Thousands of couples travel to a romantic destination for Valentine’s Day every year. Now, a report on the Least Romantic Cities In the World shows places to avoid if you’re looking for a love-filled getaway.
InsureMyTrip, a travel insurance company, analyzed and weighed key factors on the most romantic cities in the world and the least romantic cities in the world by using up-to-date data points for key categories, including the popularity of location for honeymoons and marriage proposals; price of accommodations over the Valentine’s Day holiday; quality of romantic hotels and wine bars; and quality of green space and parks.
The least romantic cities in the world are:
- Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
- Cairo, Egypt
- Honolulu, United States
- Marrakesh, Morocco
- Casablanca, Morocco
- Victoria, Seychelles
- Tokyo, Japan
- Dubai, UAE
- Moscow, Russia
- Beijing, China
For the most romantic cities in the world, InsureMyTrip analyzed 67 top cities. The top ten are below.
For its methodology, InsureMyTrip.com set data points from the latest research available from reputable sources, like Booking.com and Airbnb, according to the website. The sources include eight destination-specific data points and one country-level data point. The data was standardized using min-max normalization.
The min-max normalization value is multiplied by 10 to create a score (between 0-10). A score of 10 is always the best result, while a score of 0 is the worst. Each destination is then ranked on their overall rating across all romantic data points, to find which destination is the most romantic.
Each city is ranked based on how well it performs across nine romance-related factors:
Honeymoon Popularity from Instagram. Popularity was assessed using the number of Instagram Posts for #honeymoon (sample of 54,190 posts)
Proposal Popularity from Instagram. Popularity was assessed using the number of Instagram Posts for #isaidyes & #proposal (sample of 22,328 posts)
Price of a Three-course Meal from Numbeo. Survey data that measures the average price of a three-course meal for two in a mid-range restaurant.
Average Accommodation Price on Valentine’s Day from Airbnb. Price was recorded for two people on 14th February 2020.
Quality of Romantic Hotels from Booking.com. Average rating of “Romantic Hotels” according to Booking.com.
Quality of Wine Bars from Google Maps. According to the Google Maps API (sample of 60 maximum for each destination).
Quality of Green Space and Parks from Numbeo. Survey data that measure the quality of greenery in each destination.
Quantity of Couple Landmarks from TripAdvisor. The number of Sights & Landmarks filtered by “Good for Couples” according to TripAdvisor. The total number for each destination was divided by the destination area size to give us per square mile data.
LGBTQ Friendliness from Spartacus Gay Travel Index. The Spartacus Gay Guide encompasses 14 data points to give an overall LGBTQ friendliness score. This is country-level data.
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic is the least romantic city overall, scoring poorly for Valentine’s Day accommodation prices (2.18), quality of romantic landmarks (0.01) and LGBTQ friendliness (1.90), according to InsureMyTrip.
Cairo (2.58), Honolulu (3.01), Manila (3.91) and Marrakesh (3.05) complete the bottom five most unromantic cities to visit.
Paris, France ranks first overall (7.53), with London (5.97), Santorini (5.64), Barcelona (5.44), and Ubud (5.37) completing the top five cities.
Paris received top scores for the number of proposals (10.00) and quantity of romantic landmarks (10.00), and it is home to the fourth- highest number of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Charleston, South Carolina is rated as the most romantic U.S. city, ranking 21st globally overall.
If you plan on going to a romantic destination last minute, click this link or banner below to get the best airfare. Booking Buddy scours the top booking engines to get the cheapest flight, and it’s definitely worth it (they basically do all the work for you).
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Jimmy Im has traveled to 113 countries, stayed in over 600 hotels and has flown a million airmiles. He lives in New York City.