Manama among best capital cities to visit
MANAMA has been named one of the best capital cities in the world to visit, according to a survey conducted by an international travel company.
Primarily due to its low crime rating and rare occurrences of bitterly cold, wet and windy weather, Bahrain has been ranked the fourth best capital city to visit by San Franciso-based Bounce.
The top five capitals
The kingdom’s capital comes close behind Valetta (Malta), Abu Dhabi (UAE) and New Delhi (India), and ahead of Riyadh (Saudi Arabia).
“Manama is the fourth-best capital city for a holiday in the world with a score of 5.77/10, higher than the average score of 4.76/10,” the report noted.
“Manama has a very low crime rate score of just 17.28/100, on top of this, it scored well for average temperatures and annual rainfall due to its geographical location.”
The survey indexed costs of a hotel night stay and one-way local public transport trip, as well as average temperature and rainfall in addition to the number of restaurants and attractions, to determine an overall score.
According to the survey, a night’s stay in one of Bahrain’s hotels costs $180.87 (around BD68) while a trip on the public transport is a mere $0.80 (300 fils). The kingdom’s average temperature is 26.5 degrees Celsius and it recorded 68mm of annual rainfall on average – the third lowest amongst the top 10.
Manama’s 120 attractions and 694 restaurants make it one of the most attractive capitals to visit in the region. In terms of safety, Abu Dhabi was ranked the safest capital, with Manama the third-safest city in the GCC.
The index encompasses 69 capital cities of developed nations and also found that there were 4.8 million mentions of Manama on popular social media platform Instagram.
“Valetta, Malta is the most popular capital city in the world with an overall score of 6.74 out of 10,” the survey said.
Spending
“With Valletta being home to the highest number of attractions and restaurants out of all of the capital cities, it is no wonder this city has ranked top of the list.”
Ankara (Turkey) was determined to be the cheapest capital, in terms of average cost for a night’s stay in a hotel. On average, vacationers spent $45.74 (BD17.240) per night, while the average across all surveyed cities was $135.67 (BD51.150).
After Luxembourg made all public transport in the country free last year, its capital Luxembourg City was found to have the cheapest public transport, although the city’s overall ranking was 26th.
The driest holidays were found to be most likely in Cairo (Egypt) with only 18mm of annual rainfall, while Bangkok (Thailand) has the highest average temperature.
Tokyo (Japan) has the highest total number of restaurants, clocking in at an astounding 101,580 eateries.
London is the most ‘Instagrammable’ capital, with 151m hashtag mentions, although the UK capital was ranked the 39th best in the list.
Paris (France) was the only other capital city to exceed 100m Instagram mentions, while the average number of Instagram mentions was 21m.
naman@gulfweekly.com
Source: https://www.gdnonline.com/Details/981293/Manama-among-best-capital-cities-to-visit
