Topping a ranking of up to 420 cities in 89 countries is our beloved Malaga followed by Venice and San Francisco. The prestigious American magazine has published a study carried out by Premier Inn which investigated 420 cities in 89 countries to see which ones were of most interest to travellers.
"While it's hard to argue that the capital of a country is usually the city that has the most impressive things to offer, that's certainly not always the case," noted journalist Duncan Madden in the article, which stated that capital cities often "don't best showcase the culture and magic of the people and history" of a country.
This study analysed Google searches which placed the capital of the Costa del Sol at the top of the 25 most popular cities, with up to 312,000 global searches carried out annually under the term "holidays in Malaga".
Premier Inn claims that Malaga is "known for its idyllic beaches, lively culture and delicious food, Malaga is proving popular with visitors looking for less obvious cities to visit this year".
Furthermore, the Forbes article shared by Bernardo Quintero, founder of Virustotal, the Google-owned cybersecurity company, points out that in the case of Spain, Madrid had already been eclipsed by Barcelona, but now both are eclipsed by Malaga and its "beautiful beaches and free attractions like the Alcazaba and Gibralfaro Castle are attracting people from far and wide". Added to being the birthplace of Picasso and having its own museum.
Therefore, among the 25 cities found in the study we see Malaga being the most popular, placing it at a great distance from cities such as Venice (Italy) with 262. 240 searches or other cities that follow such as San Francisco (USA), Antalya (Turkey), Brighton (UK), Perth (Australia), Hurghada (Egypt), Porto (Portugal), Antwerp (Belgium), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Thessaloniki (Greece), Lyon (France), Vancouver (Canada), Split (Croatia), Munich (Germany), Durban (South Africa), Casablanca (Morocco), Basel (Switzerland), Pattaya (Thailand), Osaka (Japan), Fujairah (United Arab Emirates), Chennai (India), Wroclaw (Poland), Auckland (New Zealand) and Mendoza (Argentina).