It is Goodnight Vienna and arrivederci Milan as Glasgow overtakes two of Europe's leading cities as a visitor destination.

New research devised to track the effectiveness of the Glasgow: Scotland with Style brand, four years after its introduction, shows a 13% swing in the Scottish city's favour compared with two years ago.

It also suggests a "been there and done that" attitude to two of Europe's city break hotspots, Barcelona and Prague, which have suffered swings away from them by 13% and 22%.

Crucially, Glasgow is making strides into the "early style adopters" bracket, those who are among the first to visit destinations and whose opinions percolate down to the "style followers".

The research, conducted by TNS and based on the responses of 601 people, found that in 2005 only 11% of the early style adopters said they had visited the city in the past year but by November 2007 this had risen to 20%, about 150,000 visitors.

In the latest rankings, Glasgow took 13th spot, up from 15th in 2005, overtaking the Austrian and Italian style capitals, and above Budapest in 15th, Brussels in 18th and Florence in 19th. Paris topped the poll.

Scott Taylor, chief executive of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, said: "This hasn't happened by accident. This is exactly the result we were aiming for, having spent the last two years specifically targeting early style adopters with messages about aspirational Glasgow."

Graham Hankinson, of the International Institute for Culture, Tourism and Development at London Metropolitan University, added: "Glasgow can be proud of these results. Building a destination brand is a long-term business requiring focused communication and an exciting experience, but most importantly persistency of effort."