Pittsburgh’s downtown ranks among the top safest cities in the United States, according to a new report announced today from VisitPITTSBURGH. The research identifies Pittsburgh as the number one safest city in its competitive set for property crime and the third safest city against its competitive set for violent crime.
The report, issued by 2Synergize, compared Pittsburgh data from a three-mile radius around the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for the entirety of 2022 against both a national market comparison of 65 cities and a competitive set of 19 cities.
Nationally, Pittsburgh ranks among the top 10 safest cities for property crime and in the top 15 safest cities for violent crime surrounding the city’s convention center.
“The safety of downtown is vital to our mission to not only attract leisure visitors, but to provide our business and sports events attendees with a safe and memorable experience while traveling to and from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center,” said Jerad Bachar, President & CEO of VisitPITTSBURGH. “This data shows that while Pittsburgh has more work to do, we’re actually far surpassing the majority of cities in our competitive set on the safety circle surrounding city convention centers.”
Pittsburgh’s top ranking among our competitive set compares our destination to cities we actively compete with for both leisure travel and convention and sports events bookings. The cities in the competitive set include known competitors, such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Balitmore, but also destinations like Portland, Reno, Salt Lake City and Tampa Bay.
“Our business and sports events teams are always monitoring our competitive set to see how Pittsburgh fares and ways we can improve, but we’re also monitoring the health and vitality of downtown from a visitor perspective by diving deep into hotel room reviews and occupancy,” said Bachar.
VisitPITTSBURGH also engages with TrustYou, an international software company designed to aggregate guest feedback from a variety of known sources, like TripAdvisor and Yelp, to provide insight into guest experiences while in market.
From January through August of 2023, 12,501 downtown hotel reviews were collected and analyzed for specific keywords related to safety. Of those reviews, less than 1 percent (0.8%) noted safety as a negative topic or concern while visiting.
Downtown occupancy data for 2023 tells a similar story, reflecting a 6.2% increase year-over-year.
“We applaud the great work happening all across the city to ensure our guests have a positive and memorable experience that will drive them to return to Pittsburgh time and time again,” said Tom Martini, General Manager at The Westin Pittsburgh. “While there is always more work to be done, this new data from VisitPITTSBURGH helps set the tone for where Pittsburgh is positioned in the minds of our visitors.”
To read the full 2Syngergize safety report, click here. Additional travel-related information is available at VisitPITTSBURGH.com.
