Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, TripAdvisor, T+L and many others all have lists of their best hotels for 2010, and we’ve been quite happy to blog about it whenever someone comes out with a new list.

The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota

But there’s no reason why you should have to look around for these lists individually, when you can have access to the bestest of the best. Here’s a list of the top 5 such ‘best hotel’ lists, with the top 5 hotels from each list listed alongside.

Expedia Insiders’ Select – Expedia reviewed more than 114,000 hotels and resorts worldwide, giving each one a numerical score. Only the best ones made it into the list.

Among US hotels, the top 5 in Expedia’s Insiders’ Select 2010 list are the Drury Inn Indianapolis, Staybridge Suites Minneapolis-Bloomington, Epic Hotel Miami, The Wort Hotel Jackson Hole, and The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota.

Orbitz Best in Stay Awards – This list is based on reviews from customers who actually booked a stay at the property in question. The Best in Stay winners are those who earned top scores on a scale of 1 to 5 for service, amenities, comfort, location and value.

The top 5 US hotels that won Orbitz’s Best in Stay 2010 awards are the Royal Palms Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, The Island Hotel Newport Beach, Pacific Terrace Hotel in San Diego, and the Omni San Francisco.

Eliot Hotel, Boston

Priceline – Priceline has a list of the best hotels for every city, based on 2.5 million reviews from Priceline hotel guests.

While the entire list has not been published, they did list the top Priceline hotel for each of 10 US cities, out of which these are the first 5 – The Ritz-Carlton New York Battery Park, Palazzo in Las Vegas, The Eliot Suite Hotel Boston, Conrad Chicago, and Le Meridien San Francisco.

TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice - Lists the top hotels worldwide for 2010, as per TripAdvisor users. Here’s the top 5 out of the top 25 US hotels - Inn New York City, Elan Hotel in Los Angeles, The Talbott Hotel in Chicago, Four Seasons Philadelphia and the Grand Hyatt DFW. 

Halekulani , Waikiki Beach

Travel + Leisure 500 - Lists the top 500 hotels in the world for 2010, based on votes cast by T+L readers. For US listings, they only have the top few hotels in each state listed, but not the overall winners for the US.

Thankfully, each hotel has been assigned a rating, so it was easy to go through the list and find the top 5 US hotels – Inn at Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, Eliot Hotel in Boston, Watermark Hotel & Spa in San Antonio, London West Hollywood, and Halekulani in Honolulu.

One last thing – there’s only one hotel which appears in the top 5 in more than one list - The Eliot in Boston. 

Photos: Ritz – hyku; Halekulani – Alan Light; Eliot – Eliot Hotel

My brother-in-law and his wife are expecting their first child at the end of May. It’s the first grandchild on both sides, so the whole family is pretty “over the moon” about it.

The happy couple have been talking about a different kind of moon — a babymoon, which is an often romantic trip that expectant parents take near the due date (although not too near!) You could call it a last hurrah before the baby arrives and distracts them from everything else, including each other, for the next 18 years.

Of course they asked me for hotel recommendations, and of course I had some! Here are my top 5 ideas for a fabulous Northern California (no flying so close to the due date) pre-baby weekend getaway, moving from South to North: Read More »