MasterCard has published their annual Global Destination Cities Index and named Bangkok the city with the most international overnight visitors world wide at 22.78M visitor arrivals. Paris is in second place, followed by London, Dubai and Singapore. But Dubai is the city with the highest visitor spend at an astonishing $30.8B! Find out the Top 20 and where all those visitors are coming from below!
MasterCard has been analyzing this data for nine years and Bangkok has claimed the top spot for the last four years. With the explosive growth of travel, fueled by Chinese tourists, Asian destinations take 10 spots in the Top 20, with Kuala Lumpur , Hong Kong and the beach destinations of Phuket, Pattaya and Bali among them. Chinese visitors have the largest share in each of these destinations.
Paris and London have been battling for spot 2 for years and in both cities the largest group of visitors is from the USA.
New York is the only destination in the Americas. Here is the complete list of 20 destinations:
MasterCard also looks at the average time spent at the destination and the average daily spend. Dubai ($30.8B) and Makkah, Saudi Arabia ($20.1B) beat Bangkok ($20.0B) on that count.
It’s also interesting to see where those visitors are coming from. The largest origin country are the United States of America with 10% of the total visitors and their favorite destinations are Cancun, Toronto and London.
China is in second place (8.9% of visitors), but Chinese travelers are big spenders and China has surpassed the US with regards to highest share of spend. Their top destinations are Bangkok, Seoul and Tokyo.
Germany is in third place as country of origin with a share of 6.5% of the travelers, followed by the UK and France.
If you want to find out what makes Bangkok, The City of Angels, so special, check out my Destination Guide Bangkok and plan your own trip! Or try other guides by clicking on the links highlighted above!