Yanolja Research Announces 'Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index'
SEOUL, South Korea, July 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Yanolja Research, a global research institute specializing in the travel and tourism industry, today announced the inaugural "Yanolja Attractiveness Index" at the <2025 Global Tourism City Attractiveness Evaluation> seminar. This new index objectively assesses the appeal of major tourism cities worldwide from the perspective of the tourists themselves.
Developed jointly by Yanolja Research, Purdue University's CHRIBA Institute in the U.S., and Kyung Hee University's H&T Analytics Center in Seoul, Korea, the index evaluated the attractiveness of 191 tourism cities using global social media data in 14 languages, provided by Brandwatch in the UK. In the 2025 evaluation, Osaka, Japan, rose two ranks from its 3rd place in 2024 to secure the top spot overall, while Kyoto, which held the #1 position in 2024, shifted to 3rd place. Beyond Osaka and Kyoto, Japan demonstrated its status as a world-class tourism powerhouse with a total of six tourism cities ranking within the top 20, including Okinawa (10th), Fukuoka (11th), Tokyo (12th), and Sapporo (18th).
New Metric Evaluates Tourism Cities Through 'Psychology' and 'Emotion'
Unlike traditional "tourism competitiveness" evaluations that focus on supply-side factors like transportation, accommodation, infrastructure, and policy, the "Yanolja Attractiveness Index" prioritizes measuring a tourism city's "appeal" from the perspective of actual travel consumers. To achieve this, it uses two core pillars: "Tourism City Attractiveness," which indicates how positively a specific tourism city is viewed, and "Tourism City Reputation," which reflects how widely known and discussed it is.
Based on these two pillars, Yanolja Research conducted a comprehensive evaluation by segmenting a tourism city's attractiveness into four key dimensions: â–²Beauty and Natural Scenery of the City â–²Culture and History of the City â–²Experiential Content of the City â–²Hospitality of the City.
2025 Global Tourism City Attractiveness: Japan's Dominance and Asia's Strong Performance
In the 2025 overall rankings, the dominant performance of Japanese tourism cities was evident. Osaka surged from 3rd place in 2024 to 1st, and Kyoto maintained its top-tier position at 3rd. Furthermore, Okinawa (11th→10th) and Sapporo (22nd→18th) saw their rankings climb, while Tokyo (12th) and Fukuoka (11th) consistently held top positions, proving the broad appeal of Japanese tourism. In the Asian continental rankings, Osaka and Kyoto secured 1st and 2nd place respectively, solidifying their status as the region's premier tourism cities.
Globally, Asian tourism cities showed significant progress. Southeast Asian tourism cities like Bangkok (16th→7th), and Chiang Mai (61st→20th) saw their rankings soar, emerging as new popular tourism cities. Conversely, while European tourism cities such as Paris (2nd), London (6th), and Rome (8th) still exhibited strong brand power, some traditionally popular tourism cities like Madrid (17th→29th) and Barcelona (19th→25th) experienced drops in their rankings, indicating they are facing shifting tourism trends. In the Americas, U.S. tourism cities, led by New York (4th), continued to demonstrate strength.
Commenting on the research findings, Dr. SooCheong Jang, Professor at Purdue University and Head of Yanolja Research, stated, "The 'Yanolja Attractiveness Index' is the first attempt to analyze a tourism city's 'appeal' factors through the actual voices of tourists, going beyond infrastructure-centric evaluations. The strong performance of Japanese tourism cities, including Osaka, and the significant progress of other Asian tourism cities demonstrate how dynamically tourist preferences are changing. Moving forward, for tourism cities to lead the global market, discovering and communicating their unique charm will be a core strategy."
Yanolja Research plans to regularly announce the "Yanolja Attractiveness Index" annually to track global tourism trends and changes in tourism city competitiveness. Detailed results and analysis of the Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index, released on July 2, can be found on the official Yanolja Research website (https://www.yanolja-research.com).
[Appendix] Top 20 Cities in the 2025 Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index
| Rank | City | Country |
| 1 | Osaka | Japan |
| 2 | Paris | France |
| 3 | Kyoto | Japan |
| 4 | New York | United States |
| 5 | Seoul | South Korea |
| 6 | London | United Kingdom |
| 7 | Bangkok | Thailand |
| 8 | Rome | Italy |
| 9 | Dubai | United Arab Emirates |
| 10 | Okinawa | Japan |
| 11 | Fukuoka | Japan |
| 12 | Tokyo | Japan |
| 13 | Washington, D.C. | United States |
| 14 | Los Angeles | United States |
| 15 | Singapore | Singapore |
| 16 | Jeju | South Korea |
| 17 | Chicago | United States |
| 18 | Sapporo | Japan |
| 19 | Hong Kong | China |
| 20 | Chiang Mai | Thailand |
Rank
City
Country
1
Osaka
Japan
2
Paris
France
3
Kyoto
Japan
4
New York
United States
5
Seoul
South Korea
6
London
United Kingdom
7
Bangkok
Thailand
8
Rome
Italy
9
Dubai
United Arab Emirates
10
Okinawa
Japan
11
Fukuoka
Japan
12
Tokyo
Japan
13
Washington, D.C.
