Major cities that are weirdly overlooked and nobody seems to care about

[muppet]

Yep it's definitely doable, but if one's travelling for leisure rather than business I reckon you'd want more than a few hours before heading back. Also the cost for those few hours is quite something -though as mentioned it's now drastically reduced post-Covid.

Also Amsterdam isn't on an island like London, that requires a sea crossing -it's literally about an hr + from Benelux and Germany by car.

Your mate btw would have taken 4 hrs at the minimum to travel one way from London Kings X/ Heathrow to Amsterdam (by Eurostar or flight, transfer and check-in times not included). Poor sod must've spent about 10hrs travelling that day (12 hrs if he flew).

London to Paris is like NYC to Boston but throw in an extra 25 mile sea journey, plus 4 rounds of queueing for passport control, boarding and security (even if you're driving), and considerable price hikes for crossing borders.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by muppet

Yep but also bear in mind London has consistently been the world's most foreign visited city, or in the top 3 for decades. It's international visitor numbers spread out over the decades is significantly higher (and bear in mind it's hideously expensive too for many Europeans).

More importantly it also competes directly with Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Vienna etc. all of which also form top 20s. Even Dublin has 6.6 million overnighting international visitors, Brussels 9 million (Chicago is about 1.5 million, San Fran 2.9 million, LA 7 million by comparison).

In short although London may have an advantage in distance, it doesn't in expense, and especially not in competition.

err, except if you even wanted to attempt a more fair comparison, if you overlay a ridiculously brit-centric arbitrary england island around any major tourist city as a base measuring point, everything beyond it becomes a ‘foreign visit’ there, or again to use your local idiom ‘overseas.’ so size of the country surrounding the tourist city is a major flaw in your stats, especially from the usa point of view and places like china. that and the fact that visitors holding passports are much more easily accounted for than domestics.

of course there needs to be some kind of useful accounting of this, but it seems its quite varied locally to suit its purposes.

[muppet]

OMG. Britain is an island. It also corresponds with its foreign borders.

Foreign visitors are regarded as such due to them living across those borders. Feel free to try and change the history or geography that made it such, but that point stands. Foreign visitors are foreign visitors on those charts and numbers.

I'd like to see you try and set up some kind of fair comparison for every visitor in the world based on their distance and not nationality, but then you'd also have to take into account the cost for them to travel, time/ expense to cross borders and the competition in those areas (as London and Europe suffer negatively from). Not to mention the viability of the market (eg is it well linked up with transport? Are people in the region able to afford it? Is there only one tourist season?) You could of course get rid of the Himalayas and turn India into one of Asia's most popular destinations, you could set Budapest down off the coast of Shanghai, or slap Vegas into Spain, or wipe Paris, Rome and Barcelona from Europe all to level the field.


In short, sure, it may not be fair to compare like for like when distances aren't the same, but bear in mind the same applies the other way round, such as the European cities having SO much more competition, or the Developing World cities having less of the middle classes etc. It's skewed, but it's not just skewed one way.

You're also forgetting that even on the domestic visitors or daytrippers, by both measures London is still a higher count.

[JManc]

I can see where London would have considerably more foreign visitors than New York because of its proximity to other countries. It's a 45 minute flight from Amsterdam and Paris for example. Plus it's cheap to hop on a Ryanair/ EasyJet flight from almost anywhere in Europe.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by park123

I went to Dar Es Salaam ages ago, but it was really interesting. I was visiting after spending time in Kenya. From an East African perspective Nairobi might as well be Manhattan or something. The closest they get to the first world, and back then it (Nairobi) struck me as nothing so much as a 3 x larger Newark NJ, with nice suburbs complete with modern American-style outdoor malls outside of the city.

Dar Es Salaam on the other hand was super exotic. It was very undeveloped, with a lot of almost abandoned looking Soviet style buildings in the center, and low-rise semi-slums reminiscent to me of Kolkata around. Zanzibar was also really interesting. I don't know how Tanzania is now though.

as you were wondering, my niece and her husband visited us in ny before flying off to a tanzanian and elsewhere african safari last fall. afterward they spent some time in zanzibar chillaxing after their big adventure before coming home. they said a lot people who go on big safari trips tend to do that in zanzibar. they are definitely not typically adventerous people and they said they really liked all of it.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by muppet

Seriously, try it. See if you can do it. These are all one way. A combination of time and money will conspire to make the trip not worth it, leaving you only a few hours in the city.






I think the quickest way will only ever be by Eurostar train (as the coach will take 9 hrs one way, the car 10hrs return and costing $120 -$450 per person), but even then that would be 4.5 hrs out of your day provided you only went and saw the immediate locale of the train stations, and did no travelling to get to those termini. In reality the quickest route should be about 7 hrs+ including transfer, check in/ passport control. The expense would be quite something too.

However, in these trying times it IS possible. Same day returns have reduced to about $100 (down from about $260 at the cheapest normally)

I've done day trips from Boston to NYC before... catch the 8 am cheap-o-bus, get to NYC around noon, leave NYC on the 8 pm cheap-o-bus, get to back Boston just before the T closes. Obviously doable by Amtrak too but not nearly as cheap.

It's a long day, but you can sleep on the bus.

[kingkirbythe....]

Yall sure know how to kill a thread.

[0214685226]

Originally Posted by kingkirbythe....

Yall sure know how to kill a thread.

For sure, bro. Did anybody mention Budapest or Prague? If so, sorry for the repost, I got lost in the encyclopedia of Chinese city pictures that were posted.

Budapest. It's in the EU and is the 9th largest city. About 2,000 years old or so.
Prague. 13th largest in the EU over 3,000 years old.

[dc_denizen]

Prague 3000 years old ? Not sure about that

[0214685226]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Prague 3000 years old ? Not sure about that

Give or take a G or so. All that stuff is old over there.

