Opinion | Moscow the world’s third-best ‘self-care capital’, whatever that is ... Yes, really
- Travel marketers have had a tough job during the Covid-19 pandemic, but they’re getting creative
- A recent top 25 list, ‘Self-care capitals of the world for 2021’, has some interesting parameters
With international flights mostly grounded, 2020 saw travel marketers looking for increasingly creative ways to remind people why getting on a plane and going somewhere used to be so much fun.
Zoom travel conferences and virtual travel experiences have had limited appeal. As a cynical travel writer I have created a Covid-19 bingo card, in which words and phrases such as “unprecedented”, “new normal” and “pivot” score points whenever they are mentioned in an online conference. It’s a cheap shot, but has made some of the less glamorous presentations pass more swiftly.
In a brutal year for the industry, travel publicity has been a difficult and unenviable task, carried out with tenacity – but some campaigns are more creative than others. Take, for example, the recent unveiling of the “Self-care capitals of the world for 2021”, by Money.co.uk.
Suggesting that 2021 “will be the year of self-care, with more of us making time for ourselves and our personal well-being”, the consumer advice website’s wellness scores for each of the world’s 25 most populous capital cities (with the likes of Kinshasa, Dhaka and Tehran ditched in favour of Madrid, Rome and Dublin, and Hong Kong and Taipei fearlessly counted as national capitals) are defined by some intriguing parameters.
The numbers of parks, museums and restaurants, as well as the giving of a "quality of life" score, all seem on the money. The tallying of shopping centres and pottery and painting classes? Not so much.