No doubt about it now, Cape Town is the best

Matt van Onselen - 9 May 2011

The Victoria and Albert Waterfront with Table Mountain in the background. Photo courtesy <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waterfront_panorama.jpg'>Damien du Toit/Wikipedia</a>

The Victoria and Albert Waterfront with Table Mountain in the background. Photo courtesy Damien du Toit/Wikipedia

It’s official: Cape Town is the number one tourist destination in the world! And this hasn’t been decided by a select few, but by TripAdvisor, the customer-driven travel advisory website. Cape Town was voted the Number One Destination of the Top 25 Destinations in the World in the 2011 Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards.

TripAdvisor relies on the experiences of the public to rate destinations, hotels, and a whole host of other areas relating to travel. There’s no way to cheat, bribe or inaccurately influence the ratings on the website because it works on a peer-review basis. With this reputation behind it, being crowned the number one destination in the world is an achievement that can be taken seriously.

Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold says that it is an honour for Cape Town to receive such an award, and that it comes as a result of the Cape Town brand taking up the challenge presented by other tourist destinations around the world.

“Cape Town tells an authentic story and captures the hearts and imaginations of a world bombarded with choice and homogeneity,” she says. “The Mother City is iconic, complex and multi-faceted. As much as there is beauty, there is diversity and personality.”

Other cities that made the Top 5 included Sydney, Machu Picchu and Rio de Janeiro, but none of them could quite match the interest generated by the city on the southern point of Africa.