NZ voted favourite place on earth

Many tourists are drawn to New Zealand by the scenery. File picture / Lake Wanaka Visitor Information

Readers of London's Daily Telegraph newspaper have voted New Zealand as their favourite place on earth, for the second year in a row.

More than 25,000 readers were polled in Britain's biggest survey of travel habits and the results were announced at the eighth Telegraph Travel Awards reception at the Royal Opera House in London.

The readers who named New Zealand as their favourite place, listed South Africa and Australia as their second and third choices.

Italy, placed ninth, was Europe's only representative in the top 10 -- yet only two years ago it was the first choice.

The Telegraph reported that this year's awards revealed a fundamental shift in the behaviour of the travelling public: where its readers were once content with Europe -- its cities, resorts, hotels and airports were regularly named as favourites -- they now looked much farther afield.

"Affection for New Zealand owes much to the spectacular box office success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was filmed there, but also to greater accessibility," the newspaper said.

Air fares had fallen to about £500 ($1265) and flight beds and a widening choice of stopover cities had made the long journey less daunting.

It said affluent UK travellers also thought nothing of spending long weekends as far away as Dubai, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Last year, Cape Town became the first non-European destination to be named favourite foreign city and retained the title this year, followed by Sydney.

Venice was the only European city to make the top seven. When it comes to hotels, flights and airports, readers voted for the style and service of the cities of southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. Two of the top five favourite foreign hotels, were in Bangkok and two in Singapore.

- NZPA