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NEW YORK TOPS 2026 GLOBAL TOURISM CITY ATTRACTIVENESS INDEX

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Yanolja Research Announces U.S. Cities and Asian Destinations Redefine Urban Tourism Appeal

SEOUL, South Korea, July 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Yanolja Research, a global research institute specializing in travel and tourism, today announced the 2026 results of the Yanolja Attractiveness Index, officially titled the Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index, a demand-driven ranking that measures how strongly major tourism cities capture global traveler attention and emotional appeal.

Developed jointly by Yanolja Research, Purdue University’s CHRIBA Institute in the United States and Kyung Hee University’s H&T Analytics Center in Seoul, the index uses global social media data across 14 languages provided by Brandwatch. The released 2026 ranking covers 200 cities and is designed to go beyond conventional supply-side tourism indicators by capturing what travelers actually talk about, remember and emotionally value.

New York Leads Overall; Paris, Osaka, Kyoto and Seoul Complete the Top Five

In the 2026 ranking, New York ranked No. 1 overall, reflecting its rare combination of global visibility and deeply favorable visitor sentiment. Paris ranked No. 2, followed by Osaka at No. 3, Kyoto at No. 4 and Seoul at No. 5. The remainder of the global top 10 includes London (No. 6), Rome (No. 7), Bangkok (No. 8), Okinawa (No. 9) and Chicago (No. 10).

The results show that global tourism appeal is no longer defined only by iconic landmarks or infrastructure scale. Leading cities increasingly succeed when they combine strong cognitive awareness with emotionally satisfying, shareable, and distinctive visitor experiences.

U.S. Cities Demonstrate Exceptional Depth Across the Global Rankings

The United States delivered the broadest upper-tier presence in the 2026 index, with 16 U.S. cities in the global top 50 and 19 in the top 100. Beyond New York’s No. 1 position, Chicago ranked No. 10, Los Angeles No. 13, Miami No. 15, Washington, D.C. No. 18, Boston No. 22, Dallas No. 23, Tampa No. 24, San Francisco No. 26 and Houston No. 28.

Other U.S. cities also performed strongly, including Atlanta (No. 31), Seattle (No. 32), Las Vegas (No. 36), Orlando (No. 45), Philadelphia (No. 46), Denver (No. 50), San Diego (No. 54), Nashville (No. 65) and New Orleans (No. 78). This breadth suggests that the U.S. tourism portfolio is not dependent on a single gateway city, but is supported by a diverse ecosystem of cultural, business, entertainment, leisure and lifestyle destinations.

Asia’s Rise Is Driven by High Emotional Attractiveness

Asian destinations were especially strong on affective attractiveness, the index dimension that captures positive emotion, perceived experience quality and visitor enthusiasm. Japan was the clearest example: Osaka and Kyoto ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in affective attractiveness, while Okinawa, Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka and Yokohama also appeared among the leading global cities.

Korean destinations also showed meaningful global visibility. Seoul ranked No. 5 overall and No. 4 in affective attractiveness, while Busan (No. 42), Jeju (No. 44), Incheon (No. 51) and Daegu (No. 88) were also included in the global top 100. Thailand also performed strongly, with Bangkok ranked No. 8 and Chiang Mai No. 27 overall.

A New Demand-Side Lens for Measuring Tourism City Appeal

Unlike traditional tourism competitiveness measures that emphasize supply-side conditions such as airport access, hotel capacity, policy support or infrastructure, the Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index focuses on the demand side: how travelers perceive, discuss and emotionally evaluate destinations. The framework is built on two complementary pillars:

Cognitive Awareness: measures global buzz volume and destination salience — in other words, whether a city is visible, recognizable and top-of-mind in global travel conversations.

Affective Attractiveness: measures emotional responses and perceived qualitative value — in other words, whether travelers feel a destination is memorable, satisfying and worth recommending.

