According to the final list of nominees released by the World Travel Awards, widely considered as the Oscars of tourism, the Algarve is joined by the usual suspects of Cannes (France), Corfu (Greece), Mallorca and Marbella (Spain), Sardinia (Italy) and Oludeniz in Turkey. Voting will take place online until the 26 July and is open to the public via worldtravelawards.com/vote.
The winners will be revealed in Sardinia on 9 September.
The Algarve has previously won the award in 2012 and 2013.
In last year’s World Travel Awards Portugal almost doubled the number of gongs it took, moving up from nine in 2013 to sixteen in 2014.
Portugal was in 2014 nominated for an award in 40 different categories and won 16 of them, including Europe’s Leading Cruise Destination and Leading Cruise Port, both of which were scooped by Lisbon.
Madeira took the title of best holiday islands, while national flag-carrier TAP was awarded a gong for the European airline with the best connections to Africa and South America.
Portugal’s national tourist board Turismo de Portugal won Europe’s Leading Tourist Board category, and the Bairro Alto Hotel took the title of Europe’s Leading Landmark Hotel.
The Algarve took more than half of the gongs with nine of Portugal’s sixteen prestigious trophies going to that region, five of them in European categories, and four accolades at a national level.
In this year’s nominations, 71 are from Portugal, with 44 of these in the Algarve, which include Best Hotel, Best Resort and Best Beach Resort.