Reputation is everything — and Vancouver's is in very good shape.

After polling more than 18,000 people from the G8 countries, the Denmark-based Reputation Institute ranked the world's 100 most reputable cities and released the results in a survey on Thursday.

Determining factors included beauty, safety, cultural offerings and infrastructure.

Vancouver took top spot, beating out close competitors Vienna and Sydney. Toronto placed 22nd. Montreal wasn't far behind at 26.

"We believe that a factor in Vancouver's stature is our reputation as a city where all nationalities gather comfortably, where over 40 first languages are spoken in the average school, where perhaps 50 per cent of our population has English as a second language and in our having a deep-seated respect for varied religious views," Tourism Vancouver president Rick Antonson says in a statement accompanying the survey's release.

Vancouver was only seventh in the beauty rankings, following old-world architectural gems Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, Vienna and Barcelona.

Last year, the Reputation Institute used a different ranking system: Vancouver placed 14th, while London, England, placed first.

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The survey found that small to medium sized, safe, environmentally friendly and sporty cities like Vancouver, Vienna, Sydney and Copenhagen fared better reputation-wise than mega cities like Hong Kong, London New York and Tokyo, "due to the increased challenging of managing their reputation."

"The world's largest cities...have many more factors that can impact their reputation and many of these influencers cannot be controlled. Additionally, big cities tend to operate much more under the microscope of the media. The conversation surrounding a destination — be it in the news and/or social media — is often a major influence on public perception. We can see in this year's results just how effective Vancouver has been in shaping a constructive and trustworthy dialogue with the media," says Reputation Institute's Nicolas Georges Trad.

At the bottom of the list: Bogota, Moscow, Tehran and Baghdad.

Earlier in September, the Reputation Institute named Canada as the most reputable country for the second year in a row.

"We live in a reputation economy. While the idea of a destination's reputation may not be on the top of everyone's mind when they decide where to live, work, vacation, or do business, our studies indicate that it should," Trad says. "We have found that a person's perceived reputation of a city is a key factor when deciding where to visit, or in terms of business, to invest. Our modelling demonstrates that effective management of these reputation drivers translates directly into increased tourism receipts, investment, and stakeholder support."

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