The model is informed by the Push-Pull Motivation Framework and Destination Image Theory, connecting travelers’ internal motivations with the external attributes that make destinations appealing. The evaluation uses 419 keywords across four core dimensions: urban aesthetics and natural scenery; culture and history; experiential tourism content; and hospitality.

Strategic Value for Cities, DMOs and the Private Sector

The index is designed not only as a ranking, but also as a diagnostic tool. By positioning cities according to awareness/reputation and attractiveness, the framework identifies four strategic profiles: Blockbuster Masterpieces, Hidden Gems, Overpackaged Destinations and Market Entry Required destinations. This enables destination management organizations, governments and tourism businesses to better understand whether they should prioritize brand amplification, experience-quality improvement, product development or more fundamental repositioning.

For policymakers, the index can support more precise resource allocation, city-branding evaluation, and market-specific tourism strategy. For the private sector, it can help identify high-potential destinations, emerging visitor preferences and experience gaps that may not be visible through arrivals or spending data alone.

“The 2026 index shows that the most competitive tourism cities are no longer simply the most visited or most heavily promoted places. They are cities that successfully convert global awareness into emotionally meaningful visitor experiences,” said Dr. SooCheong (Shawn) Jang, Professor at Purdue University and Director of Yanolja Research. “New York’s No. 1 ranking demonstrates the power of combining unmatched global recognition with strong experiential appeal. At the same time, the rise of Asian destinations such as Osaka, Kyoto, Seoul and Okinawa shows that emotional attractiveness is becoming a decisive source of tourism competitiveness.” The comprehensive analysis and rankings for the top 150 cities across all regional tiers can be accessed on the official Yanolja Research website.

https://www.yanolja-research.com/brand/attractiveness/ranking/overall?lang=en

Appendix: 2026 Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index – Selected Rankings

Overall Rank

City

Country

1

New York

USA

2

Paris

France

3

Osaka

Japan

4

Kyoto

Japan

5

Seoul

South Korea

6

London

United Kingdom

7

Rome

Italy

8

Bangkok

Thailand

9

Okinawa

Japan

10

Chicago

USA

13

Los Angeles

USA

15

Miami

USA

18

Washington, D.C.

USA

22

Boston

USA

23

Dallas

USA

24

Tampa

USA

26

San Francisco

USA

28

Houston

USA

31

Atlanta

USA

32

Seattle

USA

36

Las Vegas

USA

45

Orlando

USA

46

Philadelphia

USA

50

Denver

USA

About Yanolja Research

Yanolja Research is a global research institute focused on data-driven analysis and policy insights for the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Through collaborations with academic and industry partners, Yanolja Research develops evidence-based frameworks to support destination strategy, tourism innovation and industry competitiveness.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-york-tops-2026-global-tourism-city-attractiveness-index-302824413.html

SOURCE Yanolja Research

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‘Kung fu tea’: US journalist Douglas’ journey into the art of Wuyi rock tea

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BEIJING, Oct. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from chinadaily.com.cn:

Three hundred years ago, a British man stole the seeds of Wuyi rock tea to plant them elsewhere. Three centuries later, US journalist Douglas travels to Xiamei village at the foot of Wuyi Mountain in Fujian province to learn the age-old craft.

After the entire experience, he understands why people call it “kung fu tea”. For him, picking tea requires “eagle claw skills” and shaking the leaves demands “tai chi hands”. Every step is filled with a sense of mastery and dedication.

Why did Douglas travel all the way to Xiamei village to learn the art of tea-making? What are his insights on the 13,000 km Tea Road? Watch the video to find out.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kung-fu-tea-us-journalist-douglas-journey-into-the-art-of-wuyi-rock-tea-302903196.html

SOURCE chinadaily.com.cn

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IQuest-Q1 Draws Early Developer Attention Across Coding and Agentic Workflows

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BEIJING, Oct. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — IQuest-Q1 has drawn early praise from developers and industry watchers since launch, particularly for its performance on coding, software engineering, interactive application generation, and long-horizon agentic workloads.

