According to the Telegraph Travel Awards 2012, Cape Town was chosen by readers as the favorite world-wide city and New Zealand was voted the best country world-wide. These two destinations were chosen based on seafront, cuisine, and climate. Telegraph polled over 17,000 different readers about their favorite companies and travel destinations, and the British newspaper announced the awards recently.
Italy won for the second consecutive year as best European country. Iceland came in second, mainly thanks to cheaper flights between the country and UK through cheaper airline easyJet. Norway pulls the big surprise in third place, as France doesn't make the cut for the first time since the inception of the awards 15 years ago.
The Maldives and South Africa respectively were voted the best world-wide countries after New Zealand came in first. There wasn't a huge change when it came to favorite world-wide city. Cape Town, who won this year, was last year's runner-up. Vancouver came in second, and the winner from last year, New York, came in third.
Edinburgh, who was runner-up last year won best UK city, and York and Bath followed in second and third. London didn't even make the cut, the city that was host to the Olympic Games and who had the most votes last year. Voters also cast ballots for favorite travel company based upon 16 different categories, such as service, efficiency and value.
Another British daily newspaper called the Guardian published its own version of the Reader's Travel Awards. The results were based upon 20 categories including best European country, best UK city, and best UK hotel. Readers chose some of the winners, and then Guardian editors chose the rest.
Guardian reported Edinburgh, Bath, and York in that order as best UK cities. The readers selected Tokyo as their favorite overseas travel destination city. San Francisco came in second place, and Seville, Spain came in third.