Boston was recently named the most beautiful winter city in the world. Initially, I was surprised. Eventually, I was just amused. Now, at present, the city is nicely covered with a blanket of snow. That’s certainly a very good look, but it’s still hard to imagine we’re the single most beautiful in the world.

And yet, the study was conducted by that bastion of science, Premier Inn. As the UK’s largest hotel brand, surely they know what they’re talking about. Their expert data scientists even laid out their methodology. Have a look:

A list of 72 cities from around the world that experience winter from December 21st to March 22nd was compiled using desk research. To conduct the research, 100 global participants were shown a series of images of these cities during winter. Using eye-tracking software, the average length of time the participants spent looking at the image of each destination (average fixation time – seconds) was recorded. The average fixation times were then ranked from high to low, to reveal the cities that people spent the longest time looking at. These cities were the most eye-catching, and therefore the most beautiful.

I’ve added the emphasis above, because that phrase makes me laugh every time I think of it. Over to you, Morbo the news monster:

Hey, speaking of “eye-catching”…

No, it most certainly does not. I like to imagine that we gamed the system somehow. Perhaps the Boston images included Fenway Park’s bizarre Green Monster or our illustrious ursus about town Keytar Bear. Those would certainly be eye catching weapons that are tough to beat.