The model weights and technical materials are publicly available:

GitHub — GitHub – IQuestLab/IQuest-Q1Hugging Face — https://huggingface.co/IQuestLab/IQuest-Q1Blog — https://iquestlab.github.io/

IQuest-Q1 is trained for the work developers actually do: navigating a repository, driving a terminal, calling tools, holding a long context in mind, and finishing multi-step tasks without losing the thread. Reasoning, tool use, long-context understanding, and multi-step execution were part of the training objective from the start — not adapted afterward.

Early external discussion has begun to explore IQuest-Q1’s capabilities. One highlighted its evaluation across application building, 3D spatial generation, code diagnosis and repair, and complex tool-assisted workflows, while another publicly shared use case described turning a written product brief into an interactive SaaS analytics dashboard. A third-party technical overview examined the sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture, integration with Claude Code and Codex CLI, and the infrastructure requirements of self-hosting a 320B-parameter model.

These early observations align with IQuest Research’s official demonstrations, which show IQuest-Q1 working across interactive application generation, code debugging, and multi-step tool use.

One-shot interactive applications

From a natural-language prompt, IQuest-Q1 emits runnable interactive apps in a single pass.

An FPS game. In one generation, the model produces the 3D scene, character movement, health, scoring, mode switching, and an in-game shop for resources and gear — code, file layout, interaction logic, and visuals in the same pass.

A racing game. Continuous scene extension — track geometry, foreground/background transitions — is where one-shot generations usually fall apart. IQuest-Q1 handles this class of spatially continuous, interaction-heavy app without special prompting.

Debugging a real RL run

IQuest-Q1 will also drop into an existing codebase and training stack and fix what’s actually wrong.

An RL run went off the rails. Starting from the training curves, the model pulled logs and execution traces, reasoned back through likely causes, and localized the bug in code. After the patch and a restart, it read the new metrics and confirmed recovery.

The root cause: a stray space had been inserted into the training trajectory. Removed, metrics came back up.

Multi-step work in a real environment

Given a workspace with heterogeneous information and tools, IQuest-Q1 runs multi-step tasks — reading, calling tools, and correcting itself as new information lands. In office settings it works across chat, cloud docs, spreadsheets, and comment threads, pulling context together into analysis, drafts, and revisions that are ready to hand off.

Architecture

The architecture and training approach behind these capabilities are outlined below.

Decoder-only Transformer with a sparse Mixture-of-Experts feed-forward. ~320B total parameters, ~15B active per token.

Training runs in three stages — pre-training, mid-training, post-training — bringing up code fluency first, then extending into longer, harder tasks.

Post-training focuses on software engineering, long-horizon agentic tasks, and general reasoning, using supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning. On top of that, Multi-Teacher On-Policy Distillation (MOPD) consolidates strengths from several teachers on the student’s own on-policy rollouts, so the student picks up capability without inheriting any one teacher’s bias profile.

Validated updates, datasets, and workflows feed into the next iteration. Pipelines, training configs, eval harnesses, and tooling are versioned and reused — capability work and infrastructure work compound instead of getting rebuilt each cycle.

Evaluations

IQuest-Q1 posts balanced results across benchmarks covering code, software engineering, terminal use, tool use, and agentic tasks:

NL2Repo — repository-level code generationCyberGym — cybersecurityTerminal-Bench 2.1 — terminal operationDeepSWE v1.1 — long-horizon codingJobBench — professional office workflows

Full numbers, baselines, and evaluation setup are in the technical report.