Wikipedia, which is gold and should never ever be disputed for factual information says that it was founded as early as 1306 BC by an ancient king, Boyya.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by muppet
Yep but also bear in mind London has consistently been the world's most foreign visited city, or in the top 3 for decades. It's international visitor numbers spread out over the decades is significantly higher (and bear in mind it's hideously expensive too for many Europeans).

More importantly it also competes directly with Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Vienna etc. all of which also form top 20s. Even Dublin has 6.6 million overnighting international visitors, Brussels 9 million (Chicago is about 1.5 million, San Fran 2.9 million, LA 7 million by comparison).

In short although London may have an advantage in distance, it doesn't in expense, and especially not in competition.

Yeah the bigger spenders are the international tourist.

But Chicago bests London by 10 million overnight tourists than London.

Day trippers not included. Both links are old but 2018 Chicago did 58 million overnights. More than LA 50 million visitors but below NYC at 65 million. Orlando believe it or not has more visitors than NYC. In the USA only Orlando and NYC has more overnight visitors than Chicago coming in at #3. If London would be included on the number of visitors in the USA it would come in at #8.

https://www.bestchoicereviews.org/tr...ist-cities-us/



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Chicago

Chicago tourism recorded 55 million visitors in 2017.

In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million visitors that year



https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/1/11...llion-visitors

In 2018 the city saw 57.6 million visitors, up from 55.2 million in 2017.











https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_London

The city attracted 20.42 million international visitors in 2018, making it one of the world's most visited in terms of international visits. It welcomed an additional 27.8 million overnighting domestic tourists in 2017

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions indicated that the following were the Top 10 visitor attractions in 2017:

(1) British Museum – 5.9 million visits

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by bnk

But Chicago bests London by 10 million overnight tourists than London.

LOL, no.

Chicago might have 1/4 the tourist counts of London. It isn't a top tourist destination in the U.S., to say nothing of the planet.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Crawford

LOL, no.

Chicago might have 1/4 the tourist counts of London. It isn't a top tourist destination in the U.S., to say nothing of the planet.

Let me guess you never even opened one link. LOL

https://www.bestchoicereviews.org/tr...ist-cities-us/

You can't lie your way out of it or just make up BS...LOL

Chicago has firmly been #3 in the USA for years.

The bolded part is a bald face lie.

And Chicagoland has had more hotel rooms than NYC to boot in 2009.
https://loyaltytraveler.boardingarea...y-hotel-rooms/

[muppet]

Erm, hate to point it out bnk but those numbers do include daytrippers.

For example, for NYC look at bottom right. Overnight 28.3m (53%) Day 24.8m (47%)

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by bnk

Let me guess you never even opened one link. LOL

You're right, actually. Why would I open random links?

There is no apples-apples source measuring municipal tourist numbers around the globe, obviously.

But you claimed Chicago receives more tourists than London, which is absurd. Chicago isn't among the top leisure tourist destinations in the U.S., and European cities are geographically generally far better located for global tourism than North American cities.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Crawford

You're right, actually. Why would I open random links?

There is no apples-apples source measuring municipal tourist numbers around the globe, obviously.

But you claimed Chicago receives more tourists than London, which is absurd. Chicago isn't among the top leisure tourist destinations in the U.S., and European cities are geographically generally far better located for global tourism than North American cities.

Once again your bolded point wrong. A leisure traveler is not the only criteria for a visitor. You will continue to make shit up.... No point in conversing with you any longer.

https://www.bestchoicereviews.org/tr...ist-cities-us/

[bnk]

Originally Posted by muppet

Erm, hate to point it out bnk but those numbers do include daytrippers.

For example, for NYC look at bottom right. Overnight 28.3m (53%) Day 24.8m (47%)

]

Well in that case Chicago bests NYC in number of overnight visitors. > 50% are overnights. In the area of ~30M than. Not to shabby.

https://www.enjoyillinois.com/assets...or-Profile.pdf

[Crawford]

Bnk, you were talking "overnight tourists" i.e. leisure visitors. Now you're talking about business travelers, which have nothing to do with anything (though I would be highly skeptical that Chicago has equivalent business traveler counts as London, though it would no doubt be much closer than tourist counts, as Chicago is indeed a huge business center).

Posting random tourist bureau shit is useless; there is no apples-apples comparison, unless you want to use Census or U.S. entry data. But for international travelers, like 80% of leisure visitors are going to three places- NY area, Florida, or California, in that order. Chicago isn't a major entry for leisure visitors.

[muppet]

Bnk, yep but if you take into account NYC's international overnighting tourists also it'll rise by 13.5m to 41.8m.

London still beats both at 21.7m international (2019) + 27.8m domestic (2018) = 49.5m

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Bnk, you were talking "overnight tourists" i.e. leisure visitors. Now you're talking about business travelers, which have nothing to do with anything (though I would be highly skeptical that Chicago has equivalent business traveler counts than London, but it would no doubt be much closer than tourist counts).

Posting random tourist bureau shit is useless; there is no apples-apples comparison, unless you want to use Census or U.S. entry data.

I was posting all visitors thinking that they were overnights

Than revised them to ~30M overnight visitors. from my last link,
I include all overnights. You think overnight Business or convention visitors do not count?

Yes they spend money too.

Adamantly Chicago does not the Number of international visitors in the range of 2M about # 8 in the USA. But we make up for in total overnights, again I already stated the international visitors spend more per day than domestic. That than NYC would obviously be getting hit hardest in tourist dollars than any other city in the entire USA due to Covid. And the same thing can be said about all of the big tourist cities in the USA. It's going to be devastating for a lot of places, hopefully not to much longer.
After the election is suspect the numbers will improve.