless in travel. We have many beautiful, smart, and arresting features in the works for 2023. I encourage you to subscribe to the print edition to learn, get inspired, dream a little, and decide where you want to go—then head over to cntraveler.com to start the work of planning and booking your next trip.
This article appeared in the November 2022 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.