Kyoto Voted Best Big City in the World

Kyoto was voted as the best big city in the world by readers of Condé Nast Traveller magazine.

For the magazine’s yearly Readers’ Choice Awards, readers vote on the best things in travel, including the best countries, cities, airports, trains and hotels. A record 600,000 readers voted from April 1 to June 30 using the Condé Nast Traveller website.

The survey, which has been held for 33 years, asked readers to score different features on a scale from poor to excellent. For hotels, for example, readers scored features like rooms, service and location.

After Kyoto, the best big cities were Lyon, Singapore, Sydney, Vienna, Tokyo, Porto, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Lisbon. The best small cities were also voted on, with San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Mérida, Mexico, being the top three.

The three best countries were Italy, Sri Lanka and Portugal. Japan came fourth, up from 12th place in 2019.

Japan’s Seven Stars in Kyushu train was also voted the seventh best train in the world. In addition to this, Haneda Airport in Tokyo was voted the sixth best airport.

According to the Kyoto Prefectural Government, the city of Kyoto had about 53 million visitors in 2019. However, this number is expected to be much lower in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Visitor numbers have fallen across the country. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization. More than 22 million people visited Japan from January to August 2019. This number is believed to be just below 4 million for 2020.