Bangkok, London and Paris lead the way in Mastercard’s 2018 Global Destination Cities Index, while Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Seoul, Phuket, Hong Kong, Pattaya, Osaka and Bali follow closely behind, securing Asia as a global tourism destination.
Mastercard's Global Destination Cities Index 2018 is a list of the most visited cities in the world compiled by Mastercard credit card. This year's winner is Bangkok (again), which attracted just over 20 million foreign visitors, followed by London with just under 20 million and Paris with almost 17.5 million. Fourth was Dubai with over 15.5 million and fifth was Singapore with nearly 14 million.
This year, and for the first time, Bali was placed at 20th with 8.3 million foreign visitors ensuring Asian cities take up 50% of the top 20 cities
Winners of Mastercard's Global Destination Cities Index 2018 by numbers of foreign visitors:
The list is based on the world's most visited cities according to their solid infrastructure, attractions for recreation and business, as well as a strong reflection of local culture, as reported by The Jakarta Post and Kompas.
This Index and the accompanying reports are not based on Mastercard volumes or transactional data.
Mastercard report they looked at 162 cities for this years index and ranked them in terms of the number of total international overnight visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending by these same visitors in the destination cities in 2017. This then gave them international overnight visitor growth forecasts for 2018.
Public data was used in deriving the international overnight visitor arrivals and their cross-border spending in each of the 162 destination cities.
Forecasts are based upon the weighted average of the national level tourism forecasts and the actual 2018 monthly data at the destination level, which is available to the latest month before release.
Sources: Mastercard, The Jakarta Post, Kompas,
Similar to this:
CBRE reveal opportunities in Bangkok's rental market
Sales volume picked up in Singapore during Q2 despite price increases
Positive results for Bangkok condo market despite supply decreases