United States
14
Los Angeles
United States
15
Singapore
Singapore
16
Jeju
South Korea
17
Chicago
United States
18
Sapporo
Japan
19
Hong Kong
China
20
Chiang Mai
Thailand
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Osaka Overtakes Kyoto to Claim #1 Spot as World's Most Attractive Tourism City
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- Innovative technologies enable retailers to implement intelligent stores at scale to deliver smarter, more responsive shopping experiences
- Industry partners to display production-ready AI solutions for loss prevention, digital twins, AI agents, customer analytics, and more
SAN JOSE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail's Big Show -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI/ML, HPC, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced collaboration with technology partners for AI-powered intelligent in-store retail solutions designed to meet increasing customer expectations with scalability, improved productivity and increased profitability.
"AI is reshaping shopping experiences, enabling real-time analysis of video and other data to give retailers actionable insights to optimizing staff efficiency, reducing shrinkage, increasing profits, and avoiding stock-outs," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "By combining Supermicro's complete and scalable AI platforms with NVIDIA RTX PRO accelerated computing solutions, we're enabling retailers to build intelligent stores that maximize the benefits of AI-driven applications."
According to the latest NVIDIA State of AI in Retail & CPG report, 89% of respondents reported that AI is helping to increase annual revenue, while 95% said it is helping decrease annual costs, highlighting the measurable business impact retailers are already achieving because of AI1.
For more information, please visit https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/edge/servers
Supermicro Complete and Scalable Edge AI Infrastructure
Retail-centric AI applications require sub-second responsiveness which is only possible, at scale, if data is processed directly at the edge. Supermicro's Edge AI infrastructure enables the deployment of solutions in distributed environments, such as intelligent retail stores and supply chains, to provide a complete solution.
Deploying at the edge presents a myriad of unique challenges in comparison to the data center. Supermicro's broad Edge AI portfolio of products helps customers and partners overcome these challenges while striking the right balance between performance and ROI.
For deployments in harsh environments where conditioned space is not available, the fanless E103 series of products bring AI processing power where it couldn't go before. Supermicro also offers a fanned small form factor E300 series systems with AI capabilities.
When there is a demanding AI workload at the edge, customers and partners can turn to numerous systems capable of holding the latest discrete GPUs for AI acceleration. Ranging from 1U short-depth to larger 4U form factors, solutions can be right-sized to meet the customer's needs by enabling the latest generation of NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell series.
Supermicro Intelligent Store Partners
Supermicro is collaborating with ecosystem partners including Everseen, Kinetic Vision, ALLSIDES, LiveX, WobotAI, and Aible, to create intelligent stores that positively impact day-to-day retail operations as well as longer term supply chain management.
- Everseen's Evercheck solution uses Vision AI to help reduce shrink and improve staff productivity and customer experiences. Built on the Everseen Vision AI platform, Evercheck detects, and deters recovery of unwanted behaviors at checkout, helping retailers recover losses and streamline front-of-store operations.
"Everseen has spent years working alongside some of the world's largest retailers, understanding the realities of the store floor and solving loss challenges where they actually happen," said Joe White, CEO of Everseen. "By partnering with Supermicro and leveraging NVIDIA-accelerated computing, Evercheck delivers real-time computer vision at the edge - transforming store activity into intelligence retailers can act on immediately."
- Wobot AI, focused on building Video AI Agents for the physical world, will be demonstrating how the cameras retailers already own can be turned into systems that continuously observe, learn, and produce usable insight. By converting ordinary CCTV infrastructure into autonomous agents that recognize patterns, identify friction, and surface decisions, Wobot's AI Agents enable retailers to improve day-to-day operations with practical and measurable outcomes.
"By working with Supermicro and NVIDIA at the edge, we're able to deploy Video AI Agents in a way that's scalable, reliable, and focused on real-time operational insight—not experimentation," said Will Kelso, President, Revenue & Growth at Wobot AI.
