Over 42,000 customers from 162 countries provided of 115,000 nominations in asia-hotels.com search for Asias best hotels. The Peninsula in Hong Kong received the most nominations to secure the Best Hotel in Asia award. The hotel also secured the websites Best Business Hotel in Asia award.

The Banyan Tree Phuket was voted Asias top resort whilst the top leisure hotel in Asia was the Oriental in Bangkok.

Our aim is to not just to identify the best hotels in the region but also to give credit to those hotels which are consistently rated highly by customers, commented Jon Stonham, CEO of asia-hotels.com. As part of the Customer Hotel Awards, asia-hotels.com is giving those hotels that scored highly on 8 criteria an accreditation of Highly Recommended or Recommended depending on their score. The criteria based on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 best) include value for money, child friendliness, staff attitude, cleanliness, facilities, location, and restaurants.

Only 183 hotels of the 3813 nominated from 24 countries received the Highly Recommended accreditation whilst 223 received Recommended. The accredited hotels can be found on asia-hotels.com website, www.asiahotels.com.

In the six years of running asia-hotels.com we have found some very good, small hotels nice family-type hotels that people like because they are quaint and friendly, stated Mr Stonham. They dont have huge facilities but offer an intimacy that people want, without the five-star prices. Many of these hotels have received accreditation in the 2002 awards because they are popular with customers. Small hotels such as the Lu Song Yuan in Beijing, the De Syloia in Hanoi, the Keong Saik in Singapore and Angkor Village in Siem Reap (Cambodia) all received accreditation in 2002.

The Customer hotel awards and travel habits 2002 survey results, a 75 page report on the findings, can be purchased for US$100 from marketing@asia-hotels.com. The report includes details on all the accredited hotels in 24 countries together with the travel habits and buying preferences of the customers who voted. Individual hotels can also get a full set of data from the survey for their hotel by contacting the same e-mail address. The reports can also be purchased online at http://www.asiahotels.com.