DISCOVER THE RANKINGS, POWERED BY TOURISM SENTIMENT INDEX
Category Property News
For the second year, destinations around the world have been ranked to uncover those that are truly most loved.
These Leading Places are the 100 most loved destinations, based on annual data from 2022, according to what people really feel. No one has paid to be named. No surveys have suggested an answer. Word of mouth built this list, unprompted and unbiased. Each of these 100 destinations has earned the love and an impressive Tourism Sentiment Score®. They are Leading Places, and that's worth celebrating.
To be able to name the top 100, we kicked off 2023 with an intensive study of our Tourism Sentiment Index data -- that's 1.6 billion online conversations and content pieces publicly available about 21,330 global destinations (talk to us about your destination's performance). Our wealth of data makes this, to our knowledge, the most in-depth study of its kind.
Tourism Sentiment Index is cutting-edge technology purpose-built for tourism that applies the power of artificial intelligence to the challenge of extracting sentiment from human expression. It generates a novel quality indicator for destination marketing: Tourism Sentiment Score®. This score is the result of our methodology refined over the years to best scan and interpret sentiment from massive volumes of content about travel.
South Africa has long been known as a destination with distinct and notable appeal, including its wildlife, culture, geography, cuisine, and significance in human history. That appeal came into sharp focus as the country's tourism reputation defied the pressure of the pandemic, pressure that South African Tourism (SAT) describes as a challenging period for its tourism sector.
The country's tourism economy relies on a significant volume of overseas visitors. In 2019, 26% of visitors came from outside the African continent, according to SAT's international tourist arrivals report. Like many places around the world, South Africa temporarily imposed its own restrictions on flights in 2020 as the pandemic began. In 2021, following the emergence of Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2, many source markets for South Africa restricted travel to and from the country.
100 most loved destinations around the world, according to consumer sentiment calculated by Tourism Sentiment Index (TSI) for 2021:
- #19 Knysna,
- #23 Stellenbosch,
- #41 Hermanus,
- #54 Cape Town,
- #73 Pretoria.
These rankings were happy news that South African Tourism could share with stakeholders and the public. Issuing press releases and responding to media inquiries, tourism stakeholders took the moment to celebrate, especially the Western Cape region, which has four of the five ranking destinations.
"The last two years will go down in history as the most challenging years thus far for the global tourism sector, and the rankings demonstrate that Cape Town and the Western Cape is a world-class destination and a firm favorite on the global travel bucket list," David Maynier, Western Cape Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC, told The Citizen.
This year, like many other markets, African economies are facing inflationary pressures that are poised to constrain travel. South Africa's potential for domestic tourism is challenged by inflation that has climbed to a five-year high of 6.5%. South African Tourism looked to TSI for signs of continued resilience and indicators for where to focus, and they found it.
From January to March 2022, South Africa's performance continued to improve as the country's Tourism Sentiment Score® increased over 2021 levels, and the dominant emotion of the online content and conversations about the destination remained joy.
Monitoring and reporting its Tourism Sentiment Score® has become an important activity for SAT. The country's score is its primary brand performance indicator. SAT shares the score and other insights drawn from TSI with the government agency that provides its funding.
"TSI is the exclusive brand measurement tool used by South African Tourism to measure the destination brand performance and to measure visitor perceptions," said Kaizer M. Dhliwayo, Regional Insights, South African Tourism. "We will be sharing TSI results with the National Department of Tourism to help provide valuable insights on a regular basis and collaborate on the same dataset to have a unified approach to destination brand management and monitoring."
In April, SAT launched a country-wide program to further boost the country's Tourism Sentiment Score® by enlisting its stakeholders to support an always-on campaign and to actively share and promote content about its most positive experiences in channels most aligned to visitors and potential visitors.
SAT reviewed the data in TSI to identify the tourism experiences that were earning the most positive sentiment. For the focus of the always-on campaign, SAT found: Profiling wedding and nightlife venues, events, breweries and pubs will likely increase engagement and the number of tourists intending to visit South Africa and the specific establishments/personalities profiled.
"The pandemic has done nothing to dampen our enthusiasm in welcoming holiday-makers and business tourists to a country known for its warm hospitality and giving value for money." said Themba Khumalo, acting CEO of South African Tourism.
https://www.sentiment-index.com/spotlight-south-africa
Author: Tourism Sentiment Index
