Picture the scene. It’s winter and you’re cold and bored and want a new setting...and your job lets you work from anywhere. You’re a digital nomad, and you’re trying to figure out where to go next. The website Business Name Generator is here to help with their list of best destinations for winter digital nomads.
The company looked at 50 different cities throughout the world, comparing them on various metrics like Wi-Fi speed (the most important thing for keeping up with your job), what it costs to live there temporarily, how much sunshine that city gets in winter and general quality of life issues. We will admit that the scores these cities earned are somewhat skewed for us in the U.S. since one of the parameters from this U.K.-based company is how long of a flight the destination is from London, and that’s not applicable to us. But glossing over that, the top destination for winter digital nomads was Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It gets 10.2 winter sunshine hours a day, and residents feel a balmy average temperature of around 72 degrees and pay an average rent of $1,412 per month.
We’ll point out that this list contains two American cities. In Orlando, residents get 7.4 hours of sunshine a day (before you freak out like we did, know that there is a difference between hours of sunshine and hours of daylight: for instance, in November, Orlando can get 11 hours of daylight but only 7 hours of sunshine) with an average temp of 65 degrees. They pay around $1,802 in rent. In Houston, residents get 7 hours of sunshine a day with an average temperature of 60 degrees and pay an average rent of $1,494.
Here’s the rest of the list:
2. Doha, Qatar
3. Bangkok, Thailand
4. Dubai, UAE
5. Singapore, Singapore
6. Orlando, FL
7. Houston, TX
8. Buenos Aires, Argentina
9. Melbourne, Australia
10. Lisbon, Portugal
The list also names the five most expensive cities for digital nomads. In order, that’s New York, Zurich, Boston, Seattle and London. And it names the five warmest cities: Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Sydney and Melbourne.