Keller @ Large: Warning For Boston Tourism

BOSTON (CBS) - The readers of Travel & Leisure magazine have come up with their annual ranking of American cities as tourist destinations, and I'm sorry to say the results for our beloved Boston, the Hub of the universe, are not good.

On the magazine's web site, you can match up any two cities head to head, so I entered Boston and Providence, and what I saw should be a warning sign to our crucial tourism industry.

As you would expect from the Athens of America, we scored well when it came to cultural attractions, finishing second in classical music, behind only New York, fourth in historical sites, and sixth in museums.

But Providence was close behind in all those categories, actually beating us easily in the theater arts. And when it comes to dining, nightlife, and shopping, the capital of Rhode Island slam dunks the capital of Massachusetts.

The survey even found Providence residents significantly more attractive, friendly and stylish than Bostonians, and - get this - almost as intelligent.

Overall, we ranked 25th out of the 35 cities ranked.

And if there were two factors that consistently hurt us with the tourist crowd, it was affordability and weather.

If you travel, you know that from cabs to hotels to the big-name restaurants, we are a high-priced place to visit.

Are we over-priced?

Maybe that's something we ought to start thinking about.

And while we can't do anything about the weather, could we do more to make bad weather days and nights more bearable here?

In places like Seattle and Montreal you can have a ball as a tourist without ever setting foot outside their indoor attractions.

Let's face it, Boston has competition now as a tourist spot that we didn't have even a decade ago.

Providence is Exhibit A.

Are we really going to let a place that thinks coffee milk is a delicacy eat our lunch in the battle for precious tourist dollars?

Listen to Jon Keller's commentary:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.