Bordeaux tops tourism survey

BORDEAUX has been named the best European destination for 2015 in an online poll that drew hundreds of thousands of votes from 113 countries.

The city claimed 17% of the 224,700 votes gathered from around the world over three weeks, putting it ahead of Portuguese capital Lisbon in second and Greece’s Athens in third.

There was no place in the top 10 for the world’s most popular tourist destination, Paris, or three other major tourist hotspots - London, Barcelona or Rome.

A large section of Bordeaux was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2007, because of its “outstanding urban and architectural ensemble”. Since then the number of visitors has risen by about 35% to 5million a year.

The top 10 European destinations, according to the poll organised by the Brussels-based European Best Destinations group, which aims to promote European tourism, are:

1. Bordeaux
2. Lisbon, Portugal
3. Athens, Greece
4. Valletta, Malta
5. Riga, Latvia
6. Zagreb, Croatia
7. Ljubljana, Slovenia
8. Innsbruck, Austria
9. Milan, Italy
10. Brussels, Belgium

Photo: Geoff Livingston