This study selected cities above the “alpha” level in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network rankings as samples to examine the relationship between local demand and urban tourism competitiveness mediated by the quality of place.

Few studies explored the intervening mechanisms between destination attributes and competitiveness. The index was made based on the data collected from the public and was not based on Mastercard volumes or transactional data.Most studies on tourism destination competitiveness examined the direct relationships of destination attributes and destination competitiveness. Singapore is expected to have 4.0% more tourists. Looks like Southeast Asian countries are will still be favoured highly by international travellers as the global payments technology giant forecasts the numbers to rise this year.īangkok is expected to see 9.6% more tourists with Kuala Lumpur expected to perform even better than last year with 7.5% international visitors. Latvian travellers relax in a rooftop pool overlooking Kuala Lumpur. Tokyo is eighth with 11.93 million and Seoul, the only city which didn't see its annual growth of international visitors go up, came in at 10th place after recording 9.54 million tourists.Įxpanding its index to look at 162 cities across the world, Mastercard said these cities saw growth in tourism in 2017 thanks to the buzzing global economy. In terms of number of visitors, Singapore came fifth with 13.91 million visitors while Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur was seventh after recording 12.58 million tourists. Visitors on average forked out US$286 in the island nation. IMAGE: WE ARE TRAVEL GIRLSĪs for the city which saw the most money spent in a day, it's Singapore. However, visitors preferred spending extra nights in Tokyo, leading the Japanese city to top Mastercard's recently launched Global Destination Cities Index in terms of average length of stay in the Asia Pacific region. Visitors stayed in Bangkok for 4.7 nights and on average spent US$173 per day. In 2017 alone, Bangkok saw a whopping 20 million international travellers making Thailand's capital the top destination for tourists.

Global destination cities index 2017