2014 Global Destination Cities Index

The impacts of travel on destination cities that receive visitors are very significant from the business, social, and cultural perspectives. International visitors’ spending constitute an increasingly important source of business revenue in a destination city, encompassing the hospitality, retail, transport, sports, and cultural industries, among many others. In many instances, it is a major economic engine for employment and income generation for the city in question. Along with the flow of visitors comes the flow of new ideas and experiences that benefits both the visitors and the destination cities, which are just as important as the flow of spending. As a result, the more connected a destination city is to other cities, the more vibrant and dynamic it becomes.

MasterCard’s Global Destination Cities Index, now in its fourth year, provides an annual ranking of 132 of the most important destination cities in the world. It generates estimates of the total number of international visitors to each of these cities each year, their cross-border spending in these cities, and breakdown of their numbers by feeder cities. The index is therefore a global map of how these 132 cities are connected and the business potential generated in each of them by the inflows of visitor spending.