ReviewPro has done the gruntwork, parsing 839,593 online guest reviews of 1,692 properties published during 2013 to determine the top luxury hotels worldwide.
This is the first annual report on the State of the Review, dubbed the Top Luxury Hotel & Brand Report. The company released the rankings after parsing its Global Review Index, or GRI, which ranks online reputation and guest satisfaction scores for hotels.
The report analyzed 84 brands on all five continents, and found that the number of reviews of these luxury brands jumped 35% over 2012.
Hotels were grouped into three categories, with large brands being those with more than 20 properties, smaller brands and finally individual hotels.
And the top-rated luxury hotels are...
Oberoi Hotel & Resorts takes top honors for large brands, followed closely by the Four Seasons and the Belmond. Constance, Capella and Montage are the leaders in the smaller brand category, while the best rated individual properties are the Palacio Nazerans (Orient-Express) in Cusco, the UK's Northern Belle and Rosewood's Jumby Bay in Antigua.
Movement among the brands showed that Orient Express, Jaz Hotels and Kempinkski Hotels moved significantly upwards in their online reputation scores in 2013.
As far as websites driving reviews, the gorilla garnered the most: TripAdvisor is the #1 review source in 2013.
Booking.com and Ctrip were the next two popular sites, showing the sheer force of both of those travel brands internationally and in China. After English,Chinese, German, French and Japanese were the most common languages for reviews.
The breakdown as far as scores on the Global Review Index is as follows.
Large brands:
- Oberoi Hotels - 94.7%
- Four Seasons - 92.3%
- Orient Express - 92.1%
- Park Hyatt - 91.3%
- Taj Hotels - 91.0%
Small brands:
- Constance Hotels - 93.7%
- Capella Hotels - 93.6%
- Montage Hotels - 93.0%
- Firmdale Hotels - 93.0%
- Andaz Hotels - 92.8%
- Raffles Hotels - 92.6%
Top individual luxury hotels:
- Palacio Nazarenas, Orient-Express, Cusco - 99.2%
- Northern Belle, Orient-Express - 98.4%
- A Rosewood Resort, Jumby Bay - 98.2%
- The Oberoi Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore - 98.2%
- Four Seasons Tented Camp, Golden Triangle - 98.0%
ReviewPro dropped this all into an infographic, breaking down specific areas of performance for luxury hotel brands.
The full report can be downloaded here.
NB: Lagoon dock image courtesy Shutterstock.