The 20 Most Visited Cities in the World

Which metropolises in the world attract the most visitors and make the most money? We want to answer this question with a ranking of the most visited cities in the world.

But before discovering the most visited city, a few clarifications are in order. Indeed, it seems that there is no single global source to stick to, as each nation tends to record tourist flows differently. This is why we have analysed both the data collected in Mastercard's"Global Destination City Index" and those collected in the"Top 100 City Destinations: 2019 Edition" by Euromonitor, a company specialising in market consultancy and analysis. The two studies differ in the way they are counted and therefore produce different rankings.

NB: In order to offer an objective insight into the tourism potential of various cities around the world, we wanted to look at the pre-pandemic data. In fact, since 2020, tourism flows have been strongly affected by the severe health crisis that has hit the world.

Top 20 most visited cities according to Mastercard

Mastercard's count is based on the number of international visitors who have booked at least a one-night stay in a given city. At the top we find Bangkok, closely followed by Paris and London closes the podium.
And Italy? The top destination in the Bel Paese is Milan, capable of beating such popular cities as Rome and Venice. The Lombard capital ranks sixteenth.

Top 20 most visited cities according to Euromonitor

Euromonitor takes into account the 'flow of arrivals', i.e. the number of people who visited a city in another country for at least 24 hours, for a period not exceeding 12 months, and stayed in paid or unpaid, collective or private accommodation. Thus Euromonitor's ranking varies in several positions from the previous one.
Thefirst position is occupied by Hong Kong, followed by Bangkok and London, the latter being one of the very few cities that maintain the same position in both rankings. The first Italian city is instead Rome, which takes the sixteenth position.