Description of a recent Travel & Leisure Magazine “America’s Favorite Places” survey and the survey results for Sacramento.
Did you see the April 21st Sacramento Bee headline about a Travel & Leisure Magazine America’s Favorite Places survey? The headline read “Sacramento is No. 2 city for ugliest people”. That headline certainly caught my eye! As a result, I decided to look into the survey a bit more (without buying the magazine).
About the Survey
Travel & Leisure Magazine apparently conducts this survey annually as “…a way for locals to share what their hometowns do best”.
This specific survey opened on 10/8/2015 and closed on 4/15/2016. The survey was open to “everyone”, and it ran alongside a sweepstakes. The open-response survey asked respondents to submit their favorite place and rate it over 65 categories, including affordability, notable restaurants, and public parks. “Cities” was defined as governed bodies with a population over 100,000.
This description of the survey seems to imply that the respondents chose Sacramento as their favorite place – and then went on to rate the various categories including “least attractive people”.
SacramentoRevealed.com – All Things Sacramento (from a personal perspective)
Sacramento Ranking
This is what Travel & Leisure Magazine had to say about Sacramento based on responses to the survey category “cities with the least attractive people”:
No. 2 Sacramento, California
“Sacramentans don’t earn high marks for their looks, but readers did give them an A for effort. They received a perfect score for being active, which is easy to do in California’s state capital, just two hours from Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. Closer to home, Discovery Park, north of downtown, has 275 acres of riverfront forest and recreation fields. Sacramento also nabbed a perfect score for its café culture. Find the best brews in town at one of several Temple Coffee Roasters locations—the local chain has become a mini-empire of community gathering places”.
No. 5 Sacramento, California
Not all of the results for the “over 65” categories appear on the Travel & Leisure Magazine website – but I did find Sacramento listed in another category at #5. This is what Travel & Leisure Magazine had to say about Sacramento based on responses to the survey category “America’s Geekiest Cities”:
“Students at Sacramento State and nearby UC Davis help bring out Sacramento’s nerdy side, showing up for weekly game nights at stores like Big Brother Comics (Wednesdays for board games, Fridays for Magic: The Gathering). The shop’s original location burned down last year, but it’s back by popular demand with a new store downtown.
Empire’s Comics Vault is another favorite shop, hosting community events—cookie bakes, art showcases, live music—and attracting the dog lovers with Rolly Polly and Captain Dylan Hunt, the resident store pugs. Sacramento also hosts an outpost of the Wizard World Comic Con, seeing over 20,000 fans attend each year”.
Bottom Line
The Travel & Leisure Magazine website states that they counted “over 50,000” votes ranking 38 cities in “over 65” categories. Based on that assertion it appears that the number of respondents taking the survey was quite limited.
Additionally, although the data in #2 and #5 above is minimal, one could make a “subjective” guess as to the profile of the Sacramento respondents – but I will not go there. Draw your own conclusions.
As we all know, the public is attracted to articles which list and rank people, places and things – which is why we will continue to see similar subjective lists in the future. Survey’s such as this are just not worth taking seriously.
What I do wonder is this – I do not recall seeing a Sacramento Bee article proudly declaring that Sacramento is No. 5 on Travel & Leisure Magazine’s geekiest city list – did you?
See related blog post: Where Does Sacramento Rank?
Comments on the Travel & Leisure Magazine survey?
What are your thoughts on the Travel & Leisure Magazine Survey?
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