Global travel is an interesting business. It’s about trade, cross-cultural sharing, vacations, shopping, politics and so much more. International travel includes the magical, the mystical and the mundane. But make no mistake, courting international arrivals is big business and this recent report by Euromonitor International shows.
The annual Top City Destinations Ranking covers 100 of the world’s leading cities in terms of international tourist arrivals. These cities combined grew by 5.4% in 2013, higher than the 4.8% growth experienced by overall international arrivals, which proves just how hard cities work in order to attract foreign visitors.
As with most things in travel these days Asia dominates. More than a third of all destinations are located in the Asian Pacific region and six of the top 10 cities are in Asia. The top three, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok all have excellent airport-connectivity with global destinations and they each also do a great job of attracting the all important Chinese traveler.
Despite a slowdown on inbound arrivals China also had the greatest number of cities on the list, counting eight in the top 100. Still there are a few surprises on the list, for instance Anatayla beats Istanbul for the most internationally-visited city in Turkey and Prague bested the likes of Shanghai, Los Angeles and Tokyo in total foreign arrivals. Data like this is always fascinating.
However if there’s one take away it’s that there’s a shift from the West to the East and Asia is really the place to visit right now and most likely into the foreseeable future.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Hong Kong
Singapore
Bangkok
London
Paris
Macau
New York City
Shenzen
Kuala Lumpur
Anatalya
Hong Kong SAR
Singapore
Thailand
United Kingdom
France
Macau SAR
Unites States
China
Malaysia
Turkey
25,587.3
22,455.4
17,467.8
16,784.1
15,200.0
14,268.5
11,850.4
11,702.5
11,182.4
11,120.7
