Muscat – Muscat ranks 23rd out of 50 destinations in the Expat City Ranking 2022 by InterNations, the world’s largest expat community with over 4.5mn members.

The capital of Oman ranks second in the Ease of Settling In Index, where expats find the people to be very friendly and the Omani culture quite welcoming. Expats rank Muscat 2nd in Local Friendliness, 6th in Finding Friends and 8th for Culture and Welcome subindices.

But expats face challenges when it comes to their Career Prospects (ranked 48th), Salary and Job Security (47th) under the Working Abroad Index (47th).

Expats seemed to be least happy when it comes to finding leisure options (ranked 50th), 42nd in Travel and Transit, 25th in Environment and Climate, and 42nd in Health and Well-Being subindices under the overall Quality of Life Index (43rd).

However, Muscat does well in Expat Essentials Index (ranked 8th) where it scores high for Housing (5th) and Language (10th).

From the region, Dubai is the favourite city for expats with its overall 2nd rank and Abu Dhabi ranking 9th.

Valencia (1st), Dubai, Mexico City, Lisbon, Madrid, Bangkok, Basel, Melbourne, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore (10th) are the top ten cities for expat life in 2022.

They all do very well in the Ease of Settling In Index but also have their particular highlights. Valencia and Mexico City are great for personal finances, and expats in Valencia and Dubai enjoy a high quality of life. Dubai is a top choice when it comes to working abroad, and expats find it easy to navigate life there.

On the other hand, expats consider Johannesburg (50th), Frankfurt, Paris, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Hamburg, Milan, Vancouver, Tokyo, and Rome (41st), the world’s worst cities to live in.

Expats in Johannesburg are particularly disappointed with the low quality of life and their working life, while Frankfurt and Paris do poorly in the Ease of Settling In and Expat Essentials Indices. Additionally, expats in all the three cities struggle financially.

To identify the best and worst cities for expats around the globe, the respondents rated up to 56 different aspects of urban life abroad on a scale of one to seven. The rating process emphasised the participants’ personal satisfaction with these aspects, considering both emotional topics (e.g. the ease of finding local friends) and more factual aspects (e.g. the availability of healthcare) with equal weight.