London took the top spot in The MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index 2015, also for the fifth year running, with 18.82 million visitors. MasterCard bases its rankings on figures supplied by national immigration authorities, but only collates projected data for each individual location in a country.
Some senior travel industry analysts say this way of awarding rankings is flawed and does not give an accurate representation. Despite this, MasterCard says arrivals at Bangkok’s two busy airports and data provided by hotels and travel service and tour agencies in the city corroborate the rating.
For its annual awards this year, MasterCard collected data and details of credit card usage in 132 of the most popular cities in the world. Paris took third place with 16.06 million visitors. Other Asian cities to feature were Singapore in seventh place with 11.88 million visitors and Hong Kong in tenth position with 8.66 million visitors.
MasterCard places Bangkok second in global hotspot ratings
News in Asia
The annual MasterCard ratings of the planet’s most visited cities has placed Bangkok second for the fifth consecutive year. Based on the global credit card supplier’s criteria, the figures show that 18.24 million international visitors spent at least one night in Bangkok.