- LiveX AI - "Retail is entering an era where AI agents become the default interaction layer between brands and customers," said Jerry Li, Co-Founder and CEO of LiveX AI. "With NVIDIA's accelerated AI and Supermicro's edge infrastructure, we can deploy a helpful, human-like AI agent directly in physical spaces—such as kiosks or holograms—bringing the speed, intelligence, and continuity of digital experiences into brick-and-mortar environments. This collaboration makes AI agents usable, in real time, where customers actually are."
-
- Kinetic Vision and ALLSIDES are bundling their expertise for a True Digital Twin solution designed to develop, test, and optimize supply chain processes, checkout stations, and other complex systems.
"The combination of Supermicro's high reliability optimized infrastructure and NVIDIA's accelerated computing stack gives Kinetic Vision the foundation to innovate at speed. Together, we are helping retailers move from experimentation to production-ready AI solutions that drive measurable operational and customer experience gains," says Jeremy Jarratt, Kinetic Vision CEO.
Franz Tschimben, CEO at ALLSIDES, adds: "Building on the combined strengths of NVIDIA and Supermicro, we deliver a high-fidelity 3D digital twin data layer for AI training that enables retailers to power applications across the entire retail value chain — from training robots with physical AI, to production and production planning, virtual store layouts and consumer feedback systems, and e-commerce integrations — helping drive higher conversion rates, faster decision-making, and greater operational efficiency."
- Supermicro will also feature Superb AI's retail-focused VSS solution, combining Superb AI's proprietary VLM with NVIDIA AI Blueprint components to enable subjective reasoning capabilities, natural-language search, automated incident summarization, and customer behavior insights across store camera networks.
- Aible will highlight its automated agent solution, which analyzes vast amounts of data across millions of patterns to explain changes in retail KPIs, such as the average purchase amount or number of purchases. Aible will also demonstrate how the latest NVIDIA Retail blueprints can be incorporated into agentic solutions that automatically customize customer experiences and optimize retail operations at scale.
Arijit Sengupta, CEO of Aible, adds, "Today's market and labor conditions are constantly changing. Only autonomous agents can understand and adjust to these ever-changing patterns of customer behavior, inventory costs and supply, and labor access at scale. Working with NVIDIA and Supermicro, Aible brings autonomous agents subject to business user review to the retail edge."
These intelligent retail solutions will be demonstrated by Supermicro and its partners at NRF: Retail's Big Show in New York City from January 11-13. To learn more about AI-powered retail applications or Supermicro's AI Infrastructure solutions, visit Supermicro booth #5281 and attend its speaking session featuring PepsiCo and Kinetic Vision. For more details, please visit www.supermicro.com/NRF
1Source: "NVIDIA State of AI in Retail and CPG" 2026
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first to market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro's motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Asia, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.
All other brands, names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
- Innovative technologies enable retailers to implement intelligent stores at scale to deliver smarter, more responsive shopping experiences
- Industry partners to display production-ready AI solutions for loss prevention, digital twins, AI agents, customer analytics, and more
SAN JOSE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail's Big Show -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI/ML, HPC, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, today announced collaboration with technology partners for AI-powered intelligent in-store retail solutions designed to meet increasing customer expectations with scalability, improved productivity and increased profitability.
"AI is reshaping shopping experiences, enabling real-time analysis of video and other data to give retailers actionable insights to optimizing staff efficiency, reducing shrinkage, increasing profits, and avoiding stock-outs," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "By combining Supermicro's complete and scalable AI platforms with NVIDIA RTX PRO accelerated computing solutions, we're enabling retailers to build intelligent stores that maximize the benefits of AI-driven applications."
According to the latest NVIDIA State of AI in Retail & CPG report, 89% of respondents reported that AI is helping to increase annual revenue, while 95% said it is helping decrease annual costs, highlighting the measurable business impact retailers are already achieving because of AI1.
For more information, please visit https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/edge/servers
Supermicro Complete and Scalable Edge AI Infrastructure
Retail-centric AI applications require sub-second responsiveness which is only possible, at scale, if data is processed directly at the edge. Supermicro's Edge AI infrastructure enables the deployment of solutions in distributed environments, such as intelligent retail stores and supply chains, to provide a complete solution.
Deploying at the edge presents a myriad of unique challenges in comparison to the data center. Supermicro's broad Edge AI portfolio of products helps customers and partners overcome these challenges while striking the right balance between performance and ROI.
For deployments in harsh environments where conditioned space is not available, the fanless E103 series of products bring AI processing power where it couldn't go before. Supermicro also offers a fanned small form factor E300 series systems with AI capabilities.
