By IANS
New Delhi : The Oberoi Udaivilas luxury hotel in Udaipur has been ranked the best hotel in the world with an overall score of 94.36 in the prestigious Travel + Leisure World's Best Awards 2007 readers' survey, it was announced Wednesday.
To arrive at the rankings, hotels across the world were evaluated on characteristics ranging from accommodation and service to location.
The survey also ranked Oberoi Amarvilas at Agra as the 10th best hotel in the world and Oberoi Rajvilas at Jaipur one step behind.
Nancy Novogrod, editor-in-chief of Travel + Leisure said: "This year's results underline (our) readers' ever-increasing embrace of global travel in their search for distinctive and authentic experiences.
"The extraordinary rise of India among the top hotels and resorts in the world is one sure reflection of this tendency, with Oberoi Udaivilas ranking number one hotel in the world and Oberoi Amarvilas and Oberoi Rajvilas coming in at 10 and 11 overall," she added.
Oberoi group chairman P.R.S. Oberoi said: "This is a significant landmark for Indian tourism and will further encourage tourists to visit the country".
The Oberoi group operates 32 properties in five countries.
Travel + Leisure has a circulation of approximately one million.
For the survey, a questionnaire developed by the editors of Travel + Leisure in association with Harris Interactive, was made available to subscribers on the Internet during the first quarter of the year.
Respondents reported where they had travelled worldwide and rated only the destinations, properties and companies that were relevant to their recent travel experiences.
Respondents were asked to rate hotels, cities, islands, spas, hotel spas, tour operators, safari outfitters, cruise lines, airlines and car rental companies on several characteristics. The final scores are indexed averages of responses concerning applicable characteristics.