Basilica in Guelph Ontario and Mississauga, Ontario skyline.
Are you trying to plan a Canadian vacation and not sure where to start? Some of the most loved Canadian travel destinations are right here in Ontario, so you don’t need an expensive plane ticket to have a fantastic vacation.
The Tourism Sentiment Index, which uses technology specifically built for tourism to rank destinations based on how people truly feel, ranked the top 50 cities to travel to within Canada. This 2021 list is the first time they’ve ranked the top vacation spots in Canada, during one of the most difficult years for tourism.
Ten cities in Ontario secured a spot as one of the most loved destinations to travel to within Canada. It’s likely not surprising to many that Toronto, Niagara and Ottawa made the list, but they may not be as close to number one as you’d think.
“No one has paid to be named. No surveys have suggested an answer. Word of mouth built this list, unprompted and unbiased,” says the Tourism Sentiment Index. Each Canadian city has earned its unique score. The top-rated city in all of Canada is Richmond, British Columbia with a score of 28.30 and St. John’s, Newfoundland comes in 50th place with a 16.71 score.
The Ontario cities of Kitchener, Kingston, Scarborough, and Haliburton Highlands all took a place on the top 50 list, ranked as numbers 47, 45, 42 and 35, respectively. Barrie also took a place at number 27.
The highest-rated cities in Ontario were Mississauga coming in the second spot with a score of 27.58 and Niagara coming in third. Mississauga was the only Ontario city to also make the list of 100 most loved travel destinations in the world. With the same ranking system, Mississauga cracked the top 50 best cities to travel to in the world at number 42.
You may be wondering where Toronto and Ottawa appeared on the list of most loved cities. With a score of 21.88, the city of Toronto came in at number 17, even beat out by Guelph at number 16. Ottawa was lower on the list and with a score of 19.49, it comes in at spot 34, yikes.