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Which luxury hotels in Latin America are readers clicking on the most? We just pulled up a report of our top-100 pages by traffic this year and there are a surprising number of luxury boutique hotels on the list.
Of course there’s nothing even slightly scientific about this: what’s popular on our site is not necessarily a reflection of the most popular luxury hotels overall or “the best” in any objective sense. Our traffic to individual hotel reviews can be driven by many things: a write-up in a magazine, a hotel being on TV, an ownership change, a published reader’s poll somewhere, or a link from another popular website.
Still, it’s interesting to take a look at which hotels are getting the most interest at different times. First, here are the top five most visited hotel pages on Luxury Latin America over a period of more than ten months this year. All of these were viewed more than 1,000 times by our readers.
- Cala de Mar (formerly Capella Ixtapa) in Mexico
- Hacienda del Mar in Panama
- El Secreto in Ambergris Caye, Belize
- Casa Polopo in Guatemala
- Hotel Casa San Agustine in Cartagena, Colombia
Then we had multiple luxury hotels showing up as a trend from specific countries.
Colombia Hot Hotels:
Tcherassi Hotel + Spa, Ananda Boutique Hotel, La Pasion Hotel, and Sofitel Santa Clara join Casa San Agustine in Cartagena. Plus Hacienda Buenavista and Hotel Sazagua in the Coffee region both appeared on the list.
Guatemala Popular Luxury Hotels
Lake Atitlan remains popular, with our reviews of Laguna Lodge and Lush Atitlan joining Casa Polopa above. Then in Antigua, Pensativo Hotel (formerly Casa Rosal), El Convento Hotel, and Casa Santo Domingo. Tragically, the popular La Reunion hotel and golf course was destroyed by a volcanic eruption this year and may never reopen.
La Lancha Hotel, one of Francis Ford Coppola’s three properties in the region, also made the most popular list, located on Lake Peten near Tikal.
Belize Top Luxury Hotels
Besides El Secreto mentioned earlier, Belize hotels Cayo Espanto, Las Terrazas, Matachica, and Phoenix Resort all showed up on our 100 most popular pages report, all of them on or near easily accessible Ambergris Caye.
Panama Favorites
Surprisingly, all the top Panama hotels on our list are outside the capital city: Laguna Azul Eco-lodge and Popa Paradise are in Bocas del Toro, while Hacienda del Mar mentioned at the top is in the Pearl Islands. Secrets Playa Bonita is a short drive away, however, on the other side of the Panama Canal.
A Few Other Top Hotels:
- A few random properties pulled ahead on their own, not as part of a cluster of popularity.
- Cuatro Cuatros glamping resort in Mexican wine country
- Lapostolle Residence in the Colchagua Valley of Chile
- Explora Patagonia in Chile
- Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica in Peru
- Garzon in Uruguay
- Sacha Lodge in the jungle area of Ecuador
This is quite a diverse list of hotels, resorts, and destinations!
A few observations from this list stick out to me. Colombia is clearly gaining a lot in popularity and is a “hot destination” these days. We are in the midst of adding several new reviews there in Bogota, Cartagena, and Santa Marta.
At the other end of the scale, a few that usually top the list from Nicaragua were strong at the beginning of the year, but have now taken a dive. (Mukul is actually closed until further notice, the owners waiting out the popular protests and brutal government crackdown.)
Our readers are clearly not the business road warrior types who prefer predictable chain hotels. Almost all of them on this list are independent properties or are part of some regional Latin American hotel chain. The one exception is the Secrets in Panama.
Source: luxurylatinamerica.com