Macau ranks 29th in Asia on Tourism City Attractiveness Index, Osaka leads

Macau has ranked 29th in Asia’s Regional Ranking of the Tourism City Attractiveness Index.

The ranking, which analyzes cities’ tourism attractiveness across four dimensions, including “Culture and History,” “Experiential Tourism Contents,” “Hospitality,” and “Urban Aesthetics and Natural Scenery,” has announced its latest results.

Macau ranks between Mecca (Saudi Arabia) and Manila (Philippines) with an overall Attractiveness Index of 0.236 points.

Osaka (Japan) leads the Asia Regional Index with 3.064 points and ranks globally as the most attractive city for tourism. Kyoto (Japan) and Seoul (South Korea) follow Osaka at the top.

The Top 5 Asian cities are completed with Bangkok (Thailand) and Dubai (UAE).

Macau’s best score was achieved in the “Experiential Tourism Contents” dimension, where it ranked 23rd (0.332), right behind Phuket (Thailand) and ahead of another Thai city, Pattaya.

Interestingly, Macau’s lowest score (0.118) was in the “Culture and History” dimension, which placed it in 40th position behind Nha Trang (Vietnam).

Better results were achieved in “Hospitality” (32nd) and “Urban Aesthetics and Natural Scenery” (28th), with scores of 0.16 and 0.285, respectively.

Still, Macau’s results are far from those of the Top 10 Asian cities, which include Okinawa, Fukuoka, Tokyo, Singapore, and Jeju.

In the overall ranking, for reference, the neighboring city of Hong Kong placed 12th, between Sapporo and Chiang Mai.

Hong Kong also achieved the best score among the Greater China cities, followed by Shanghai (16th), Beijing (19th), and Taipei (26th).

As previously mentioned, Osaka ranked among Asia’s most attractive cities for tourism and topped the global list, followed by Paris (France), Kyoto, and New York (USA). Seoul completed the overall Top 5, while London (UK), Bangkok, Rome (Italy), Dubai, and Okinawa rounded out a Top 10 that includes six Asian cities.

In the overall ranking, Macau placed 66th in “Tier 2,” just behind Dublin (Ireland) and one place above Cairo (Egypt).

Significant hike from 2024

Although it placed relatively low in the index, Macau’s score in 2025 represents a significant hike from the previous year, when it placed 90th with a score of 0.154 points.

In regional terms, Macau also moved up a few spots in the Asia ranking, from 34th in 2024 to 29th this year.

Analyzed by dimension, Macau significantly increased its score in “Urban Aesthetics and Natural Scenery” compared to one year ago, moving from 36th (0.121) to 28th (0.285).

On the other hand, Macau dropped one place compared to last year in “Culture and History” (39th to 40th), due to much higher scores for different cities in this particular dimension.

The result in “Hospitality” remained unchanged compared to one year ago, with Macau repeating the 32nd position, although with a slight drop in score of 0.001.

About the Tourism City Attractiveness Index

The Yanolja Attractiveness Index (Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index) is a measurement tool developed by Yanolja Research in collaboration with Purdue University’s CHRIBA Institute and Kyung Hee University’s H&T Analytics Center.

It quantifies cities’ overall appeal as tourist destinations by analyzing global social media data. This index integrates two core dimensions: emotional attractiveness (how positively tourists perceive a city) and cognitive reputation (how well-known or prominent the city is among global audiences).

Tourism city attractiveness is a psychological-cognitive composite comprising tourists’ affective responses and awareness or recognition of a destination.

It aims to answer two interrelated questions: “Do tourists feel positively about this city?” and “How prominently is this city recognized as a tourist destination?” Both dimensions jointly shape tourist decision-making.

It targets 191 cities (12 cities max per country). Based on their large user populations and the maturity of available Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, it uses 14 languages for social media data analysis, including English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, German, Japanese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Korean, Italian, and Thai.

This fact, combined with the social media platforms from which it collects information (YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Blogs, Facebook Public, X [Twitter], Review, Reddit, Facebook, Forums), may also play an essential role in Macau’s score, since Chinese is not one of the languages analyzed, nor does the index use any social media platforms popular in China.

Still, it provides insight into the global reputation of Macau as a tourist city.