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The 10 Best Resorts in Italy, According to Travel + Leisure Readers

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5 months ago

July 9, 2024

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The 10 Best Resorts in Italy, According to Travel + Leisure Readers

Whether your Italian vacation consists of an afternoon with a spritz overlooking Lake Como or a morning beneath a striped parasol on the Amalfi Coast, one thing is for sure: Italy is hard to beat when it comes to the idyllic resort vacation. From Positano to Taormina to Como, our readers have much love for Italian resorts, particularly those on the water.

How Voting Works

Every year for our World’s Best Awards survey, T+L asks readers to weigh in on travel experiences around the globe — to share their opinions on the top hotels, resorts, cities, islands, cruise ships, spas, airlines, and more. Over 186,000 T+L readers completed the 2024 survey. A total of more than 700,000 votes were cast across over 8,700 properties (hotels, cities, cruise lines, etc.).

Hotels were classified as either resort hotel, city hotel, inn, or safari lodge based on their location and amenities, and they were specifically rated on the criteria below:

Rooms/facilities
Location
Service
Food
Value

For each characteristic, respondents could choose a rating of excellent, above average, average, below average, or poor. The final scores are averages of these responses.

Courtesy of Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

What Readers Loved

Readers directed their Italian passions all over the boot this year. Two properties on Lake Como took top slots, with the Mandarin Oriental, Lago di Como rising from the No. 9 rank in 2023 to No. 3 in 2024. Lake Como’s Grand Hotel Tremezzo is a return contender (No. 6), as is the Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, in Montalcino (it retains its No. 4 position and is, as one T+L reader put it, a “one-of-a-kind property”). On the Amalfi Coast, Il San Pietro di Positano won readers’ hearts again, though it fell from No. 5 to No. 9. There were some additions this year, like Grand Hotel Timeo, a Belmond Hotel, in Sicily’s Taormina, a property described by one surveyor simply as “the Art of Belmond,” as well as Borgo Egnazia, in the seaside town of Savelletri di Fasano, in Puglia.

But this year, the No. 1 winner was Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, in Sorrento, a 190-year-old property that was voted No. 10 last year. For the full list, read on.

The Winner

Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, Sorrento, Italy

Courtesy of Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

Founded by the Fiorentino family in 1834, this 5th-generation, family-owned property offers guests everything they could want and more from coastal Italy: superlative dining, historic charm, and, naturally, an unparalleled view of the water. Readers loved the “glorious gardens with sculptures,” the “attentive service,” and “the most elegant buffet breakfast anywhere.” One T+L reader called the hotel the “most gorgeous property in Sorrento.” Again and again, travelers referenced the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria’s beauty. As one reader put it, “it is exquisite.”