Newsstand: November 23, 2009
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Transit City and Transit Cities
Subscribers to the magazine “Travel & Leisure” have chosen their top ten destination cities in North America for 2006, and although 4 Canadian cities made the list, Toronto wasn’t one of them. Scenic Vancouver and Victoria, and quaint and historic Montreal and Quebec City all proved more popular than Toronto in this year's survey. Apparently, a little thing called the world’s tallest free-standing structure doesn’t mean much to Travel & Leisure readers.
No Canadian cities made the top ten in the world, all finishing well behind perennial front-runners New York and Sydney as well as surprise newcomer Beirut.
Blame it on SARS
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We've really got to get a better tourist attraction than the CN Tower...
Their Beirut article is from 2004...
"In the years since Lebanon's civil war ended, the once-divided city of Beirut has emerged from the rubble as a symbol of the new Middle East."
David, I think we just need to be ourselves. Be ourselves and have the olympics.
I do not think we shouldn't fret too much that Travel and Leisure (mostly US) subscribers didn't pick Toronto. Los Angeles, Toyko, Madrid, Lisbon and London et al did not make the cut and no Germany city which was the host of the World Cup which was well attended and highly successful. Speaking for Toronto, I had a hard time choosing what I wanted to see throughout the summer as it was jam packed with many free events. I also was in London in July and the city was packed for full of tourists. Toronto is a great city and its uniquness lies in its neighbourhoods and diversity not in its past. Americans are staying home more to the high dollar, the hassle of travelling and also the fact that their country is not well liked abroad.
That was North America.
Don't get me wrong, I love Toronto as a place to live (taxes aside), but really - as a tourist destination it doesn't have a lot to offer.
Yes your right, the top 10 list was restricted to North American cities but I should mention that on their other lists for other continental areas, there were other major cities (i.e. London, Toyko) absent in their top 10 lists. With respect to North America, LA and Miami are absent. With the exception of New York, I would pick those two cities over any of the cities listed. Yes I know Victoria is pretty but c'mon, I know where I would want to go in winter.
To paraphrase/add onto something from Toronto Life this month...
I don't think attracting touristm is about attractions as much as it's about creating a world-image of Toronto. And, just like creating a celebrity image, the only way to do this is through awknowldgement and promotion in other media venues.
People go to NY and Paris because they've seen those places and their icons in the media so much it's not even a concious choice. If we get some more media-replicated TO-based icons then we'll be at the same level, I think.
(the ROM's own Da Vinci Code! Sex And The Bay Street!)
I hear a lot of Americans like to needle Toronto particularly because of its uncreativity. Some guys I knew took notice that we keep stealing ideas from other cities to prop ourselves up i.e. the Tower idea from Paris, the Walk of Fame from L.A., SARStock concept from the Concert for New York, etc etc (hey, don't shoot the messenger) While I enjoy T.O., it does need some originality to call its own.
I'm still miffed about Victoria making the list and Toronto not making it.... then I realized this is about tourist attractions. Victoria has a lot of them (lotsa nature, the Empress hotel, museums) the whole city is quaint and nice. But good grief, I wouldn't want to live there.
Toronto is schizophrenic. I love living here, but I wouldn't want to vacation here. The CN Tower doesn't have the romantic connotations of the Eifel. We have no grand shopping promenades (University is nice, but it's all hospitals, and Bloor is still being redesigned). We have no waterfront worth mentioning. No rivers you can stroll along. What's there to see north of Bloor once you wander away from Yonge? Now I'm depressed.
Rek, not too many tourists have ever seen outer Paris or strayed far from London's West End, either. I don't think its a shame that most of the tourist stuff is concentrated downtown. Look at the folly that is the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts.
Michael - Having it all downtown isn't a problem, but Toronto's downtown pales compared to Chicago's for example. We have nothing like the Mag Mile (even the redesign of Bloor won't do it) or Millennium Park (Hillside Gardens in High Park is the closest we come).
I love living here, but I wouldn't want to visit.
"Don't get me wrong, I love Toronto as a place to live (taxes aside), but really - as a tourist destination it doesn't have a lot to offer. "
Au contraire, as a resident of Washington, DC (which is built to be a tourist destination), I take most of my vacations in Toronto, because Toronto has everything that a wise tourist looks for. It has plenty of egg restaurants, which means a good breakfast every morning. It has a number of distinctive neighborhoods, which allows for variety. It has friendly people that are quick to help out if you're lost or don't know how something (like the streetcars, for example) works. It has a great nightlife, with dance clubs, a live music scene, theater, comedy clubs, etc. It has plenty of events going on throughout the years. They have distinctive stores and shopping areas that allow tourists to find different souvenirs for friends back home.
I could keep going, but I hope you get the point. Just because Travel & Leisure doesn't get it doesn't mean that Toronto isn't a great tourist destination. That may be because Travel & Leisure has a tendency to forget that there's a whole other part of their title after the ampersand.
We're not hurting
From TO left off great Cities List (Toronto Star, Aug. 29, 2006)
>>Amy Farley, an associate editor at Travel + Leisure, says not to despair. "Toronto not being on the list doesn't mean readers aren't going to Toronto, and it doesn't mean they aren't enjoying their experience in Toronto."
A recent forecast from the Conference Board of Canada bears that out. Toronto draws the most tourists out of the eight Canadian metropolitan areas that it studies. Overnight visits to the city are expected to reach 10.5 million this year, an increase of 3.7 per cent over 2005. Those visitors will spend nearly $4 billion, up 5.5 per cent from the year before.
"This year Toronto is expected to attract even more domestic pleasure travellers," the report said, noting the draw of new theatre attractions, as well as new exhibits at the Ontario Science Centre and Royal Ontario Museum.
The report blames a projected decline in U.S. visitors on new passport requirements.
Cities are evaluated in six categories: sights, culture and arts, restaurants and food, people, shopping, and value.
It's hard to imagine how Toronto could finish behind Victoria in rankings like culture and arts, restaurants and food, and shopping. I'm not sure what people means, but hey, we've got more than all those other Canadian cities put together so that's gotta count for something.
Surveys like that are always subjective, no matter how scientifically they approach it. Bangkok over Hong Kong? Rome over London? i'm not buying it.
Victoria is a cruise ship port. Big, Alaska-bound, floating buffet tables full of American tourists who read mags like Travel + Leisure. Toronto sadly only had the ferry from Rochester.
Toronto: We got good eggs.
;)
I have it on good authority that Toronto's appearance in this magazine's top destinations list seems to have a lot more to do with how much advertising Toronto does in the magazine.
I'm not a subscriber or anything, but apparently Toronto never advertised in this magazine and never made the list a few years back. then when ads for Toronto started to appear in the magazine, they started to appear on the list...now there is no advertising for Toronto anymore!
Hmmmmm!!!!
I'm not getting all Oliver Stone on you am I???
Toronto is a city to live in, not one to visit. We're not a one trick pony, we have variety. I say it's better to be a liveable city than a city like Venice, Italy, that is basically a ghostown filled only with foreign tourists. The locals there only come in to the city during the day to work in the restaurants and hotels, then escape back to the surrounding towns at the end of their shift. That's the opposite ugly extreme of a city relying on nothing but tourism.
Michael, as someone who has tried to get a decent breakfast in many different cities, "Toronto: We Got Good Eggs" would be a very effective slogan for tourism! :)
S'funny, seeing how Torontoist is the only city whin- uh, complaining about this exclusion.
Yeah, you don't see Regina or Moncton complaining. Them's tough cities.