• Thailand’s cosmopolitan capital, Bangkok, earned a score of 86.56 and was ranked third in the 2007 Travel + Leisure World’s Best ‘Top 10 Cities Overall’. Bangkok maintained its leadership among the Top 10 Cities in Asia and the northern city of Chiang Mai, with a score of 84.12, ranked third.
  
  TOP 10 CITIES OVERALL

  Rank	2006	Name	Score
  1	1	Florence	86.90
  2	7	Buenos Aires	86.75
  3	3	Bangkok	86.56
  4	2	Rome	86.30
  5	4	Sydney	86.27
  6	8	New York	85.36
  7	n/a	Udaipur, India	85.12
  8	n/a	Istanbul	84.78
  9	10	San Francisco	84.60
  10	6	Cape Town	84.12

  Source: http://www.travelandleisure.com/worldsbest/2007/results.cfm?cat=cities
  
  TOP 10 CITIES IN ASIA
  

  Rank	2006	Name	Score
  1	1	Bangkok	86.56
  2	7	Udaipur, India	85.12
  3	2	Chiang Mai, Thailand	84.12
  4	10	Luang Prabang, Laos	83.99
  5	9	Jaipur, India	83.49
  6	4	Kyoto	83.24
  7	5	Hong Kong	81.25
  8	3	Kathmandu	80.72
  9	n/a	Siem Reap, Cambodia	80.23
  10	8	Beijing	79.80

  * "N/A" means that the property was not among the top-ranked in this category in 2006.
  
  
• The tropical island of Phuket, ‘Pearl of the Andaman’, with a score of 84.56 was eighth in the Top 10 islands overall, and second among Asia’s Top 3 islands.
  
  TOP 3 ISLANDS IN ASIA
  

  Rank	2006	Name	Score
  1	1	Bali	86.30
  2	2	Phuket, Thailand	84.56
  3	n/a	Maldives	80.00

  * "N/A" means that the property was not among the top-ranked in this category in 2006.
  
  
• Thai Airways International, the national carrier, ranked fifth in the World’s Best Top 10 International Airlines.
  
  
• In the 2007 World’s Best Top 100 Hotels category, The Oriental Bangkok, with a score of 94.23, shot into the Top 3 from the ninth slot in 2006. The Four Seasons in Chiang Mai, with a score of 91.90, was ranked nineteenth.
  
  TOP 100 HOTELS OVERALL

  Rank	2006	Name	Score
  3	9	The Oriental, Bangkok	94.23
  19	11	Four Seasons Resort, Chiang Mai, Thailand	91.90

  
  

• The following hotels in Thailand have helped maintained Thailand’s award-winning status for some of the finest accommodation in the region.

In the February and March 2007 issues of Travel + Leisure, subscribers were invited to participate. A select group of subscribers also received an invitation via e-mail. Travel + Leisure subscribers were asked to enter their complete name (as it appears on their mailing label), as well as their five-digit ZIP code, at tlworldsbest.com before completing the survey. Only those responses from subscribers whose personal information entered at tlworldsbest.com exactly matched Travel + Leisure’s subscriber file were counted in the final tally. Respondents were permitted to complete the survey only once.

To protect the integrity of the data, after March 27, 2007, respondents were screened by Travel + Leisure and responses from any identified travel-industry professionals who completed the survey were eliminated from the final tally. The survey Web site, tlworldsbest.com, was maintained, monitored, and kept secure by Harris Interactive, which collected and tabulated the responses and kept them confidential.

The scores are indexed averages of responses concerning applicable characteristics. Respondents were required to rate hotel spas on four characteristics; hotels, islands, airlines, destination spas, and rental-car agencies on five characteristics; and cities, cruise lines, and tour operators and safari outfitters on six characteristics (see below). In the 'hotel' category, respondents could also rate properties on additional optional characteristics; these ratings were not included in final scores. For each characteristic, respondents were asked to rate a candidate on a scale of 1 to 5, where '5' means excellent and '1' means poor. Required ratings were then averaged, creating an overall score. A minimum number of responses was necessary for a candidate to be eligible for inclusion in the World's Best Awards listings. Some companies were rated in both the 'cruise lines' and 'tour operators and safari outfitters' categories, and some properties were rated in both the 'destination spas' and 'hotel spas' categories. In both cases, companies and properties have different scores for each category.