Bangkok Tops World’s Most Popular Travel Destinations List

The two cities have topped the ranking for most of its history.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Japanese city of Osaka has shown the strongest growth in worldwide visitors over the past seven years, attracting tourists from neighboring countries, particularly China and South Korea, said Mastercard. “Ranked at number 10, right after Shanghai, the city boasts of 4.86 million visitors along with a visitor spend of $3.6 billion for the year 2016”, the study added.

Bangkok has edged out London as the world’s most visited city, according to the 2016 MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index released on Thursday.

And seven of the top 10 fastest growing destination cities – Osaka (+24.2%), Chengdu (+20.1%), Colombo (+19.6%), Tokyo (+18.5%), Taipei (+14.5%), Xi’an (+14.2%) and Xiamen (+13.0%) – are also located in the region. It projects visitor volume and spend estimates for the 2016 while delivering a deeper understanding of how people travel and spend around the world.

Moreover, Mumbai and Chennai have stood out as the fastest growing destination cities globally with at least one million overnight visitors in 2016, ranked at number 14 and 19, respectively.

According to Reuters.com, Bangkok topped the Mastercard Index of Global Destination Cities list, beating out other major metropolitan areas such as London, Paris and Dubai as the city most visited by worldwide travelers. Many cities measured on the Index have increasing growth trajectories, indicating the growing interest in both visiting and living in cities, Mastercard said.

The compound annual growth rate of worldwide overnight visitors to Osaka over the period is 24.15 percent, and those to Taipei is 14.53 percent.

The index revealed that Singapore is expected to receive 12.11m visitors in 2016, with more than 77% of visitors arriving for leisure or personal purposes. Mumbai further consolidated its position as the only Indian city to enter Asia Pacific’s Top 10 Destination Cities in terms of worldwide overnight visitors in 2016.

In Europe, London maintains its top spot, followed by Paris, Istanbul, Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Middle East and Africa – Dubai is the top ranked destination city in the region (ranked fourth globally), while Abu Dhabi is the fastest growing in the region with a growth rate of 19.81 percent. Almost 90 percent of New York’s global visitors are from outside North America, led by London, Paris, Sao Paulo, Toronto and Beijing.

Public data is used in deriving the worldwide overnight visitor arrivals and their cross-border spending in each of the 132 destination cities.