Dubai just got ranked as the worlds most sought after city break. Again

This time around the analysis was conducted by the Premier Inn…

Dubai has once again been singled out as a top tourist destination by an online survey. This time the research was conducted by Premier Inn, an organisation that knows a thing or two about city breaks, not least because they play host to a lot of them. Shout out to Birmingham City Centre, Bridge Street 2008.

We don’t have to point out to you Dubai’s glittering allure (although we will), with it’s futuristic skyscraper canyons, immaculate beachfront, year round sunshine, nightlife, the safety (excuse me ma’am you dropped your phone, wallet and blank cheque book) sophisticated cuisine scene, luxurious shopping malls, desert adventures, culture, thrills, themeparks, manmade islands, globally central location, multi-culturalism, six-star hotels and shawarma. In all its glorious toumy, don’t skimp on the pickles boss, forms.

But there are other more recent hats that Dubai has worn to help get it to the top of urban pops recently too. We’re talking about landmark legal changes, Expo 2020 and the reputation for how the authorities dealt so incredibly well with the pandemic. We really are living in a tourist’s dream.

Feeling lucky?

This particular ranking was compiled after careful analysis of Google search data. Premier Inn looked at which cities topped the search list in 126 countries and then gave scores according to which aspirational destination was the number one most Googled city in each nation’s data pool. And naturally, Dubai came out on top.

If you’re wondering who else hit hard with the global SEO wasta, you can check out the full list below. Paris was a massive pull, coming in second, Boston picked up the bronze, Madrid was number four and Singapore in sixth picked up almost unanimous approval from the Asian and Australasia belt. Cape Town, London, Amsterdam and Bogota also get honorable mentions.

By country

Those curious about what each individual country has been Googling (safe search on, this is purely for city breaks), Premier Inn also published a country-by-country breakdown, demonstrated by the medium of a colour coded Atlas. And it reveals some interesting travel thirst.

The Chinese are big on Prague, where as the Czech Googlers are more keen on Vienna, Dubai is all about London apparently, Djibouti fancies a bit of Hamburg, Kyrgystan has its sights set on Washington DC, and Togolese just want to go to San Francisco (though the survey makes no mention of whether they’ll be wearing flowers in their hair).

There are trends of course, with the familial ties of former colonial powers (not the space to dive into that very complicated subject here) and neighbours favouring neighbours (Scandanavia we’re looking at you), but the biggest take away, at a casual glance is that Dubai just continues to tick all the right travel boxes.

Images: Premier Inn