A survey developed by the editors of Travel + Leisure, in association with digital marketing firm Wylei, was made available at tlworldsbest.com/intl from November 2, 2015, to February 29, 2016. Readers were invited to participate through Travel + Leisure magazine, T+L tablet editions, newsletters, social media and travelandleisure.com. Wylei maintained, monitored, and kept the survey website secure, and also collected and tabulated the responses. To protect the integrity of the data, after the survey closed, Travel + Leisure and Wylei screened the responses to identify fraudulent votes, which were eliminated from the final result tallies.
Respondents were asked to rate airlines, airports, car-rental agencies, cities, cruise ships, destination spas, hotels, hotel brands, islands, tour operators, and safari outfitters on a number of characteristics (see right). For each characteristic, respondents could…