The world’s a big place. Even if you dedicate your life to it (and plenty do), you’ll never be able to see it all, so you need to choose where to travel wisely. Luckily, the annual World Travel Awards are dedicated to telling you exactly where is worth your time.
The awards, whose mission is to ‘acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all sectors of the global travel and tourism industry’, have been going for more than thirty years now. Launched in 1993, the WTAs are now seen as ‘the ultimate hallmark of industry excellence’ – aka the Oscars of tourism.
Six world regions are recognised by the awards: Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and North America. Each area has its own winners in a bunch of categories, ranging from ‘Leading City Break’ all the way to ‘Leading Airport Hotel’.
The competition is, of course, fierce. That’s why it’s so impressive that one city in South America managed to bag three awards: Leading City Break, Leading Beach Destination and Leading Festival & Event Destination.
That’s right: Rio de Janeiro is pretty much the greatest place to visit on the continent this year.
And we can’t really say we’re surprised. Rio is known for its iconic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, its annual Carnival and, generally, for being a huge, exciting city with a diverse population, meaning there’s plenty of local culture to explore.
Rio is also home to Brazil’s Leading Hotel, according to the WTAs: the Belmond-owned Copacabana Palace.
You can discover the full list of winners from South America on the World Travel Awards’ website now.
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