Bangkok is by far the most popular tourist destination in the Asia Pacific, according to a new report.
In its inaugural Asia Pacific Destinations Index, which was released on Wednesday, MasterCard revealed that the Thai capital tops the regional rankings in terms of both visitor arrivals and expenditure.
Inbound arrivals to Bangkok grew 28.6% to 21.9 million last year, marking the first time the city has exceeded the 20m mark. This was almost double Asia’s next most-visited destinations, Singapore and Tokyo, both of which attracted 11.8m arrivals. Kuala Lumpur (11.3m) was fourth and Phuket (9.3m) fifth.
And the appeal of Thailand is clear, with three of the country’s destinations (including Pattaya in eighth place with 8.1m visitors) in the top 10.
In terms of tourism expenditure, Bangkok once again topped the charts with receipts worth US$15.2 billion in 2015, followed by Seoul (US$14.4bn), Singapore (US$14.1bn), Tokyo (US$11.9bn) and Kuala Lumpur (US$10.5bn).
And tourism in Asia Pacific destinations continues to rise sharply, according to MasterCard. Half of the top 10 destinations, in terms of visitor numbers, saw year-on-year growth of 10% or more, including Osaka (54.0%), Tokyo (53.2%), Bangkok (28.6%), Phuket (15.5%) and Pattaya (10.0%).
By sub-region, Northeast Asia continues to attract the largest number of international visitors (134.5m), followed closely by Southeast Asia (127.1m), with South Asia (25.7m) and Oceania (20.6%) lagging some way behind.
Mainland China, despite not having any destination in the top 10, has three cities in the top 20 – Shanghai (12th, 5.5m visitors), Beijing (18th, 4.0m) and Guangzhou (19th, 3.9m). Japan, which achieved a record number of international arrivals in 2015, had four destinations in the top 20 – Tokyo (3rd, 11.8m), Osaka (10th, 6.5m), Hokkaido (14th, 4.7m) and Chiba (17th, 4.5m). Mumbai (15th, 4.6m), was the only South Asian city in the top 20.
MasterCard’s Asia Pacific Destinations Index monitored a total of 167 Asia Pacific destinations.
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