IQuest-Q1 was developed by IQuest Research. Developers and research teams interested in participating in upcoming early-access testing programs can apply for trial access via email: research@iquestlab.com 

CONTACT: 
IQuest Research
research@iquestlab.com 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iquest-q1-draws-early-developer-attention-across-coding-and-agentic-workflows-302903211.html

SOURCE IQuest Research

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INFiLED Launches NX Series for Stage Productions

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SHENZHEN, China, Oct. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — INFiLED, launched the NX Series in early October, a heavy-duty rental LED solution for stage productions. Developed for live events, touring productions, outdoor festivals and temporary indoor or outdoor installations, NX Series is designed for projects where LED systems must hold large structures, shift between stage forms and keep onsite work moving under tight schedules.

Recent INFiLED rental projects place the release in a real production context. Shenzhen Happy Valley‘s outdoor summer festival stage showed the scale of a layered five-screen rental layout, while UMK2026‘s live stage production reflected the precision required for large-format screens and overhead LED elements. Together, they point to stage environments where larger visual surfaces, dimensional design and tighter onsite schedules now converge.

NX is introduced for this kind of stage work, where creative direction and technical execution need to stay aligned from load-in to show time. The platform brings structural capacity, multi-form configuration, rental-ready protection, faster service and stable visual performance into the same system.

Larger Stages Ask More of the System

Large stage displays now do more than fill a background. They shape the scene, define depth and often become part of the performance architecture. Before content appears on screen, the LED structure has already passed through transport, lifting, alignment, rehearsal and operation.

NX is specified for stacking and hanging up to 20 m, with optional wind-resistant braces and locks for demanding sites. That capacity matters for large suspended or stacked LED structures, especially in outdoor environments where structural planning carries the whole production.

The cabinet design follows the same logic. A dual-layer magnesium cabinet keeps panels lighter in handling while retaining the rigidity needed for alignment, with cabinet weights of 6.8 kg and 10.9 kg across its two cabinet options. Top quick locks and bottom alignment pins support faster connection and more consistent geometry as the screen grows.

Creative Forms Need Repeatable Mechanics

Stage design rarely stays within a flat rectangle. Productions move between curves, staggered layers, stepped contours, wraparound corners and compact scenic structures. In rental work, those forms need to return accurately across different venues, crews and schedules.

NX supports flat displays, curved layouts, staggered and stepped surfaces, and heart-shaped creative forms. With NX Edge, the system forms 90° curved transitions for wraparound content. In selected configurations, NX also works with MC Series for right-angle and cube structures, and with Xmk3 Series for larger curved forms.

For precision curves, NX offers a –10° to +15° range in 2.5° steps. The degree-based adjustment gives designers room to shape the stage while giving technicians a clear mechanical reference during installation and repeat use.

Onsite Workflow Shapes the Final Image

A strong stage image depends on work the audience never sees. Load-in, locking, alignment, cabling, service and rehearsal all influence whether the screen stays on schedule and performs cleanly when the show begins.

NX addresses those pressure points through several rental-focused details:

Top quick locks and bottom alignment pins support faster assembly and consistent screen geometry.The unified integrated PDU centralizes power and signal distribution, reducing cabling complexity across the system.Optional clip-on masks for outdoor configurations reduce disassembly steps during onsite service.Outdoor versions feature full encapsulation and IP65-rated protection for exposed environments.

Visual performance remains part of the same production path. Outdoor stages need brightness that stays clear in stronger ambient light, so NX reaches up to 5,000 nits outdoors. A 7,680 Hz refresh rate supports smoother motion and camera capture, while 16-bit grayscale and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio preserve tonal control, depth and clarity for stage content.

NX Series expands INFiLED’s rental LED portfolio with a heavier-duty option for stage production applications where scale, form and timing carry equal weight. For INFiLED, whose work spans rental, fixed-installation and commercial display environments, the release adds another layer to its engineering focus – LED systems shaped around the conditions of real projects, not only around the appearance of the screen.

For stage teams, that focus matters most when the technology fades into the work. The structure holds, the workflow keeps moving and the image reaches the audience as intended.

Website: www.infiled.com
Contact: info@infiled.com

SOURCE INFiLED

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