Preply, an online language learning platform, analyzed various metrics to figure out which city is the friendliest city in the world, and as it turns out New Yorkers aren’t as mean as people like to say we are!
To find the most friendliest cities Preply looked at a number of key metrics, including:
- Visitor return rate – % of visitors who return to each city after traveling there
- Friendly staff – % of accommodation reviews mentioning ‘friendly’
- Community respect – city’s safety index score
- Acceptance of diversity – LGBTQ+ equality score
- Happiness – the city’s overall happiness and wellbeing score, according to inhabitants
- Ease of communicating through a common language – each city’s English-speaking proficiency score
Using these metrics they created a Community Spirit Index–which they define as “building a sense of belonging and connectedness among individuals in a community…especially when it comes to welcoming newcomers”–and thus created a comprehensive ranking of 53 different cities worldwide based on their friendliness for non-natives.
Though New Yorkers continuously get a bad rap for not being the nicest people in the world, we can’t deny the numbers, and this study ranked us as the fifth friendliest city in the world!
Honestly, we didn’t expect to take the number one spot, but we are surprised to see ourselves as fifth…or maybe we just don’t give ourselves enough credit. And though this proves we’re not as mean as everyone thinks we are, if you are looking to hangout with people even nicer than us, go pay our friends in Toronto a visit–they’re the friendliest city in the world!
As part of being the fifth friendliest city, NYC also stood out for friend-making with 22,800 annual searches for “how to make friends.” Though, according to search volume data, São Paulo takes the actual crown for this title with 23,160 annual searches for this topic.
As for the least friendly city in the world, that title goes to Accra, Ghana, followed by Marrakech, Morocco, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Mumbai, India, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Looks like our RBF’s aren’t as bad as we thought they were (if you don’t know what that stands for you’re probably part of the reason why we came in fifth).