Asbury Park Named ‘Best Place to Travel’ in 2016

Travel + Leisure released their list of the best places to travel in 2016 and a rebounding shore hot spot made the list!

To compile their annual list of the best places to travel in the upcoming year, T+L editors say they meticulously considered a variety of factors.

• Which under-the-radar gems are most exciting to our network of contributing writers and global correspondents?
• Which destinations are our A-List travel specialists fielding requests for?
• Which classic vacation spots are starting to emerge—but for entirely new and compelling reasons?
• Which global events and changes in travel restrictions have made certain destinations easier to get to?

Congratulations Asbury Park for getting named!

T+L's reason behind the nod:

In the song “My City of Ruins,” written in 2000, Bruce Springsteen described Asbury Park as a city of boarded-up windows and empty streets. A battering by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 didn’t help. But the Jersey Shore town, 90 minutes south of New York City, has started to recover, led by its gay and live-music scenes. Visitors to Asbury’s boardwalk can still have their fortunes told at Madam Marie’s Temple of Knowledge and play on vintage pinball machines (preserved at the Silverball Museum), but now they’ll also find clothing and jewelry at the Market at Fifth Avenue, sushi and tacos at Langosta Lounge, and surfboards and skateboards at Lightly Salted. A short walk from the beach, the Asbury Festhalle & Biergarten serves almost 100 varieties of beer, and famous venues like the Stone Pony—a Springsteen haunt—are still packed. TheEmpress Hotel on the oceanfront is the place to stay, at least until the 110-room Asbury opens this year. The first new hotel in the city in 55 years is part of a multimillion-dollar plan to revive a one-mile stretch of beachfront. Also in the works: a face-lift for Asbury Lanes, the beloved 1930s-era bowling alley. —David Shaftel

We'd like to think we had a little something to do with this honor, too!