(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

KAMLOOPS - In less than two months Kamloops media have reported that the Tournament Capital is a sexy, growing, romantic city which means great value for travellers.

Those stories all come from recent corporate media releases, which have taken to ranking cities that use there services, giving small towns bragging rights over each other, and the bigger cities that usually dominate headlines. Who wouldn’t want to be one of the sexiest cities in the country?

Before slipping into some neglige, though, it should be noted the title comes from from PinkCherry, an online sex toy company. They compiled the list, not by meeting the most alluring people in every Canadian city, but from their web sales.

That suggests Kamloops might not be the sexiest city, but is the municipality going through the most batteries. All it really shows is an online retailer of adult fun time objects keeping track of customer addresses.

As much as anything, releasing the list assures PinkCherry free advertising in many of the 40 small and mid-sized cities topping the list. These releases help feed the machine here, with articles from local news outlets. It’s not just Kamloops,as media in pretty much every city appearing one of these lists wrote about their town’s new title.

U-Haul called Kamloops the fastest growing city in Canada because a lot of their trucks came here, the same month as Statistics Canada released comprehensive population statistics based on the census. Kamloops hasn’t seen a population boom in recent years according to facts released by government statisticians, gaining just a few thousand new residents over five years, which is below the provincial average for growth.

A better reason for one-way U-Haul trips to Kamloops may be university students moving to the city and selling all their possessions to help cover student loans when they graduate.

The romantic city statistic is even wonkier (Kamloops was ranked ninth nationally). It’s not based on overall sales, but sales of specific items from Amazon. Included this year were romantic books, romantic comedy films, relationship books, jewelry and ‘sexual wellness products.’ The company’s media release doesn't mention classic gifts like roses or chocolates at all, but do offer breakdowns of the categories, turning consumer habits into civic competitions.

The fact B.C. does so well, with Victoria topping the list every year, may just mean people in here have more disposable income. Meanwhile romantic cities like Niagara Falls, Banff or Quebec City lose out to allegedly lovey-dovey towns like Prince George, Lethbridge and Grand Prairie.

Trivago, the web travel company that ranked Kelowna and Kamloops third and fourth best value destinations in Canada, is less transparent with their list making, saying in a media release the rankings were determined by ‘an exclusive algorithm.’ The algorithm takes into account user ratings and the cost of hotels on the website, which means it skips costs like transportation or activities.

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