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 for the first half of this year. The favorite luxury resorts are all over the map and there are a surprising number of luxury boutique hotels on the list.
We will freely admit that 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 hotel reviews are getting the most interest at different times. Here are the top 20 most visited hotel pages on Luxury Latin America online magazine over the first five months of this year. All of these were viewed hundreds of times by our readers.
Mari Mari Natural Reserve Experience on the northern Patagonia coast of Chile
W Costa Rica in Central America
JW Marriott Panama City, Panama
La Casa de la Playa Adult All-Inclusive Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Le Blanc Adult All-Inclusive Resort in Cancun, Mexico
Westin Playa Bonita near Panama City, Panama
Buenaventura Autograph Collection Resort, Rio Hata, Panama
W Punta de Mita north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Mira Earth Studios Hotel in Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico
Waldorf-Astoria Cancun in Mexico
Casa Bocana in Huatulco, Mexico
American Trade Hotel in Panama City, Panama
Four Seasons Punta Mita, north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Royal Hideaway Playacar near Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Anavilhanas in the Amazon River region of Brazil
Hotel Fasano Las Piedras in Uruguay
Amaniah Boutique Resort on Lake Bacalar, Mexico
Explora Rapa Nui, Easter Island, Chile
Kula Maya Hotel on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
That’s quite a bit of variety among those 20 hotels. All of these were in our top-60 pages overall but reflect a lot of different countries and types of destinations.
Hot Hotel Trends on Luxury Latin America:
Among all that variety on the list, there were a few trends that stuck out. The most obvious one is that Panama is becoming a lot more popular with our luxury travel readers, especially for Panama City. A few properties bubbling under that top-20 above were the new Sofitel Casco Viejo and the recently reviewed W Panama City.
A few other reviews for fairly new properties were popular as well, including Susurros del Corazon by Auberge in Punta de Mita and the new Kimpton in Mexico City.
Mexico continues to be quite popular with our readers, likely in part that it’s so easy to get to and in part by the biggest selection of luxury resorts in Latin America. Everything we’ve covered in the Punta de Mita region is popular, including the recently revamped St. Regis Punta Mita, plus the new Four Seasons at Costa Palmas resort in Baja got a lot of buzz on its FS Costa Palmas review page and here on the blog where we posted a video tour.
We had a few unlikely ones show up for Mexico though, like a boutique hotel in Huatulco and a wine region lodge in Baja California.
Belize is Popular Overall
Our #3 page overall on the magazine size is Belize Luxury Resorts and Hotels. An easy hop from North America and boasting warm waters and air temps all year, Belize remains a popular choice with the readers of Luxury Latin America. It’s the only English-speaking country we cover too.
What’s interesting though is while private island resort Cayo Espanto is the most-read review on the site, a dozen others are close behind. From Ambergris Caye to the jungle lodges to Placencia, the whole country of Belize seems to get relatively equal interest. It probably helps that you can find an easy prop flight to wherever you need to go in the country and there’s not much traffic when you do need to hit the road.
Of course many visitors come to explore the islands, where you can kayak, snorkel, or dive near the second-longest coral reef in the world.
Our readers are clearly not the business road warrior types who prefer predictable chain hotels. While you see a few properties affiliated with Marriott, Four Seasons, or Waldorf-Astoria on the list, they’re in the minority. Almost all of them on this list are independent properties or are part of some regional Latin American hotel chain.
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