When there is a demanding AI workload at the edge, customers and partners can turn to numerous systems capable of holding the latest discrete GPUs for AI acceleration. Ranging from 1U short-depth to larger 4U form factors, solutions can be right-sized to meet the customer's needs by enabling the latest generation of NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell series.
Supermicro Intelligent Store Partners
Supermicro is collaborating with ecosystem partners including Everseen, Kinetic Vision, ALLSIDES, LiveX, WobotAI, and Aible, to create intelligent stores that positively impact day-to-day retail operations as well as longer term supply chain management.
- Everseen's Evercheck solution uses Vision AI to help reduce shrink and improve staff productivity and customer experiences. Built on the Everseen Vision AI platform, Evercheck detects, and deters recovery of unwanted behaviors at checkout, helping retailers recover losses and streamline front-of-store operations.
"Everseen has spent years working alongside some of the world's largest retailers, understanding the realities of the store floor and solving loss challenges where they actually happen," said Joe White, CEO of Everseen. "By partnering with Supermicro and leveraging NVIDIA-accelerated computing, Evercheck delivers real-time computer vision at the edge - transforming store activity into intelligence retailers can act on immediately."
- Wobot AI, focused on building Video AI Agents for the physical world, will be demonstrating how the cameras retailers already own can be turned into systems that continuously observe, learn, and produce usable insight. By converting ordinary CCTV infrastructure into autonomous agents that recognize patterns, identify friction, and surface decisions, Wobot's AI Agents enable retailers to improve day-to-day operations with practical and measurable outcomes.
"By working with Supermicro and NVIDIA at the edge, we're able to deploy Video AI Agents in a way that's scalable, reliable, and focused on real-time operational insight—not experimentation," said Will Kelso, President, Revenue & Growth at Wobot AI.
- LiveX AI - "Retail is entering an era where AI agents become the default interaction layer between brands and customers," said Jerry Li, Co-Founder and CEO of LiveX AI. "With NVIDIA's accelerated AI and Supermicro's edge infrastructure, we can deploy a helpful, human-like AI agent directly in physical spaces—such as kiosks or holograms—bringing the speed, intelligence, and continuity of digital experiences into brick-and-mortar environments. This collaboration makes AI agents usable, in real time, where customers actually are."
-
- Kinetic Vision and ALLSIDES are bundling their expertise for a True Digital Twin solution designed to develop, test, and optimize supply chain processes, checkout stations, and other complex systems.
"The combination of Supermicro's high reliability optimized infrastructure and NVIDIA's accelerated computing stack gives Kinetic Vision the foundation to innovate at speed. Together, we are helping retailers move from experimentation to production-ready AI solutions that drive measurable operational and customer experience gains," says Jeremy Jarratt, Kinetic Vision CEO.
Franz Tschimben, CEO at ALLSIDES, adds: "Building on the combined strengths of NVIDIA and Supermicro, we deliver a high-fidelity 3D digital twin data layer for AI training that enables retailers to power applications across the entire retail value chain — from training robots with physical AI, to production and production planning, virtual store layouts and consumer feedback systems, and e-commerce integrations — helping drive higher conversion rates, faster decision-making, and greater operational efficiency."
- Supermicro will also feature Superb AI's retail-focused VSS solution, combining Superb AI's proprietary VLM with NVIDIA AI Blueprint components to enable subjective reasoning capabilities, natural-language search, automated incident summarization, and customer behavior insights across store camera networks.
- Aible will highlight its automated agent solution, which analyzes vast amounts of data across millions of patterns to explain changes in retail KPIs, such as the average purchase amount or number of purchases. Aible will also demonstrate how the latest NVIDIA Retail blueprints can be incorporated into agentic solutions that automatically customize customer experiences and optimize retail operations at scale.
Arijit Sengupta, CEO of Aible, adds, "Today's market and labor conditions are constantly changing. Only autonomous agents can understand and adjust to these ever-changing patterns of customer behavior, inventory costs and supply, and labor access at scale. Working with NVIDIA and Supermicro, Aible brings autonomous agents subject to business user review to the retail edge."
These intelligent retail solutions will be demonstrated by Supermicro and its partners at NRF: Retail's Big Show in New York City from January 11-13. To learn more about AI-powered retail applications or Supermicro's AI Infrastructure solutions, visit Supermicro booth #5281 and attend its speaking session featuring PepsiCo and Kinetic Vision. For more details, please visit www.supermicro.com/NRF
1Source: "NVIDIA State of AI in Retail and CPG" 2026
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first to market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro's motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Asia, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions® allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
Supermicro, Server Building Block Solutions, and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.
All other brands, names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Supermicro Announces Intelligent In-Store Retail Solutions in Collaboration with a Broad Range of Industry Partners
