Mayor welcomes Cape Town’s ‘best city to visit’ global ranking
24 January 2024
The rankings are the result of media company Time Out’s extensive survey of 20 000 global travellers alongside their network of travel writers and editors. Remarkably, Time Out noted that Cape Town had been ranked by every single respondent as a beautiful city to visit, contributing to the city ranking 2nd behind New York.
‘Tourism to Cape Town is now at all-time record levels, which will only be boosted even more by our world-beating ranking in the ‘50 Best Cities in the World to Visit 2024’ global survey. This is good news because record tourism brings new jobs in our City of Cape Town, and that is always our primary goal.
‘It takes a big Team Cape Town effort to offer tourists a world-class experience. Our city is clearly impressing visitors, who uniformly highlighted the beauty of our destination in responses to this global poll.
‘The City is making the right investments now to ensure Cape Town is an even better place to visit in future. That includes a record infrastructure investment pipeline, advanced plans for water and energy security, and growing our policing resources to keep making Cape Town safer,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.
Alderman James Vos, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, said Cape Town welcomed 317 000 overseas visitors in December and 2,9 million visitors during 2023. Both of these figures are new all-time records, driving new tourism jobs in the city economy.
‘It’s exhilarating to see that our beloved city continues to be a top tier choice for global travellers and these record tourism numbers will significantly benefit the hospitality sector and attractions, indicating a positive year ahead for the sector and our goal of a tourism-related job in every Cape Town home. We continue to drive this success through various destination marketing campaigns and city-to-city connectivity initiatives. Additionally, our goal is to unveil our Responsible Tourism charter for local industry operators because we must craft and nurture places that are not only captivating to visit but also enriching for those who call them home. This industry is not just about attracting visitors; it's about fostering an ecosystem that supports our local businesses and communities, driving forward our city's prosperity,’ said Alderman Vos.
The Top 10 Best Cities in the World to Visit in 2024 are:
1. New York, USA
2. Cape Town, SA
3. Berlin, Germany
4. London, UK
5. Madrid, Spain
6. Mexico City, Mexico
7. Liverpool, UK
8. Tokyo, Japan
9. Rome, Italy
10. Porto, Portugal
In a further accolade, Cape Town has been named the city with the ‘best community spirit’ in Africa based on a study by Remitly which analysed the number of social media community groups individuals belong to on average. The study found Cape Town had 153 community groups on Meetup, a popular social media platform, the most of any city on the continent. This showed a level of social cohesion and inclusivity in the city, with residents interacting across a range of shared social interests.
Issued by Media Office, City of Cape Town, 24 January 2024
