mastercard global destination cities index 2017 pdf

Of all 132 destinations across the globe, Osaka was at the top with a whopping 24.0 percent growth in overnight visitor arrivals during the 8-year period. Kuala Lumpur / Photo: Sitthisak Namkhamįrom 2009 to 2016, two ASEAN cities also saw strong growth in visitor arrivals, namely: Jakarta up 18.2 percent, and Hanoi up 16.4 percent. Meantime, Kuala Lumpur was likely to post a strong 7.2 percent gain in visitor arrivals for 2017, enabling it to keep its eighth place on the chart. The Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index predicted that Bangkok’s visitor arrivals would increase by 4.0 percent in the 2017 calendar year, while Singapore was forecast to move up one notch growing by 2.6 percent and outranking New York (at minus 2.4 percent). London, Paris, Dubai and Singapore rounded out the top five.įeature image: Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, by Brieuc Saffré via Flickr ( CC BY 2.Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn), Bangkok / Photo: Tanakitt Khum-on

Globally, Bangkok was the world’s most popular city, with 20-million visitors.

Overall, the Index claimed that Marrakech, Morrocco was Africa’s second most popular city with 3.93-million visitors, while Djerba, Tunisia, was fifth. Nelspruit also proved more popular than Lagos and Cairo. Interestingly, Nelspruit (6th) and Bloemfontein (11th) outranked Durban (16th) and Klerksdorp (17th) in the Index. Polokwane visitors spent 4.3 nights on average, with US$760-million spent overall. Visitors to the latter spent 12.5 nights and US$1.62-billion in 2017.

While Polokwane leads Cape Town in terms of visitors, the latter does pull ahead in terms of stay duration and expenditure. Namibian visitors accounted for 6.2% of visitors to the Cape - the highest share of any African country. The former seemingly attracted more visitors from Africa though, with 77.7% of its visitors originating from Zimbabwe and 6.9% from Botswana.Ĭape Town’s visitors originated mainly from the UK (14.4%), Germany (12.4%), US (10.9%), and France (6.6%). Notably, Polokwane - a city north of Johanensburg and the capital of Limpopo - saw more overnight visitors than Cape Town in 2017. “On average, international visitors stayed 10.9 nights and spent US$48 per day in Johannesburg, with shopping accounting for more than 50 percent of their total spend,” the report added. 4.05-million visitors stayed in the city for one night or more in 2017, which places it top of the African cities which made the list.

Mastercard global destination cities index 2017 pdf