Canada sweeps ‘most reputable city and country’ in RepTrak™ studies highlighting the value of destination reputation management
Vancouver has been named the city with the world’s best reputation. The result is from Reputation Institute’s 2012 City RepTrak™. The yearly study ranks the world’s 100 most reputable cities by polling more than 18,000 people from the G8 countries.
Vancouver now joins its home, Canada, in the winner’s circle. Canada was named the world’s most reputable country in the 2012 Country RepTrak™ ranking released just three weeks ago.
RepTrak™ destination studies dive deep into the emotional bond between stakeholders and destinations by quantifying the degree to which people Trust, Admire, Respect and have an Affinity for a city or country.
Underlining a destination’s RepTrak™ score are three dimensions that influence the perceptions of a destination.
These dimensions: Advanced Economy, Appealing Environment and Effective Administration, are what drive a destination’s reputation and stakeholder support.
In the City RepTrak™ study, these three dimensions are further defined by 13 reputation attributes that participants in the study are asked to evaluate. These include the destinations’ perceived: beauty; safety; cultural offerings; infrastructure; business environment; schools and more.
“We live in a reputation economy. While the idea of a destination’s reputation may not be on the top of everyone’s mind when they decide where to live, work, vacation, or do business, our studies indicate that it should.
We have found that a person’s perceived reputation of a city is a key factor when deciding where to visit, or in terms of business, to invest. Our modeling demonstrates that effective management of these reputation drivers translates directly into increased tourism receipts, investment, and stakeholder support,” says Nicolas Georges Trad, Executive Partner of Reputation Institute.
Vancouver and Sydney were the only cities to finish in the top 10 in all three of the aforementioned, reputation dimensions.
Vancouver scored highest in administration and was recommended by poll participants as also the best place to live and work.
The host of the 2010 Winter Olympics focuses many resources on creating a welcoming environment and promoting its multicultural heritage.
“At Tourism Vancouver, we have a role as a brand steward for our city, helping to court and share positive and responsible media comments, ensuring that our visitor infrastructure is safe and welcoming to everyone, and by inviting the world to come and spend some time with us.
We believe that a factor in Vancouver’s stature is our reputation as a city where all nationalities gather comfortably, where over 40 first languages are spoken in the average school, where perhaps 50% of our population has English as a second language and in our having a deep-seated respect for varied religious views.
Ongoing immigration continues to provide us with an array of benefits: be they wonderful foods; inspired cooking, festivals, music and fashion. In Vancouver, we tend to share ideas, to learn from one another and to celebrate our differences,” commented Rick Antonson, President and CEO of Tourism Vancouver.
Although Vancouver was not voted the most beautiful city in the world, it did place number seven in the category behind old world and architecturally revered Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, Vienna and Barcelona.
When tallying a reputation score, the 13 reputation attributes are weighted in order of importance in determining a city’s overall reputation. The most important reputation attributes were found to be: beautiful city; safe environment; wide range of appealing experiences, including food, sport, architecture, and entertainment; well-respected leaders and progressive social, economic, and environmental policies.
It is no wonder then that small to medium sized, safe, environmentally friendly and sporty cities like Vancouver, Vienna, Sydney and Copenhagen top the list while the mega cities that never sleep, such as Hong Kong, London, New York and Tokyo are lower down in ranking.
“The world’s largest cities certainly face more challenges when it comes to managing their reputations. They have many more factors that can impact their reputation and many of these influencers cannot be controlled. Additionally, big cities tend to operate much more under the microscope of the media. The conversation surrounding a destination – be it in the news and/or social media – is often a major influence on public perception. We can see in this year’s results just how effective Vancouver has been in shaping a constructive and trustworthy dialogue with the media,” says Reputation Institute’s Nicolas Georges Trad.
While global mega-cities like New York and Hong Kong may still rank amongst the most visited in the world, to maintain and increase their tourism and investment share, the RepTrak™ demonstrates that they will need to focus more on improving these key attributes.
