Sydney’s nightlife gets a bad rap. But since the lockout laws were repealed back in early 2020, the Harbour City has been clawing back its reputation as a place that knows how to party. Last year, a Sydney night club was the only Australian club to make a prestigious list of the best clubs in the world, and now, Sydney has ranked as one of the best cities in the world for nighttime tourism – outranking all other Aussie cities.
Heck yeah: Sydney recently ranked among the best cities in the world for culture.
After noticing an increase in the popularity of nighttime tourism, travel booking site Travelbag did some digging into the best nighttime destinations in the world for travellers. To discover which destinations shine the brightest after dark, Travelbag assessed a number of factors including Instagram hashtag volume, levels of light pollution, perceived safety after dark and the number of venues that stay open late. Based on the data, they put together a guide to the prettiest cities at night, and Sydney ranked at number seven.
Unsurprisingly, the highest-ranking city was New York. With sparkling sky-high towers and a huge selection of late-night venues, ‘the city that never sleeps’ earned its title, with 2,302 late-night venues and a deafening hashtag volume of 40,800.
Tokyo came in second place with 996 late night venues and a considerably higher safety score (75.28 compared with New York’s 46.25), followed by Dubai, Singapore, Muscat and Kyoto.
Our very own Emerald City ranked in seventh place, with an Instagram hashtag volume of 13,000, a relatively low (read: good) noise and light pollution score of 40.19 and a safety score of 53.80. Where the Harbour City fell down was on the late-night venues front, with just 325 late night venues (lets hope the NSW Government’s plans to support Sydney’s nighttime economy will boost those numbers).
The only other Aussie city to rank among the top ten was Melbourne, which came in at number 10 with 291 late-night venues (that’s 34 less than in Sydney) and a safety score of 43.10.
You can check out the full list of the best cities for night time tourism here.
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