Media Contact:
Brenna Moore/Visit Albuquerque
Office: (505) 222-4349
Moore@VisitABQ.org
Rankings determined by global advisory firm Resonance Consultancy
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – (June 30, 2021) – Albuquerque has been named one of America’s 100 Best Cities for 2021 by Resonance Consultancy, a global advisory firm focusing on real estate, tourism and economic development. Albuquerque was ranked No. 34 on the list of the best American cities with metro populations of 500,000 people or more, up from No. 54 in 2020.
“The Best Cities rankings are composed of experiential factors that people consider most important in choosing a city to live and visit, as well as empirical factors that business decision-makers consider important in choosing where to invest,” said Resonance Consultancy President & CEO Chris Fair in a press release.
The list highlights Albuquerque’s natural beauty and outdoor recreation opportunities and calls attention to the city’s rich cultural heritage and one-of-a-kind culinary scene. The city also ranked highly within a few of the report’s subcategories, coming in at No. 19 for Museums, No. 38 for Restaurants, No. 16 for Shopping and No. 14 for Weather.
“Albuquerque’s stock is on the rise, and this leap in rankings is a testament to that,” said Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller. “Our city is a healthy, beautiful place to be with irreplicable culture and experiences. All over the country, folks are waking up to what we have to offer, and we’re excited to welcome more and more of them for a visit.”
“To be named one of the best cities in the country – and to have moved up 20 places over last year’s report – is a very prestigious honor and sparks optimism for the city’s strong recovery from the challenges of the past 18 months,” said Tania Armenta, President & CEO of Visit Albuquerque. “We know that Albuquerque is a special, authentic place with boundless potential, and it’s wonderful to see that recognized within the highly regarded Best Cities report.”
According to the news release, the Best Cities rankings quantify and benchmark the relative quality of place, reputation and competitive identity for American cities with metropolitan populations of 500,000 or more. They are lauded as the world’s most thorough city rankings, based on an original methodology that analyzes key statistics as well as user-generated reviews and online activity in channels such as Google, Facebook and Instagram.
The rankings’ methodology evaluates each qualifying city across the six pillars of place equity: Place, Product, Programming, People, Prosperity and Promotion. To capture the reality of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic within these rankings—now in its seventh year—Resonance added several new subcategories to the six performance pillars to better understand the economic performance of cities amidst the crisis.
In addition to America’s Best Cities, Resonance Consultancy also publishes the World’s 100 Best Cities and America’s 100 Best Small Cities reports. Last year, Resonance Consultancy revised the population metric for the small city classification to be between 100,000 and 500,000 people (in past years, small city was defined with a metro population of under 1 million people), meaning that Albuquerque moved out of the small city category for the 2020 and 2021 rankings. Under the previous classification, Albuquerque was ranked as the No. 4 best small U.S. city in 2019 and the No. 3 best small U.S. city in 2018.
About Visit Albuquerque
Visit Albuquerque is an accredited destination marketing organization (DMO), and a private, not-for-profit organization [501(c)(6)]. The mission of Visit Albuquerque is to stimulate economic growth by marketing Albuquerque as a convention, sports and visitor destination. For more information, go to www.VisitABQ.org.
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