Today we have begun a tradition here at TravelGround.com. We are giving awards to our most popular accommodations of 2009, and we will be awarding them every year from now on.

Choosing the winners

Since TravelGround opened only 6 months ago we have received almost 250,000 page views and thousands of accommodation enquiries, bookings and reviews. To choose the winners we simply calculated which accommodation establishments drew the most attention, potential bussiness and completed business in each region.

So, in truth we didn’t choose the winners – our users did!

The prize

Each winner has received a custom badge made for their website. Below we have a sample of the Award that was designed in-house here at TravelGround.com.

A sample of what each of the awards will look like in full
A sample of what each of the awards will look like when displayed in full

And the winners are…

We have 35 winners of TravelGround’s Most Popular Accommodation Awards for 2009. Each award is for a distinct region of South Africa. Click on any of the awards below to see the winner’s page on TravelGround.com.

You can have fun trying to figure out what the winner’s might have in common. You will quickly realise that the winners have extremely varied accommodations – from price ranges to star-gradings to service. Yet the specific prospects of each property drew guests to that page more than any in the surrounding region, and then prompted them to action. If you can figure out the pattern, please let us know! 🙂