Helsinki ranked 3rd most welcoming city

Helsinki has been ranked third by the online travel specialist TravelBird among the most welcoming cities in the world.

Singapore secured the first place on the list, followed by Stockholm, Helsinki, San Francisco, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Tokyo, Oslo, Zurich, and Orlando, said a TravelBird press release.

TravelBird released the study report ranking international cities according to how welcome tourists are there in relation to their levels of over-tourism.

They undertook this study firstly to take notice of those cities that are making impressive efforts to welcome tourists responsibly and secondly to open the dialogue about over-tourism and its impact on residents and their surrounding communities.

October 31st has been designated by the United Nations as World Cities Day, with the theme ‘Innovative Governance, Open Cities’. To mark the occasion, TravelBird released the study report to further the discussion on sustainable tourism and global urbanization.

Singapore is revealed as the most welcoming city, successfully managing their high visitor levels with the best airport in the world and cultivation of a safe city ecosystem.

Helsinki ranks 3rd out of 100, considered by travel journalists to be very welcoming. The city also ranks highly for safety, citizen happiness levels and English proficiency and has a low over-tourism score.

To create the ranking, TravelBird first analysed the global top 500 tourist destinations (taken from the UN-WTO) based on factors that can make a visitor feel welcome, such as a welcoming port of entry (airport, train station etc), citizens’ happiness, safety, openness to host tourists, and English language proficiency.

Furthermore, they ran an expert poll asking over 15,000 travel journalists how welcoming they found each city based on their personal experiences.

TravelBird then weighted all of these factors with a formula that measures over-tourism in each destination to determine the final ranking of 100 cities. This research highlights a precise selection of popular cities around the world in order to give an international overview, meaning there are undoubtedly many welcoming cities not included in this study.