“Destinations that identify and devote proper resources to building a strong reputation attract more tourists, more business investment and when the price is right, sell more products. We can see what happens when for example, a destination neglects these reputation attributes and the opposite effect occurs, as with the USA’s drop in tourism numbers. Destinations, like businesses, need to pay attention to their reputation,” says Kasper Nielsen, Executive Partner of Reputation Institute.
About Reputation Institute
Reputation Institute is the world’s leading corporate reputation consulting firm. Founded in 1997, with a presence in over 30 countries, we are the pioneer in reputation management. Through systematic research and analysis, Reputation Institute supports companies to build comprehensive strategies and make operational decisions that are designed to align stakeholders with corporate objectives creating tangible economic value. We enable leaders to make business decisions that build and protect reputational capital and drive competitive advantage. For more information: www.reputationinstitute.com.
City RepTrak™ 2012
City Rank Country RepTrak™ Pulse
Vancouver 1 74,22
Vienna 2 74,03
Sydney 3 73,01
Copenhagen 4 72,96
Oslo 5 72,14
Barcelona 6 71,84
Florence 7 71,66
Venice 8 71,04
Stockholm 9 71,03
Melbourne 10 70,68
Paris 11 70,23
Munich 12 70,03
London 13 69,52
Osaka 14 69,46
San Francisco 15 68,95
Rome 16 68,87
Zurich 17 68,74
Geneva 18 68,73
Frankfurt 19 68,48
Edinburgh 20 68,45
Madrid 21 68,28
Toronto 22 68,10
Berlin 23 67,91
Auckland 24 67,82
Prague 25 67,82
Montreal 26 67,62
Helsinki 27 67,37
Tokyo 28 67,15
Lisbon 29 66,97
Dublin 30 66,95
Brussels 31 66,86
Brisbane 32 66,73
Perth 33 66,52
Bali (Denpasar) 34 66,22
Adelaide 35 65,91
Orlando 36 65,89
Seattle 37 65,50
Milan 38 65,05
New York 39 64,82
Houston 40 64,76
Amsterdam 41 64,69
Lyon 42 64,53
New Orleans 43 64,37
Washington DC 44 63,56
St. Petersburg 45 63,48
Monterrey 46 63,23
Dubai 47 62,78
Singapore 48 62,78
Budapest 49 62,73
Boston 50 62,65
Los Angeles 51 62,01
Miami 52 61,88
Atlanta 53 61,51
Taipei 54 61,32
Chicago 55 60,00
Rio de Janeiro 56 59,61
Abu Dhabi 57 59,44
Seoul 58 59,11
Kuala Lumpur 59 59,05
Santiago 60 58,88
Montevideo 61 58,22
San Juan 62 58,22
Las Vegas 63 57,98
Buenos Aires 64 57,90
Warsaw 65 57,83
Hong Kong 66 57,59
Istanbul 67 57,46
Santo Domingo 68 57,41
Cancún 69 57,08
Macau 70 57,03
Athens 71 56,51
Cape Town 72 56,33
Kiev 73 55,99
Jerusalem 74 55,52
Lima 75 55,32
Mecca 76 54,85
Shanghai 77 54,62
New Delhi 78 54,50
Guangzhou 79 54,35
Caracas 80 54,11
Sao Paulo 81 53,23
Ryad 82 52,94
Hanoi 83 52,90
Jakarta 84 52,74
Bangkok 85 52,57
Port-au-Prince 86 51,63
Kolkata/Calcutta 87 51,33
Mexico City 88 51,18
Tel Aviv 89 50,47
Cairo 90 50,33
Nairobi 91 50,11
Beijing 92 49,98
Mumbai 93 49,96
Johannesburg 94 49,72
Manila 95 49,02
Karachi 96 46,41
Bogota 97 44,88
Moscow 98 44,13
Tehran 99 35,12
Baghdad 100 28,09
*The methodology used in this year’s City RepTrak™ has been aligned with our Country RepTrak™ study. It therefore departs from last year’s City methodology
