Bangkok, the populous capital city of Thailand, is expected to be the most popular city for international travelers this year.
That’s according to new estimates from Mastercard’s 2013 Global Destination Cities Index.
Bangkok is estimated to have nearly 16 million overnight visitors,
followed closely by London, Paris, Singapore, and New York. Here’s the
rest of the top 20:
Not surprisingly, those are also the cities bringing in the most
money from overnight international travelers. But this time New York is
at the top with an estimated $18.6 billion spent in 2013, followed by
London ($16.3 billion), Paris ($14.6 billion), Bangkok ($14.3 billion),
and Singapore ($13.5 billion).
But competition is coming fast from cities outside the top 20.
Smaller cities are seeing massive international travel growth with
Chengdu, China leading the way with 285 percent growth between 2009 and
2013, along with places like Colombo, Sri Lanka with 123 percent growth
and Mumbai, India with 113 percent growth.
The latest rendition of this annual Mastercard Index is the first
time an Asian city has been atop the international visitors rankings,
part of a larger trend.
“This geographical pattern clearly suggests that destination
cities in emerging markets in the Middle East and Asia are expanding the
fastest in being connected to the rest of the world through having more
flights to more cities, and more frequent flights to cities where they
are already connected,” said Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, in a post about the rankings. “This will strongly drive the growth of their visitor arrivals and cross-border spending in the coming years.”