DAYTONA BEACH — Two area hotels have been honored by U.S. News & World Report with spots on the publication’s 2018 list of Best Hotels, a worldwide evaluation that includes more than 24,000 luxury hotels across the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico and Bermuda.
Among the statewide rankings, the Shores Resort & Spa in Daytona Beach Shores placed at No. 153 among rankings of 293 Florida hotels. On the same list, the 744-room Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront Resort was ranked at No. 239.
The Shores Resort also received a silver badge to denote its finish in the top 30 percent of ranked hotels for a particular destination. Among U.S. News city hotel lists for 2018, the Shores and the Hilton, in that order, were the only two hotels to make the list for Daytona Beach.
“It’s exciting,” said Rich Byrd, general manager of the 212-room Shores Resort. “Our team has worked hard for that and we have made a lot of changes to our service levels here. We’re rated as a four-diamond resort by AAA, but we train our staff at a five-diamond level and they work very hard to achieve that.”
With new properties such as the Delta Hotel by Marriott in Daytona Beach Shores and the Hard Rock Hotel in Daytona Beach being added to the landscape, the area is poised to potentially add more hotels to the U.S. News list in coming years, said Jim Berkley, general manager of the Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront Resort.