Singapore has grown more popular in 2016 as a top global destination for business and leisure, as it has been ranked second in Asia and sixth in the world by worldwide visitor arrivals. Among the top ten cities of the list, which all are projected to receive over 10 million visitors, Istanbul’s visitor spending expectation remained the lowest at $7.5 billion.
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Asia makes up half of the global top 10 – Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and Seoul – and seven of the top 10 fastest growing destination cities – Osaka, Chengdu, Colombo, Tokyo, Taipei, Xi’an and Xiamen.
Bangkok beat 2015’s most popular destination, London, into second place. “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.
Tourism arrivals in Bangkok have remained strong despite a rash of negative headlines, and the number of visitors are expected to increase by 9.6 percent compared to past year.
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. Visitors to the top 20 overwhelmingly spent more while shopping, as opposed to dining, except in Europe, where meals captured greater share of spend in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Istanbul, Milan, Paris, Prague and Vienna.
Five Indian cities – Mumbai (ranked at 27), Chennai (30), Delhi (48), Kolkata (62) along with Pune (91) – have made it to the top 100 destination cities for 2016.
The compound annual growth rate of global overnight visitors to Osaka over the period is 24.15 percent, and those to Taipei is 14.53 percent. However, the rankings are very different in terms of overnight visitor spend; Punta Cana leads the region with US$2.95 billion followed by Mexico City (US$2.27 billion).
North America – New York, ranked fifth globally, is the top destination city in the region. This rate was the highest in Paris, where visitors spend an average 44.8 percent of their travel budget. Almost 90 percent of New York’s global visitors are from outside North America, led by London, Paris, Sao Paulo, Toronto and Beijing. One example is the broad adoption of contactless payments by transit systems like London and Chicago.
Meanwhile, Bangkok has emerged as the leading destination city by global overnight visitor arrivals.
This Index and the accompanying reports are not based on Mastercard volumes or transactional data.
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The index measures global overnight visitor arrivals and ranks the 132 most visited cities around the world.
