Travel & Leisure readers favorite family resorts

[DancingBear]

I don't remember seeing this here--I apologize Sara if I missed it, but:

Disney placed 5 hotels in the top 7 and 9 in the top 16 in a poll of Travel & Leisure magazine readers of their favorite family resorts.

http://www.travelandleisure.com/family/invoke.cfm?objectID=9BA82B30-A3A9-4199-9BAE1E0961CE44BF

[KNWVIKING]

I'm surprised Poly came in so low....even more surprised it finished behind the GF. I picture the Poly as being more family friendly then GF.

[DancingBear]

I used to subscribe to T&L and it was definitely more focused on "luxury" travel, so my guess is its readership skews toward the GF for that reason.

[Bstanley]

Oh my...Wilderness Lodge #3 and Animal Kingdom Lodge #4!, far above The Polynesian...

Don't let certain midwestern minor royalty see these results - or we'll all get a lecture about what snow-globe blinded brand monkeys we are.

FYI on the methodology used: the magazine had an online questionaire developed and a subset of their subscribers were given the opportunity to rate resorts using the web. Only one review per person per site. Known travel agents/etc were not invited to participate so the results were supposed to represent 'real folk'.

[WebmasterCricket]

How can it be a survey on how well they cater to families when "for families" was an optional characteristic that was not calculated in the final total.

For hotels: rooms/facilities, location, service, restaurants/ food, value.

Just on "location" alone pretty much allows them to dominate.

[WebmasterCricket]

It starts out like this which is how the results are labeled:
Methodology
Return to main article

Rankings are based on reader evaluations collected in Travel + Leisure's 2004 World's Best Awards survey. Readers were given the option to rate resorts on how well they cater to families, using a scale of 1 to 5, where "5" means excellent and "1" means poor. In the event of a tie, resorts share a ranking. For the full survey methodology, see www.travelandleisure.com/worldsbest.


Which links to this, which is what they really did:


The scores are indexed averages of responses concerning applicable characteristics. Respondents were required to rate hotels, islands, and airlines on five characteristics; and cities, cruise lines, and tour operators 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.

These were the categories and characteristics:
· For hotels: rooms/facilities, location, service, restaurants/ food, value. Optional: for business, for families.


I believe the menu this evening has roasted scam as the main course with Key Lie Pie for desert.

JC

[DancingBear]

Not sure what your criticism is, Mr. Cricket. The way I read this, the "full survey methodology" refers to the methodology used to create their 2004 Worlds Best Awards (for all types of hotels, and for islands and airlines). The family responses were not included in the final scores for the overall awards (because they were optional), but they were the basis for these family resorts results.

No Disney hotels cracked the top 100 of T&L's overall worldwide hotel rankings:

http://www.travelandleisure.com/worldsbest/results.cfm?cat=hotels

[WebmasterCricket]

That seems to be correct. This particular grouping looks to be a subset of that bigger survey with the family question possibly being the only criteria considered.

I originally saw it as "We asked question A, but here is a set of results from something that has nothing to do with question A. In fact, we specifically excluded question A from the results"

Oddly, the mag is owned by American Express, which seems to further disprove my point.

I've been wrong before and I can say with 100% certainty I will be wrong again (probably will happen before lunch) so take my yammering with a grain of salt. I just hate survey's that twist results and say things they want them to say, which happens all the time.