Two Siem Reap hotels were celebrating this week after receiving big international accolades.The Shinta Mani Resort was a winner in TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards for 2016, being ranked as the second best hotel in the world.

“This places the Kingdom of Cambodia in the spotlight and [in relation to the TripAdvisor award] into 274 newspapers worldwide for positive reasons,” said Christian de Boer, general manager of Shinta Mani Resort and Club hotels.  

“It is a massive boost in our efforts to change the image of Cambodia and to make it a ‘must visit’ destination, not only for the amazing temples of Angkor but also because of the fantastic Khmer people.”

Meanwhile, the Amansara Resort was named by London’s Telegraph newspaper as one of their picks for the 50 best hotels in the world. 

“To have Siem Reap and Cambodia mentioned twice in these awards with both Shinta Mani and Amansara certainly makes for a terrific impression,” said Sally Baughen, the general manager of Amansara, adding that: “It helps both independent travellers and travel industry companies to focus on where to go to next.”

Both hotels were assessed according to very different criteria. For Shinta Mani Resort, the award was determined based upon the millions of reviews theTrip-Advisor site receives every year.

Meanwhile, Amansara, in a list that eschewed the banner hotels of yesteryear such as the George V and Sandy Lane, was assessed by the paper’s own team of writers, luxury travel writers, and hotel and destination specialists.