Asian cities leading charge as global destinations says MasterCard Index

Destinations in Asia Pacific are key players in the movement of the world economy in favour of emerging markets, according to the MasterCard Index of Global Destination Cities released on Wednesday.

The latest Index from MasterCard is a new approach to understanding the global economy and the dynamic flow of commerce across the world. It ranks cities by their total international visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending by these same visitors in the destination cities, and gives visitor and passenger growth forecasts for 2011.

The Index results show that many emerging markets are showing robust growth with increases in both visitor arrivals and cross-border expenditures, with many showing growth rates exceeding 20%.

Cities in Asia Pacific led the charge globally having eight of the top 20 cities by international arrivals, with Bangkok ranked third, projected to have 11.5 million visitors this year, followed by Singapore in fourth rank with 11.4 million visitors and Hong Kong fifth with 10.9 million visitors.

Asia also displayed strong visitor growth for 2011 with Kuala Lumpur ranked second in the world with a 21.8% growth forecast, only behind Barcelona which led with an impressive 24.3%. Istanbul ranked third with 20.4%, followed by Shanghai (18.6%) and Hong Kong (17.4%).

The region also ranked highly on visitor spending with Bangkok ranked fourth globally with US$14.4 billion expected to be spent by inbound passengers in 2011; Sydney ranked sixth with US$13.8 billion, Singapore ranked ninth with US$10.8 billion and Hong Kong tenth with US$10.4 billion.

Asian cities dominate in terms of expenditure growth rates too, with seven of the top twenty high growth cities in the world heralding from the region, including Singapore (23.9%), Hong Kong (23.6%), Tokyo (20.8%) and Taipei (20.3%).

 “This kind of growth pattern strongly suggests that destination cities in emerging markets in Asia will continue to grow in importance,” observed Dr. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, global economic advisor, MasterCard Worldwide.

Overall London topped the world’s cities by visitor numbers with 20.1 million inbound passengers expected in 2011, ahead of Paris in second with 18.1 million. Only one city in North America is in the top 20, New York, which is ranked twelfth with 7.6 million inbound passengers expected.

London also ranked first on cross-border expenditure, ahead of New York in second place, and Paris in third.

Estimated expenditures in these cities for 2011 amounted to US$25.6 billion, US$20.3 billion and US$14.6 billion respectively.

While cities in Europe and the US still ranked highly in the MasterCard Index of Global Destination Cities, Dr. Hedrick-Wong said that emerging market cities in Asia were shaping to play a much greater role in the global economy.

 “Growth of outbound travel and expenditures is clearly a resilient secular trend that will continue to shape the future of globalisation,” he said.

“As the global center of economic gravity shifts inexorably to the dynamic emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Africa, cities there will correspondingly play ever bigger roles in knitting the world together.”