What do digital nomads think of this list of "Top 100" destinations?
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Joy Kennelly
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Featured on Jul 18, 2025 (5 days ago).
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Accommodation website "Hotel With Tub" recently published a list of top digital nomad destinations for 2025.
hotelwithtub.com/blog/ranking-the-top-100-digital-nomad-destinations-of-2025
They claim: "We pulled data from over 1,300 cities worldwide and ranked the top 100 based on what digital nomads care about most—how affordable it is to live there (alone or with family), how safe and livable it feels, how often people return, and how much buzz it's getting online."
I'd be very curious to hear how this compares to real life experiences by true digital nomads!?
As a long time nomad/slomad myself and from our data at Insured Nomads I'm surprised by a few of the cities being on the list (Ogden, Utah and six cities in Poland out of 100) and then for Rio de Janeiro to be placed as 99 and Medellín as 100 is questionable as they would be higher I believe.
Yeah I was surprised by some results. Melbourne? It's a cool city but very expensive and the timezone sucks for most people working remotely. And where is Bansko?
:) I have no idea where some of these people draw their data from but it doesn't align much with what we see from 2,000 nomads a day.
Some weird results and left-outs in there.
I really hope this guy joins to hear everyone's comments! I wondered which is why I asked if I could share. I consider becoming a digital nomad myself and found the new community presented by our colleagues on here very interesting.
Wow, that list varies a lot from what you normally see! I've never even heard of Nakhon Ratchasima as a digital nomad destination and it's #5?
I wouldn't have expected London and Tokyo that high just because of the cost of living (Dubai is expensive too but I do agree Dubai is rapidly becoming a popular remote work destination). And I would have expected Valencia, where I'm currently based, much higher on the list.
In short, I really wonder how useful the data they chose is to rank digital nomad destinations...
Most surveys like this are not sound in my experience. The methodology (from a publication I've never heard of) doesn't mention who was polled, how information was gathered or how it's weighted. We do a lot of primary research on the women 50+ travel market and always show our sources. I tend to ignore blogs and rely on organizations that understand data, which is also my background.
I believe it's just a content creator trying to promote the website and they looked at a lot of data analysis to come to their conclusions. Do you share your 50+ travel data anywhere? I'd be interested in reading it if you care to share.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I've sent them over to the guy who sent it to me so he sees what real life nomads think. I found what you all had to say very interesting and hope he does too. I told him he should join so he has more of a feel for this community if he's trying to appeal to digital nomads in general.:)
Just seeing Bangkok at #1 with 23.3m nomads by 2025? These are the overall tourist arrivals so far this year, unless they are all digital nomads. What a load of bull! However, living here, there are quite a few of them, but definitely not 23.3m so far this year. So I scrap this list as just another load of bullshit!
Tell us how you really feel Bert! LOL
I guess a challenge of this kind of list is distinguishing between tourists and digital nomads. For instance Yangshuo. I absolutely loved the place, but it's pretty small, not really a place to stay for months at a time, so probably the instagram hashtag volume played a big role in getting Yangshuo on this list.
As far as cheap destinations go, it all depends on which cities where included in the original research. I'm missing Danang, it's cheaper than Hanoi, and wildly popular among digital nomads.
It's difficult to make this kind of list perfect (though it's fun to read!)
Isn't it? That's why I thought this group was great to share it in.
I'm surprised not to see Chiang Mai in the top 20
Why would you say that? Just curious.
I've read a number of articles citing Chiang Mai as a good digital nomad destination. Here is an example: thisremotecorner.com/digital-nomads-in-chiang-mai/ . The rest can be googled.
Thank you! Very interesting.
A fun list ... as a BKK resident I can understand the appeal.
This is awesome