The five-vessel Celebrity Cruises fleet, including two of the Island's regular callers, sailed away with top honours in two recent magazine readership surveys.

Thousands of readers participated in the annual surveys for Travel & Leisure magazine's World's Best Awards and Porthole Cruise Magazine's Readers' Choice Awards.

The results were published in Travel & Leisure's September issue and the October issue of Porthole Cruise Magazine.

In Travel & Leisure's Transportation/Cruise Lines category, Celebrity Cruises earned a second-place ranking, moving up from third place in last year's awards.

Participating cruise lines were rated for accommodations, food, entertainment, activities, itineraries, destinations, and overall value.

Meanwhile, Porthole Cruise Magazine's readers awarded Celebrity Cruises top honours in five categories including a platinum award for Best Cuisine.

Of Celebrity's five ships, two -- the Zenith and Horizon -- visit the Island weekly between April and October.

"Celebrity prides itself on consistently providing our guests extraordinary gourmet cuisine, impeccable service and luxury amenities,'' said Celebrity Cruises senior vice president for marketing James Lomonosoff.

"It's a great pleasure when such an enormous number of cruise enthusiasts recognise us for delivering such memorable vacation experiences.'' Since its founding in 1989, Celebrity Cruises consistently has won top honours from the industry's most respected cruise reviewers and publications, including Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising, Fielding's, Fodor's, Frommer's, Stern's Guide, America Online's Cruise Critic, Conde Nast Traveler, Modern Bride, Bride's, and Glamour, in addition to the recent honours from Porthole Cruise Magazine and Travel & Leisure.

Celebrity's Mercury is the only cruise ship in the world to be awarded membership in the prestigious Epicurean International Associates.

Mercury also achieved a perfect score in the intensive Centers for Disease Control/US Public Health vessel sanitation inspection programme.

Only six ships have ever scored a perfect 100 since the programme began -- and half of those ships were part of the Celebrity fleet.

Celebrity Cruises' fleet of five ships -- the other two vessels are the Century and Galaxy -- also sail in Alaska, the Caribbean, Europe and the Panama Canal.

The line is one of two cruise brands owned and operated by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., which also operates Royal Caribbean International.