The month of love is upon us, and if you’ve exhausted Sydney’s most romantic date spots and worked your way through the best free and cheap dates in the city, it might be time to take your romance elsewhere. A new study from online language learning marketplace Preply has identified the most romantic cities in Australia, and it’s good news for Sydneysiders – four of them are right here in NSW, making ours the most swoon-worthy state.
To determine which of Australia's cities are best for romance, Preply assessed our country’s 50 largest cities, judging their performance in seven different categories. The romance factor of cities was determined based on the number of romantic hotels, number of romantic restaurants, number of activities for couples and the amount of romance-related online searches (concerning engagements, Valentine's Day plans, buying flowers and dating interests). Based on their aggregated score, each city was given a ‘Romantic City Break Score’ out of five, and the NSW town of Orange came out on top.
Orange landed its crown for several reasons; scoring an overall romance score of 4.47 compared with the national average of 2.58. The vineyard-studded town scored high based on its wide range of ‘couples’ attractions (according to Tripadvisor data), and was the Aussie town with the highest rate of online searches for engagement rings.
The unpretentious beach town of Port Macquarie came in at number three on the list – scoring high based on search rates for flowers, number of romantic activities and comparatively high number of romantic hotels according to Booking.com (you can read about our personal Port Macquarie favourite here).
The other NSW towns to make the top ten were Bathurst, coming in at number five with a Romantic City Break Score of 3.56, followed by Dubbo which came in at number six.
Sydney might not have taken the crown for Australia’s best city this year according to Time Out’s global rankings, but if you’re in the market for butterflies, it seems like NSW is the place to be. You can read the full report and plan your next romantic getaway over here.