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Two Australian cities named in top 10 safest for tourists

Sydney has been named as one of the top 10 safest cities for tourists in the world.

Sydney has been named as one of the top 10 safest cities for tourists in the world. Photo: Getty

Two Australian hotspots made the list of the safest cities for tourists in the world, further cementing the country as a destination for travellers and sightseers alongside other global travel icons like Amsterdam and Tokyo.

Sydney ranked No.4 on Forbes Adviser’s safest cities list, beaten out by only Singapore, Tokyo and Toronto.

Melbourne also managed to place ninth on the list, below Zurich, Copenhagen, Seoul and Osaka, with Amsterdam rounding out the top 10.

Forbes ranked cities based on metrics that included health security, crime, travel safety rating, infrastructure security, digital security and natural disaster.

“To uncover the most and least risky cities for tourists, Forbes Adviser compared 60 international cities across seven key metrics,” Forbes said.

“We found that Caracas, Venezuela tops the list as the riskiest city for tourists, while Singapore ranks as the safest.”

Safest cities

Sydney scored No.1 in the world based on its digital security risk, “reflecting the ability of citizens to freely use the internet without fear of privacy violations, identity theft and online attacks”.

It also performed well on personal security, health security and infrastructure security risk, landing in the top 10 for each.

Melbourne landed at No.9 on the list. Photo: Getty

Melbourne, on the other hand, ranked 57th highest on health security out of the 60 cities, while also performing strongly in digital security.

Neither city landed in the top 15 cities based on crime, reflecting “the overall level of crime in each city”.

Singapore landed the top spot as the safest city in the world because of its low natural disaster risk, and second lowest health security, infrastructure security and digital security risk.

Smart Traveller, the Australian government’s travel advice site, said that “violent crime against tourists is rare” in Singapore.

“The standard of medical facilities and care is similar to or higher than in Australia,” Smart Traveller said.

“Singapore has strict laws for ‘outrage of modesty’ offences or being drunk and disorderly in public. You should avoid any action that could be interpreted as molestation, including inappropriate touching or language.”

Riskiest cities

The world’s most unsafe city, according to the list, was Caracas in Venezuela.

caracas

Caracas in Venezuela was named the riskiest city for travellers by Forbes. Photo: Getty

Caracas has topped other lists of the world’s most unsafe cities because of its extreme rate of crime and violence while having the sixth-highest homicide rate in the world outside of an active war zone.

Smart Traveller warns that people shouldn’t travel to Venezuela because “common violent crime includes murder, armed robbery, drive-by shootings, sexual assault and carjackings”.

The city had the highest health and crime risk, and the second highest infrastructure security and digital security risk, according to Forbes.

The top three unsafest cities were rounded out by Karachi in Pakistan and Yangon in Myanmar.

Lagos (Nigeria), Manila (Philippines), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Bogota (Colombia), Cairo (Egypt), Mexico City (Mexico) and Quito (Ecuador) were the other cities in the top 10.

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