Toronto ranked one of the most visited cities in North America

Toronto has been ranked one of the most visited cities in North America — and in fact the world if you take a wide enough view of these things.

Approximately 4.5 million international tourists left home explicitly to visit the 6ix last year, according to one of the world's leading market research firms.

A freshly dropped report from Euromonitor International places Toronto among the top 10 most-visited cities in North America, just behind New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Cancun, and Orlando in terms of visitor volume.

That's pretty freaking huge – even if it the numbers sound kind of low.
You see, Euromonitor's Top 100 City Destinations Ranking only counts "visitors from abroad who arrive at the city under review as their first point of entry" and stay "for at least 24 hours" in "collective or private accommodation."

Someone from London, England who comes to Toronto on vacation and stays in a hotel for one week would count. Someone from London, Ontario who comes to Toronto for a day of shopping and then drives home would not.

Euromonitor's figures also exclude same-day visitors, people in transit, those in paid employment abroad, students who stay for more than 12 months, military personnel, transportation crew and "displaced people because of war or natural disasters."

These are the world’s most visited cities: Euromonitor International’s latest ranking reveals the top 100 city destinations based on visitor numbers. https://t.co/M0Se5JIdVv #wef17 pic.twitter.com/hybYgxTOSX

— WEF Context (@WefBot) January 9, 2018

Tourism Toronto pegs our actual annual visitor count at closer to 40 million, which is great – but not so impressive when contrasted against the entire world.

Euromonitor places us at spot number 52 on a list of 100 city destinations worldwide. That said, Toronto is on the rise and in the grand scheme of things that ranking is pretty impressive in and of itself.

The number of tourists visiting Ontario's capital rose 11.2 per cent between 2016 and 2017. Some might credit a low Canadian dollar and events like The Invictus Games for that bump, but others might just say that Toronto is simply really cool right now.

The seven coolest cities to look out for in 2018 are:
- Toronto
- Muscat
- Dundee
- Paris
- Tokyo
- Tbilisi
- San Miguel de Allendehttps://t.co/cBBO23dyIv

— CNN International (@cnni) January 10, 2018

Like, really cool.