This Year’s Best City Destinations for Millennial Travelers

European travel-tech company Holidu recently released its Generational Travel Index for 2022, as reported by CNBC. To create its rankings, the company compiled a list of every country in the world’s main city, and analyzed them according to specific factors that aligned with the values and travel desires of each generation.

The company’s research revealed that 71 percent of Millennials use Instagram at least once per week, and center their travel plans around the destination’s food and beverage offerings and that more than half of them are parents with children who still live at home.

In assessing the best cities for Millennial travelers (defined as those born between 1981 and 1995), Holidu took into account which are the most “Instagrammable” (i.e., the number of Instagram hashtags each has accrued), how many of its national dishes made it into the “top 100” and each destination’s overall family-friendliness.

Here are Holidu’s top five best cities for Millennials:

1. Paris, France

2. Barcelona, Spain

3. Madrid, Spain

4. New York, United States

5. Miami, United States

The long-celebrated ‘City of Light’ ranked highest among all the world’s main cities. As home to some of the world’s most well-known landmarks, Paris has received over 137 hashtags on Instagram. The French capital is also home to the most attended theme park in Europe, Disneyland Paris, which of course is a favorite among families. Paris also boasts two of the “top 100” best national dishes.

When looking at worldwide major cities solely in terms of their Instagram hashtag numbers, Paris actually came second to London, which had a count of 158 million. In third for hashtags came Istanbul, Dubai in fourth and New York City in fifth place.

Interestingly, the global cities that feature the most national dishes ranked in the “top 100” are (in order from first to fifth) Naples, Rome, Milan, Florence and—the only city outside of Italy to make the top five—Beijing.