While at least two government agencies are promoting the island’s Work from Bermuda certificate, the travel site Kayak puts Bermuda at the bottom of its list of recommended places from which to work remotely.

Using 22 different factors, Kayak compared 111 countries and ranked the island only ahead of the Maldives and the US Virgin Islands in places it is recommending in its Remote Work Rankings for people to site their next personal office.

The island ranked dead last in pricing and also last in social life, tied with the same two countries, together with Antigua and Barbuda, the Cayman Islands, Belize, the Bahamas, the Seychelles and Anguilla. Not enough things to do, says Kayak.

Bermuda was beaten out for the quality of a social life by Lebanon, a country crippled by energy shortages, where an electricity crisis has paralysed much of public life since mid-2021.

The Bermuda islands do not even rate a passing ‘C’ grade on Kayak’s list, scoring 12 out of a total possible score of 100.

Bermuda only eclipses Maldives (7 out of 100) and US Virgin Islands (1 out of 100).

This may seem surprising considering the Government is all in on offering the Work from Bermuda one-year residential certificate, highly visible and available on both the Bermuda Tourism Authority website and the Bermuda Business Development Agency website.

The new policy has already attracted 900 residents and generated more than $23 million for the economy.

What are the calculations for Kayak’s Work from Wherever Index Methodology?

The scoring system involves collecting data sources for six areas of review.

Travel: accessibility defined by the weekly number of flight routes to/from the destination country; average hotel prices per night for standard double room across all hotel types during search period January to September 2021, for travel January to December 2022; car rental prices and fuel.

Local prices: apartment rental prices per month; local transportation prices; food prices; restaurant prices.

Health and safety: political stability and absence of violence/terrorism; air pollution exposure; LGBT equality and legal rights; car accidents including estimated road traffic death rate (per 100,000 population).

Remote work: internet speed; remote work visas; estimated number of co-working spaces per capita.

Social life: English proficiency index score based on test data from more than 2.2 million test takers around the world; going out or the average number of bars and clubs in five major cities per 100,000 inhabitants; culture or the average number of theatres, museums and galleries in five major cities per 100,000 inhabitants.

Weather: average monthly precipitation; average monthly temperature.

Kayak’s ten trending workcation destinations include Lisbon, Milan, San Jose, São Paulo and San Juan.

Further details of the Work from Wherever Index — Methodology can be found scrolling down the page for data and data sources and factor definitions here:

https://www.kayak.com/work-from-wherever/rank