World’s Top 10 Most Inspiring Cities in 2016

Package holiday specialists TravelBird have released the 2016 Inspiring Cities Ranking offering a comprehensive ranking of some of the world’s most inspirational cities. The Ranking utilises eight criteria associated with innovation and creativity to allow travellers to best pick their next inspiring adventure.

In addition, their analysis of winter and summer cities means the Inspirational City Ranking can be used to inspire seasonal travel, further empowering curious travellers.

To create the Ranking, TravelBird began with a list of renowned inspiring cities worldwide and continued to add vibrant locations until they reached 85 destinations. They then calculated the Inspirational Rank of each, factoring in performing arts companies, art schools, art galleries, museums, music production facilities, film industry facilities and startups seeking funding located within the city. They also ranked each location by the number of Google searches for romance-focused keywords (e.g. searches for romantic areas or dinners), in the native language, in each location. Scores for the criteria are equal to each factor per 100,000 residents in each city.

Interestingly, TravelBird found that many larger cities did not rank as high as smaller cities in the same country. A main reason behind this can be attributed to smaller cities ranking with high numbers in multiple factors which, coupled with having smaller populations, mean higher accessibility to each inspiring criteria per capita.

Istanbul came 80th in the Inspirational Cities Ranking and 30th in the summer cities ranking. The city placed in the top 35 for the number of romance inspired Google searches per 100,000 citizens.

The study revealed the 10 most inspiring cities are:

	City	Performing Arts Companies1	Art Schools1	Art Galleries2	Museums2	Film Industry3	Music Production3	Startups4	Inspired Romance5	Inspirational Ranking6
1	Miami	18.14	1.59	22.22	5.67	50.57	29.25	321.54	72.56	100.00
2	Bruges	15.25	5.08	13.55	16.94	2.54	2.54	0.85	8.47	71.95
3	San Francisco	15.15	1.04	11.56	5.67	26.36	12.95	1707.30	83.25	71.53
4	Bristol	17.81	2.23	7.79	5.34	48.74	6.01	28.93	31.16	70.34
5	Reykjavik	10.74	2.30	13.81	23.02	17.65	2.30	49.10	7.67	68.83
6	Santiago de Compostela	8.33	6.25	16.65	11.45	4.16	5.20	10.41	10.41	68.08
7	Salzburg	12.06	0.67	16.75	14.74	18.09	5.36	10.72	73.72	63.37
8	Zurich	1.77	5.81	10.10	14.65	13.38	6.06	100.50	148.98	63.05
9	Heidelberg	18.10	1.94	13.57	10.99	5.82	1.29	18.10	58.17	59.85
10	Florence	12.07	3.94	10.76	10.50	6.30	3.15	9.97	102.35	58.90

TravelBird also sought to incorporate seasonal inspiration into their Index, to inform travellers of stimulating seasonal travel and adventure. To do so, the company looked to artwork depicting each city and from thousands of images assigned a score based on a ratio of whether winter or summer had inspired more painters, and therefore, which season made each city more inspirational. These scores were taken into account along with the Inspirational Ranking to create a seasonal rank.

The top 10 cities to rank for winter and summer are as follows:

	City	Winter Score			City	Summer Score7
1	Reykjavik	100		1	Miami	100
2	Helsinki	96.71		2	San Francisco	91.02
3	Oslo	95.54		3	Florence	87.63
4	Salzburg	94.51		4	New Orleans	86.71
5	Lübeck	94.05		5	Chiang Mai	86.35
6	Vancouver	90.51		6	Barcelona	86.27
7	Tokyo	89.88		7	Porto	86.05
8	Zurich	89.61		8	Los Angeles	82.87
9	Heidelberg	88.46		9	Cartagena	82.28
10	Utrecht	85.74		10	Lisbon	81.76

Further findings from the ranking include:

The cities which contain the most performing arts companies by population are Miami, Heidelberg, Bristol, Chiang Mai and Bruges.

The cities which contain the most art schools by population are Santiago de Compostela, Zurich, Bruges, Porto and Luebeck.

The cities which contain the most art galleries by population are Miami, Porto, Salzburg, Santiago de Compostela and Reykjavik.

The cities which contain the most museums by population are Reykjavik, Chiang Mai, Bruges, Salzburg and Zurich.

The cities which contain the most film industry facilities by population are Paris, Miami, Bristol, Barcelona and Los Angeles.

The cities which contain the most music production facilities by population are Miami, Vancouver, San Francisco, Paris and Portland.

The cities which contain the most startups seeking funding by population are San Francisco, Miami, Tel Aviv, New York and Vancouver.

The cities with the highest volume for Romantic-themed Google searches by population are Valparaiso, Paris, Zurich, Berlin and Tel Aviv.

To create the final Inspirational Ranking, all of the factors were calculated and ranked out of 100, with 100 given to the highest scoring city and proportionate amounts of 100 be given to other cities based on their scores.

For full results click here.