TRAVEL AWARDS:THE TRAVEL AWARDS were flying around this week, with Irish destinations reaching the top. The Ritz-Carlton brand was voted the best in TripAdvisor's seventh annual Travelers' Choice Awards, followed closely by the Four Seasons.
The Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt, in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, has just launched a “bicycle concierge” service. Stay at the hotel, with its golf course, spa and Gordon Ramsay restaurant, and you can bike your way around Co Wicklow.
Gregans Castle Hotel, in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, is another winner. The international incognito critic Andrew Harper named it one of his top 10 hotels of the year. In the past it has won Georgina Campbell’s Hideaway of the Year award, the AA Courtesy and Care award and a Good Food Ireland best-member award, as well as making it on to the Hot List of The Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland 2009.
Harper has spent the past 30 years writing monthly reports for high-end US travellers, always travelling incognito and paying his own way, to ensure that his reviews are unbaised. Gregans Castle is the only Irish destination to make his 2009 list. No Irish hotel made the list in 2008. As Harper’s 2009 list includes the Four Seasons in Florence and Six Senses Hideaway Yao Noi, in Thailand, Gregans Castle is in good company.
Georgina Campbell has chosen Dromoland Castle Hotel Country Estate, also in Co Clare, as her hotel of the year and Renvyle House Hotel, in Co Galway, as her family-friendly hotel of the year.
- Three Go contributors were named travel writers of the year at the Travel Extra awards last weekend. Deirdre McQuillan won in the winter-sun category, for her feature on St Lucia; Laurence Mackin won the short-breaks category, for his article on Warsaw; and Mal Rogers won in the ski category, for a piece on Kandersteg
