Conde Nast announces 15th annual Gold List.

This list is considered “must read” by many affluent types worldwide and is billed as the “ultimate annotated guide to the world’s finest properties and cruise lines, as elected by more than 32,000 Condé Nast Traveler readers.”

You can browse by destination, type of award (e.g., service, food, location, cruise lines) or alphabetically, where you can see all on the list. Wondering how they were picked? Well, here is a break down of the criteria utilized:

Entries include the edited comments of readers and are intended to reveal a property’s character rather than to catalog its facilities. Each score represents the percentage of respondents who rated a property excellent or very good on specific criteria (see “Key to Symbols,” below). For example, the first entry, the Boulders Resort & Golden Door Spa, in Carefree, Arizona, has an overall score of 87.5, the highest component of which is 90.2 percent for Activities. Criteria for hotels, resorts, and cruise lines vary. Rates ($, $$, $$$, and $$$$) reflect the average price for a double room in 2009. The Gold List is based on data collected from the annual Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Survey; to qualify for inclusion in these rankings, a property had to receive a required minimum number of responses.

~~Raine Devries