A “safe destination” is at the top of every event professional’s list. Affordability is important and proximity is helpful. But an event won’t be wonderful if attendees don’t feel safe.
Montréal just received an important vote of confidence from the travel industry. Travel insurance experts Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection (BHTP) recently released a list of the World’s Safest Cities for travel. Plenty of wonderful destinations around the world — such as Amsterdam, Berlin, and Sydney — made the list.
But only one ranked in first place: Montréal.
Why did Montréal rank so highly?
Montréal was the top-rated city in the survey almost across the board. As a city, we have relatively low crime rates compared to other major North American cities (including one of the lowest homicide rates). But the survey also considered first-hand perceptions of safety, which inevitably helped us top the list. Why? Because Montréal feels like a safe place.
Yes, there was a methodology
BHTP started with readily available lists of the most popular international and domestic cities for travellers, culled from Expedia, American Express, and other sources. This provided a list of 23 cities for survey respondents to rank.
This year, BHTP took the extra step of asking our survey respondents whether they had actually visited any of these cities, and only travelers who had been to the cities ranked them on a variety of safety measures, using their first-hand knowledge as a yardstick. To those survey ratings BHTP added the most recent safe-cities index from The Economist, city ratings from GeoSure Global, and the Current Crime Index from Numbeo, and weighted everything to get a final result.
It's not a “one off” study
The findings of the BHTP report align with other data that highlights Montréal as a safe destination. For instance, according to data by Statistics Canada and the FBI in 2018, Greater Montréal ranked No. 1 for safest city among 20 of the largest metropolitan areas in Canada and the U.S. due to its low homicide rate.
Travellers love Montréal
According to the BHTP article, “Old Montréal is the best of France and Canada, the waterfront is delightful, the neighbourhoods are explorable, and Mont-Royal is worth the trek to the top. And the smoked meat is the stuff dreams are made of.”
Plus, Montréal is easily accessible for American citizens who are eager to travel again (but don’t necessarily want to fly across an ocean).
See the full list of the world’s safest cities…
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