Bucharest enters Expedia’s top of world’s best shopping cities

Ranking last among 25 cities of the world, Bucharest has entered Expedia’s top of best cities for shopping this year. The top, taking into account three factors (value for money, visitor numbers and city friendliness), gave a total score of 11 out of 30 to our capital city, due mainly to the low prices registered here.

While scoring low (1 point out of ten) for both friendliness and number of visitors, Bucharest gathered 9 points in terms of value for money, having cheap public transport (GBP 0.24) and low prices for clothing (a pair of Levi’s can be found for GBP 39.69 and a pair of Nike shoes for GBP 44.67).

For comparison, in London (number 4 overall), which scored 2 out of 10 at this point, public transport costs GBP 2.5, while a pair of Levi’s can be found for GBP 61.44 and a pair of Nike shoes for GBP 62.47. Amsterdam, the most expensive city among the 25 (scoring 1 out of 10 in value for money), has a less expensive public transport than London (GBP 2.05), while shopping prices go higher (BGP 67.18 for Levi’s and GBP 63.03 for Nike).

To measure the level of friendliness of a city Expedia used the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015, in which Romania scores 66th with a score of 3.8 (the best score being 5.3). Berlin and Madrid are the two cities in the top that scored 10 out of 10 in this concern, while Bucharest is joined in “unfriendliness” by Marrakech, which scored a similar 1 out of 10.

With 1.2 million visitors a year, Bucharest is only slightly surpassed by Melbourne (1.6 million visitor per year, scoring the same) and Cape Town (1.9 million). At the other end of the scale, cities that scored 10 out of 10 in terms of attracting tourists were London (18.82 million visitors/year) and Bangkok (18.24 million visitors/year).

The first five cities of the ranking are: New York (8/10 value for money, 9/10 friendliness, 7/10 number of visitors), Berlin (4/10, 10/10, 7/10), Los Angeles (9/10, 9/10, 3/10), London (2/10, 9/10, 10/10) and Kuala Lumpur (10/10, 5/10, 6/10).

See here a selection of places to go for Christmas shopping in Bucharest.