This is the world’s most welcoming city, according to a new travel study

A new study looked at safety, ease of entry, language, and traveler experience to find which cities make visitors feel most welcome.

What makes a city feel welcoming when you first arrive? Feeling safe helps. So does being able to communicate, find your way around, and get help when you need it.

Travel eSIM provider Holafly recently tried to put numbers behind that experience, analyzing 200 cities using English proficiency, safety, visa openness, tourism and information services, social support, and search interest for terms like “friendly” and “welcoming.”

The cities were drawn from lists of the world’s most visited destinations and most populous urban areas, and the data was current as of June 15, 2026.

The 10 most welcoming cities in the world

1. Singapore, Singapore
2. London, United Kingdom
3. Sydney, Australia
4. The Hague, Netherlands
5. Hong Kong
6. Boston, United States
7. New York City, United States
8. Utrecht, Netherlands
9. Penang Island, Malaysia
10. Aarhus, Denmark

Singapore finished with an overall score of 81.83, well ahead of London at 65.04 and Sydney at 64.80.

Why Singapore ranked first

Singapore performed particularly well for safety and ease of entry, earning a safety score of 77.7 and a visa openness score of 164. Researchers also counted 41 tourism and information assistance services in the city.

I asked Harry Deacon, a travel expert at Holafly, about the challenge of measuring something as subjective as feeling welcome.

“There’s a difference between a city that’s easy to visit and one that makes travelers feel welcomed and accepted,” Deacon told me.

That distinction becomes especially interesting once you get a little farther down the list.

Boston and New York are the interesting surprise

Boston was the highest-ranking U.S. city at No. 6 worldwide, with New York right behind it at No. 7.

That caught my attention.

I love visiting Boston and have always had a great time there (see the video below!), but the city does have a reputation for being a little, well, blunt.

Other surveys have backed that up. A Preply survey asking residents of 25 major U.S. cities about friendliness placed Boston among the three least-friendly cities in the country, along with Philadelphia and Seattle.

Another Preply study found Boston was particularly associated with drivers not slowing down for pedestrians and people not acknowledging strangers. When respondents were asked where locals were ruder than people who had moved to the city, Boston ranked second and New York fifth.

New York’s rude reputation goes back even further. A separate Insider and SurveyMonkey poll of nearly 2,100 Americans once ranked New York the rudest major city in the country, with Boston also landing near the top.

So seeing both among the world’s most welcoming cities is pretty funny. But it also makes Holafly’s methodology easier to understand. Boston scored well here because of factors such as safety, tourism infrastructure, social support, and how often people search for the city alongside words such as “friendly” and “welcoming.”

That actually tracks with my experience. I find Boston easy to explore and a city I happily return to. I just wouldn’t expect strangers on the sidewalk to start making small talk with me.

Apparently, a city can be a very good host without greeting you with a hug.

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