2023 PASSENGERS' CHOICE AWARDS
The passengers have spoken
The spirit of adventure was alive and well throughout the past year. Travelers itching with wanderlust sought out affordable travel on buses and trains to explore destinations near and far. And they turned to Wanderu to search, compare and book their tickets with hundreds of bus and train companies.
But we didn’t stop there. We asked those travelers to rate and review their trip experiences to help us discover the ground travel companies that provided the best-in-class service.
And now, after analyzing thousands of reviews, we’re thrilled to announce our second annual Wanderu Passengers’ Choice Awards for Excellence in Ground Travel celebrating the top bus and train companies in North America. These are the ground travel providers that travelers rated the highest across several different categories.
And the Passengers' Choice Award goes to...
Best of the Best
The overall best bus & train carriers in the U.S. and Canada
Best By Feature
Carriers that offer the industry's best value, safety, and more
Best By Passenger Type
The favorite travel providers for different kinds of travelers
Best by Region
The top bus & train carriers in each region of the U.S.
About the Passengers' Choice Awards
Every day, thousands of travelers turn to Wanderu to plan and book their journeys across the United States and Canada. Once their adventure comes to an end, they can provide a 1 to 5 star rating on their trip, plus rate the carrier’s performance in specific categories. Passengers can also leave detailed reviews of their experience, with comments sharing their opinions of the ground travel provider’s performance.
All in all, these reviews are a treasure trove of valuable insights, both for our inaugural awards last year and our new batch of winners.
To determine the winners of the Passengers’ Choice Awards, we analyzed passenger reviews for trips where the ticket was purchased on the Wanderu platform between January and December 2022. We only considered trips within the U.S. and Canada.
Each passenger review includes an overall rating, plus ratings for several features of the passengers’ trips. We used each carrier’s average rating to rank the best carriers in each award category.
To determine the best overall Passenger’s Choice Awards winners, we looked at the average rating for every ground travel provider that accumulated a minimum of 25 reviews. We then ranked the best-performing carriers based on their average score from passenger reviews collected in 2022.
We ask Wanderu travelers to rate different features of their travel experience, from whether their trip was on-time to how safe they felt traveling. For feature-based categories (such as Most Helpful Crew and Best Wi-Fi), we looked at the average of passengers’ ratings for that specific feature.
For passenger-type awards, we only considered the ratings that came from the specific type of passenger. Commuters and business travelers self-identify as such in the review, and students were considered as such if they purchased tickets with a .edu email address.
For regional awards, we looked at trips where the bus or train departed, arrived, or was completed entirely inside the region.
We broke our regions out into 6 categories across the U.S.: New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, and West.
The states included in the New England region are Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The states included in the Mid-Atlantic region are Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia, as well as Washington, D.C.
The states included in the Southeast region are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
The states included in the Midwest region are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
The states included in the Southwest region are Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.
The states included in the West region are California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
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With just a quick search on Wanderu, you can compare bus and train schedules and prices from hundreds of travel companies in one convenient place to find the trip that works best for you. Wanderu’s simple checkout process makes it easy to book cheap bus and train tickets completely hassle-free. Most importantly, as Wanderu is an official partner of all leading bus and train companies, we always have the best bus and train deals out there.
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