The beach at Infinity Bay, Honduras

A couple times a year I like to highlight which pages of Luxury Latin America travelers are clicking on the most. It changes a lot from one quarter to the next depending on where our readers are headed and who’s in the news (good or bad), and usually it’s a bit surprising who makes it up to the top.

The most popular pages are the portal ones, like the main luxury tours page or luxury travel in Costa Rica, but here are the individual ones people planning a vacation landed on the most so far this year.

Luxury hotel and resort reviews:

5) Infinity Bay in Roatan, Honduras
4) Cayo Espanto near Ambergris Caye, Belize
3) Jicaro Island Ecolodge near Granada, Nicaragua
2) Azul in Ambergris Caye, Belize
1) Hotel Garzon in Uruguay

Mendoza wine country, Argentina

Luxury tours in Latin America:

5) Getting Pampered in the Spas of Argentina
4) Touring the Wine Districts of Chile Near Santiago
3) Touring the Best of Mendoza Wine Country, Argentina
2) Trekking From Lodge to Lodge to Machu Picchu, Peru
1) The Coffee Triangle of Colombia

So from all this I’ll conclude you want to head to a beach, get pampered, or drink some wine. Except for that hardy bunch going trekking through the Andes Mountains…

I mentioned in our monthly newsletter last month that my Avianca flight to Colombia was another reminder just how far the U.S. airlines have fallen in comparison to most of the international carriers.

Avianca made me feel like a passenger again instead of a  number on a spreadsheet to be optimized and squeezed.

This matters because soon Avianca will probably be the name you see the most besides LAN in Latin America. It merged with TACA last year and by the end of May the TACA brands will all change to Avianca. By the end of 2013 the Ecuadorian airline AeroGal will change to Avianca name too.

On the way down to Bogota from Ft. Lauderdale, I was flying in economy but still had a seat-back entertainment system, a real meal, and a glass of wine. The flight attendants smiled instead of just nagging everyone to turn off their Kindle. My business class report will have to wait for another time, but it looked far superior to what I’ve seen on United and American.

Since international and domestic passengers can check two bags without fees, there was plenty of overhead bin space on my first flight and the three that followed. Naturally the plane boarded a lot faster for the domestic ones since there was no economic reason for bringing a rollaboard bag on the plane

We even got drink service on a 45-minute flight from Bogota to Pereira. Nice.

A few fun facts and some history about Avianca:

Avianca is the second oldest airline in the world after the Dutch carrier KLM.

TACA was created in 1931 in Honduras. It grew fast the past couple decades through acquisitions. In 1991 TACA bought all the airlines of Central America that were in financial trouble (Aviateca of Guatemala, SAHSA of Honduras, LACSA of Costa Rica) and merged them into GRUPO TACA.

In 1999 GRUPO TACA created an airline in Peru called TACA Peru

TACA stands for TRANSPORTES AEREOS del CONTINENTE AMERICANO (American Continent Air Transport)

Last year Avianca and TACA joined STAR ALLIANCE, in many ways the best international alliance for frequent fliers.

Avianca and TACA have 4 main connection hubs in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Bogota and Lima and fly to all Central America and South America.

North American gateways (direct or in code shares with partners) include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Washington-Dulles, JFK, Chicago-O’hare, Toronto, and Mexico City.

See more at Avianca.com for more info and flight deals. See SeatGuru’s Avianca section for seat pitch and plan configurations.

Is there a definitive answer on which hotels and resorts are viewed as the best in Mexico, Central America, and South America?

Sort of. I’ve said before that there’s a lot of hanky-panky that goes on with “best of” readers polls in magazines. Ballot stuffing is a part of the job when you’ve got a vested interest in who wins and people who are on the clock are much more likely to go through those hour-long surveys. Plus some readers are voting for places they’ve never set foot in, on reputation alone.

But if the two biggest travel magazines get the same results on some hotels, AND they’re featured here in Luxury Latin America, well that starts to look like a real trend. Three hits and you’re solid. Here are the hotels that came out on top in this year’s Conde Nast Travel Best in the World survey, Travel & Leisure’s 500 Best survey, and our picks here (follow the links to detailed reviews).

Mexico Top Resorts and Hotels

La Casa que Canta – Zihuatanejo

Four Seasons Mexico – Mexico City

One & Only Palmilla – San Jose del Cabo

Las Ventanas al Paraiso – San Jose del Cabo

Capella Pedregal – Cabo San Lucas

Esperanza – Cabo San Lucas

Ritz-Carlton Cancun

Banyan Tree Mayakoba – Riviera Maya

Fairmont Mayakoba – Riviera Maya

Grand Velas Riviera Maya

Four Seasons Punta Mita – Riviera Nayarit

St. Regis Punta Mita – Riviera Nayarit

Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit

Central America Top Resorts and Hotels

Lodge at Chaa Creek – Belize

Hotel Casa Santo Domingo – Antigua, Guatemala

Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica – Papagayo Peninsula

Top Hotels and Resorts South America

Llao Llao Hotel & Resort – Bariloche, Argentina

Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Alvear Palace Hotel – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Four Seasons Buenos Aires

Park Hyatt Mendoza – Argentina

Ritz-Carlton Santiago – Chile

Hotel Monasterio – Cusco, Peru

JW Marriott Hotel Lima – Peru

Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel – Peru

Obviously it pays to have a well-known brand name and the hotels that have been around for a decade or more have a clear edge. The big surprise for me is how few matches you see for Chile (where the most impressive resorts have been opening) and for Central America overall. Conde Nast had loads from Costa Rica, but T&L hardly any. Expect that to change in the coming years as more readers get out and about in this region.

Long before all the flashy new hotels opened up in the Sacred Valley of Peru, Sol y  Luna (Sun and Moon) had staked out a spot in Urubamba.

Over the years the orginal small lodge mirrored Peru’s tourism industry, expanding and going more upscale as the number of visitors increased. Now Sol y Luna has 42 casitas, a well-regarded spa, and a strong tradition of giving back to the community.

One of our contributors stayed here and mentioned the lodge in our feature story Walking Peru with Butterfield and Robinson. Now we’ve got a full review of it. Here’s a taste:

Private verandas face terraced mountainsides with garden views and lounge chairs that beckon upon arrival. And extravagance registers in deceptively simple touches: colorful Peruvian folk art, indigenous woods, hand-painted frescoed murals, and a hot water bottle in the bed at night.

Yes, there are newer and trendier places to stay among the luxury hotels of the Sacred Valley, but this one has been tied into the community since the start and will really make you feel like you’re in Peru.

See our full review of Sol y Luna Lodge and Spa.

The news came out yesterday that the various brands owned by the merged Avianca/Taca company are going to be combined under one brand. Avianca won out, so the others will go away in 2013. Aerogal will be the last to switch.

I picture a bunch of execs in a board room screaming at each other over their favored brand, but the official word is more market-based. They said, “After rigorous market research and business analysis it was decided that Avianca will be used as the single commercial brand for the airlines that today comprise AviancaTaca Holding S.A.”

The majority of travelers in the U.S. and Canada haven’t heard of any of these airlines anyway, despite the long history of Taca especially. As these various entities have merged or been bought out though, the combined company has become a major force in Latin America, flying to nine countries in South America and all of Central America. In many countries they serve multiple cities.

Also, the combined company is part of the Star Alliance, so you can book flights with points or earn points on them to use elsewhere. See more at the Taca site, which for the moment has a separate link to Avianca.

See our Latin American airlines reviews and news in past posts.