Some Places Simply Keep Calling You Back

For the fourth consecutive summer, my family and I have found ourselves back in Aix-en-Provence. It has become one of those decisions that seems to make itself. Every year we briefly discuss trying somewhere new, every year we convince ourselves that we probably should, and every year, somehow, we end up renting another apartment in Aix.

Friends occasionally ask why we keep returning. It is a perfectly reasonable question, particularly given that there is no shortage of beautiful towns scattered across the south of France. My answer, however, has always been strangely inadequate. I usually find myself shrugging my shoulders and saying, “I don’t know. It just has something about it.”

The irony of that answer only struck me recently. Over the past year, I have been developing the Destination Vibe Quotient (DVQ), a framework designed to better understand why certain places seem to exert a pull on us that goes well beyond their attractions. It eventually occurred to me that I had never actually applied it to the one place I seemed incapable of explaining myself.

So I ran Aix through the framework.

The overall score: 97.6 out of 100, was interesting enough, but it wasn’t the number that held my attention. It was the composition beneath it. Looking back over the past four summers, the results suddenly seemed rather obvious.

- Authenticity (100): Life happens for residents first. Visitors are simply invited into it.

- Originality (100): In an increasingly homogenised world, Aix still feels unmistakably like Aix.

- Vibrancy (100): Its energy comes from everyday life rather than programmed activity.

- Rebelliousness (87.9): Enough independence to resist becoming generic, without constantly trying to reinvent itself.

The exercise left me with a broader observation. We often assume people return because of a landmark, a restaurant, or an attraction. Those things may persuade someone to visit once, but they rarely explain why they return. More often, it is the underlying composition of a place - its identity, rhythm, confidence and authenticity - that quietly draws people back.

So, after four summers, I finally have a better answer when someone asks why we keep coming back to Aix.

Perhaps we should keep it our little secret.

Then again, I’m not too worried. Places like Aix aren’t built by marketing campaigns. They’re built over centuries, and that’s rather difficult to copy.

And now I'm curious: what's your Aix-en-Provence?