About Best Island to Visit
An independent guide that answers one question, which island should you pick, with scores you can check.
Best Island to Visit ranks 64 islands for American travelers: Hawaii, the Caribbean, the Bahamas and Bermuda, Key West and other US islands, Greece, the Canaries and the Mediterranean, Madeira and the Azores, Thailand, Bali, the Philippines, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. It answers the question four ways: by overall score, by month, by region and by who you are traveling with.
It is independent. It is not affiliated with any tourism board, government, airline, hotel, cruise line or tour operator, and none of them pays to appear on it or reviews what we write. For official information, go to the tourism authority or government page each island page links at the foot.
What makes it different
The rankings are computed and shown, not asserted. Weather, access from the US, hotel value and crowds come from data; beaches and things to do are our editors' scores, on one published scale, with the reason written next to each. One program combines them with fixed weights and sorts every list. The method page gives every formula, and each island page shows its six factors and its 12-month weather table, so you can disagree with a weight and still use the numbers.
How the site earns money
Some pages link to tours and boat trips on GetYourGuide and Viator. If you book through those links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Commission never changes a score: no commission, fee or advertising figure is an input to the formula. The affiliate disclosure has the detail.
The people who write the site are on the editorial team page, and the way we source is on editorial standards.