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London Has Enough Attractions to Keep You Busy For 16 Years

Have you ever visited a city and thought; 3/5/7 days is not enough?

Leaflets line the lobbies of hotels the world over advertising the wide range of activities you can sign up for, from elephant trekking in South East Asia to bungee jumps in New Zealand.

Often many of us will pick new destinations for holidays based on the activities on offer.

Which cities will keep you most busy based on your interests?

Methodology

I used Euromonitor’s Top 100 City Destinations Ranking (tourist arrivals) to identify the top 100 cities for tourism in 2015.

Using this list of 100, I then turned to Tripadvisor to identify number of activity options in each city. Tripadvisor splits activities into the following 20 categories:

  • Sights and landmarks
  • Transportation
  • Nature and parks
  • Shopping
  • Water and amusement parks
  • Tours
  • Zoos and aquariums
  • Outdoor activities
  • Museums
  • Food and drink
  • Fun and games
  • Nightlife
  • Boat tours and water sports
  • Casinos and gambling
  • Concerts and shows
  • Spas and wellness
  • Classes and workshops
  • Traveller resources
  • Events
  • Day trips

Results

Top cities (all activities)

Activities-Count-Map

Interactive map.

Rank total activities City & Country Activities Total
1 London, UK 5809
2 Tokyo, Japan 5021
3 Moscow, Russia 4375
4 New York City, US 4342
5 Rome, Italy 4159
6 Paris, France 3732
7 Prague, Czech Republic 3239
8 Barcelona, Spain 3203
9 St Petersburg, Russia 3158
10 Istanbul, Turkey 2990

Full list.

London has the most activities for visitors 5809, nightlife activities account for 1280 of the total. That is enough to keep you busy for almost 16 years (5809 / 365).

Europe is one of the best regions to visit for spread of activities, 8 of the top 10 cities in the top 10 are all European.

Top cities (nightlife)

Nightlife-Count-Map

Interactive map.

Rank nightlife activities City & Country Nightlife total
1 London, UK 1280
2 Madrid, Spain 913
3 New York City, US 857
4 Barcelona, Spain 776
5 Prague, Czech Republic 648
6 Berlin, Germany 600
7 Rome, Italy 565
8 Istanbul, Turkey 440
9 Paris, France 429
10 Milan, Italy 376

Full list.

9 of the top 10 cities for nightlife attractions are all European with London leading the way with 1280 options — over 300 more than 2nd placed Madrid.

Top cities (shopping)

Shopping-Count-Map

Interactive map.

Rank shopping activities City & Country Shopping
1 New York City, US 796
2 London, UK 718
3 Paris, France 646
4 Tokyo, Japan 645
5 Istanbul, Turkey 530
6 Shanghai, China 506
7 Bangkok, Thailand 457
8 Rome, Italy 427
9 Prague, Czech Republic 386
10 Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China 386

Full list.

Unsurprisingly the “fashion capitals”, New York (769), London (718), Paris (646) have the most shopping options available to visitors.

Top cities (museums)

museums-activities-count

Interactive map.

Rank museums attractions City & Country Museums
1 Moscow, Russia 594
2 St Petersburg, Russia 430
3 Tokyo, Japan 390
4 Seoul, South Korea 330
5 Prague, Czech Republic 317
6 London, UK 314
7 Beijing, China 284
8 Istanbul, Turkey 283
9 New York City, US 266
10 Shanghai, China 261

Full list.

Russia, a country with a very rich history has a large number of museums compared to other major cities. Moscow (594) and St Petersburg (430) are placed 1st and 2nd for count of museums.

2 cities in Euromonitor’s Top 100 list have no museums: Halong (Vietnam) and Palau Pinang (Malaysia).

Top cities (food & drink)

food-activities-count

Interactive map.

Food & drink rank City & Country Food & Drink
1 Rome, Italy 211
2 Hanoi, Vietnam 188
3 London, UK 170
4 Barcelona, Spain 166
5 Paris, France 159
6 Florence, Italy 134
7 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 112
8 Tokyo, Japan 106
9 Prague, Czech Republic 106
10 Madrid, Spain 102

Full list.

Rome tops the list for Food & Drink options. Parisians will be very disappointed to see themselves in 4th place, behind London in 3rd.

Top cities (nature & parks)

parks-activities-count

Interactive map.

Nature & park ranks City & Country Nature & Parks
1 Tokyo, Japan 378
2 Beijing, China 273
3 Moscow, Russia 187
4 London, UK 179
5 Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China 141
6 St Petersburg, Russia 133
7 Taipei, Taiwan 126
8 Shanghai, China 125
9 New York City, US 109
10 Sydney, Australia 106

Full list.

The greenest city in the world is highly debatable (how do you measure “green”?). Tripadvisor’s count does not account for area of green space, rather the number of distinct green spaces and parks. Tokyo, a city with a very dense population, does not have many very large parks but seemingly lots of very small green spaces.

Top cities (landmarks)

sights-activities-count

Interactive map.

Rank sights activities City & Country Sights & Landmarks
1 Tokyo, Japan 1851
2 Moscow, Russia 1300
3 St Petersburg, Russia 1030
4 Rome, Italy 894
5 Kyoto, Japan 799
6 Beijing, China 757
7 London, UK 693
8 Osaka, Japan 614
9 Paris, France 505
10 Milan, Italy 451

Full list.

I was not going to include this category as Sights and Landmarks is a very broad categorisation. However I decided to include with an explanation. Older cities will likely have lots of historic landmarks, but this category has no distinction. Likewise, a “sight” can be very subjective. As such, I am not sure there is too much we can draw from this category.

Improvements

Tripadvisor’s count of activities offers a general overview of the most popular activities within a city. If you’re like me, you’ll browse Tripadvisor’s “Top 10” activities before visiting a new city. However, the activities listed by Tripadvisor is not exhaustive. Many activities, especially those of a very specialist nature, are likely to be excluded. If I could identify a better way to classify and count activities in each city the accuracy of the results could be improved.

tl;dr

London has the most activities for visitors 5809, nightlife activities account for 1280 of the total.

Get the Data

Get all the data used in this blog post on Google Sheets.

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