So, this is interesting. A new study called the Tourism Sentiment Index has looked at the “most loved” destinations around the world, and it’s not at all what you might expect. Richmond, British Columbia was the top Canadian destination listed, coming 34th overall. Mississauga, Ontario was 42nd in the world and finished second in Canada. The company, which is based in Vancouver, said its findings were “drawn from more than 1.6 billion online conversations and content pieces publicly available about 21,330 global destinations.” “Our work with destinations is amassing a continuously expanding dataset within Tourism Sentiment Index,” the group said Read more
Texas
A new listing of the top cities in the U.S. gives a boost to NYC and to several California cities. I also take a look at tourism in Nova Scotia and the re-opening of a fabulous hotel in the Caribbean. My Aug. 5 Future of Travel blog. Top 20 Cities in the U.S. The Big Apple takes top prize. But California has plenty to boast about. A company called Resonance Consultancy has once again published its list of the top cities in the U.S. They used six categories for ranking American cities: place, product, people, prosperity, program and promotion. The Read more
LUCKENBACH, TEXAS – Sometimes we travel writers research a destination too much. Then we get there and find it’s nice. But not as great as we had hoped. That wasn’t the case on my recent visit to Luckenbach, Texas. Hell, I didn’t know the place was a legend. I don’t have any Willie Nelson records, but I did buy a Waylon Jennings album long ago and I’m a big fan of Dwight Yoakam and cross-over country/rock artists like CCR and Linda Ronstadt. And I love the soothing soulful sound of a slide guitar. Still, I didn’t quite know what Luckenbach, Read more
Looking for a travel deal this summer? Look south. And way, way east. But not to the west coast of the U.S. A useful study from the folks at Trip Advisor finds that a three-day visit for two people to any of several great cities in the U.S. south is your best financial bet. If you’re looking overseas, you’re better off to consider the Far East. If you’ve got money to burn, on the other hand, try Seattle, Cancun or Zurich. The Trip Advisor study looked at the price of a four-star hotel (personally I’d study 3-star hotels if I Read more
I got news of a remarkable study the other day from Resonance Consultancy, which did a report on 121 U.S. cities and ranked them according to their “experiential quality.” It strikes me as a bit of an inexact science, but the idea behind the study is a very good one that involved analyzing consumer comments on various websites to determine not just actual numbers of who goes where but the level of engagement and happiness people feel when they go to a destination. In a press release they sent, Resonance officials said industry folks know about visitor county,, spending and Read more
