Negros Oriental’s Dumaguete City is the safest city in the country to visit for travellers, suggests the World Travel Index in their 2025 rankings.

The ‘City of Gentle People’ garnered an average ‘Safety Index’ score of 81.36– the highest given to a Philippine city, which ranks 1097th globally. 

Davao City in Davao del Sur, a staple first on travel websites’ safety rankings in recent years, placed second with an 80.73 Safety Index score. 

Bulacan (76.42), Balanga in Bataan (76.15), and Lucena in Quezon (75.24) ranked third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. 

Naga City, Camarines Sur (75.02); Baguio City (73.99); Puerto Princesa, Palawan (71.46); Legazpi City, Albay (71.34); and Makati City (70.41), round out the Top 10. 

The feat has been recognized by Dumaguete’s local government.

“The site reports that both residents and visitors alike said that they feel completely safe and secure in Dumaguete City during the day or night with consistently very low risk of theft, violence, harassment, scams or encounters with drug users,” reads an article on Dumaguete’s official government website. 

World Travel Index (WTI) is a travel website that compiles and analyzes tourism-related data to generate travel-based rankings in various categories, such as cost, activities, safety, infrastructure, and total tourist appeal. 

WTI’s overall safety score is computed using five subcategories– Day, Night, Theft-Free, Drug-Free, Violence-Free– based on the Numbeo Crime Index. It looks into the general safety of a place or area, with short insights on the propensity of criminal activities such as scams and theft, scam activities, 

The travel portal’s assessment also makes use of “AI-assisted aggregated analysis of 50 million travel websites, including all user reports from Reddit or Quora.”

More information about World Travel Index’s Safest Cities in the world through this link.