For locals, having your city awarded as the most popular tourist destination probably isn’t up there on the priority list—that particular crown inherently denotes more people, more congestion, more tacky stores hawking postcards and heinous keyrings.
However, give a city any kind of award, and I’m fairly certain it’ll be celebrated with a smug sense of superiority and shameless pride – beers in hand.
Today, that feeling unfortunately can’t be worn by any of us in Australia, as the top 20 list of the World’s Most Popular Cities has dropped, and we’re nowhere to be seen. The title of *the* World’s Most Popular City (based on the number of visitors it attracted) once again goes to London – the big British sibling that Australians all but call their own.
And with good reason.
This year’s list, put together by
Mastercard, awards eight cities from
Europe in the top 20; while
Bangkok narrowly trailed London’s 18.82 million visitors with a staggering 18.24 million visitors. The city of love, city of lights,
city of hideous locks was awarded the honourable number 3.
Italy was the only country to land two of its cities in the list (
Milan and
Rome); further confirming that nothing satiates tourists’ appetites quite like a smorgasbord of delicately-modelled carbs on offer at literally every street corner.
In terms of the tourist dollars spent in cities, Australia unsurprisingly did make the top 20, with Sydney and its horrifying price tags—on absolutely everything but air—taking out spot number 17.
Without further ado, World, here’s your top 20 hit list.
1. London: 18.82 million visitors
2. Bangkok: 18.24 million
3. Paris: 16.06 million
4. Dubai: 14.26 million
5. Istanbul: 12.56 million
6. New York: 12.27 million
7. Singapore: 11.88 million
8. Kuala Lumpur: 11.12 million
9. Seoul: 10.35 million
10. Hong Kong: 8.66 million
11. Barcelona: 7.37 million
12. Amsterdam: 7.23 million
13. Milan: 6.82 million
4. Rome: 6.79 million
15. Taipei: 6.29 million
16. Shanghai: 6.09 million
17. Vienna: 6.05 million
18. Riyadh: 5.59 million
19. Tokyo: 5.38 million
20. Lima: 5.11 million
Via
Traveller.
Lead image by Peter Macdiarmid via Getty.
