Thursday, November 27, 2008

UK paper readers vote Cape Town “Best World City”


The Telegraph Travel Awards for 2008 were released today and New Zealand, Australia and South Africa were voted the readers’ “favourite destinations on earth”; while their favourite cities were voted as Cape Town, San Francisco, Sydney and Vancouver.

The Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town was named one of the favourite city hotels in the world to visit.

More than 25,000 readers were polled in Britain’s biggest survey of travel habits and an overwhelming 92 per cent of them maintain that the financial crisis will not affect their choice of holiday destinations. 96 per cent of the readers polled refuse to downgrade their holiday accommodation.


The readers’ favourite destinations (outside of Europe) can be identified as ones where the pound has strengthened against the respective foreign currencies in the past year (the Australian and New Zealand dollars, and the South African rand).


The Telegraph readers’ holiday budget remains high – more than half of the readers polled spent more than £1,000 (R15,220) on their last holiday: one in six spent between £2,500 (R38,000) and £5,000 (R76,000) and one in twenty spent more than £5,000 (R76,000).


“As Britain enters a new winter of discontent, taking a break may never feel more needed, but the value for money it provides will be scrutinised like never before,” said Charles Starmer-Smith. “This is why, during belt-tightening times, readers return to destinations they know – namely, the English-speaking former colonies.”