Prague Drops Off List of World’s Most Visited Cities

Every year, more and more tourists are visiting Prague.

Estimating the total number of tourists a city receives using data related to “overnight visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending”, the MasterCard index is released each year, and in 2018 evaluated a total of 162 of the most-visited cities around the world.

In 2016 and 2017, Prague just made the top 20 list of the world’s most visited cities according to the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index, with an estimated 5.7 million overnight international visitors in 2015 and 6.1 million in 2016.

That number keeps rising, as an estimated 6.7 million international tourists visited Prague over the course of 2017, according to the newly-released 2018 Global Destination Cities Index.

Still, that increase in tourists wasn’t enough to keep Prague among the top 20 most-visited cities in the world, as the Czech capital feel all the way down to number 26.

Prague tourists spend an estimated $151 (3290 CZK) per day. That’s about 30% of the amount at the most expensive city on the list, Dubai, where the average visitor spends an estimated $537 per day (11,700 CZK).

Prague wasn’t the only destination to drop out of the top 20 most visited cities. Other popular cities in Europe – including Vienna, Amsterdam and Rome – also fell from the top 20, as did Shanghai.

In their places, numerous Asian destinations including Osaka, Phuket, Pattaya, and Bali leapt into the top 20.

For the third straight year, Bangkok led the list with an estimated 20.05 million visitors. London, Paris, Dubai, and Singapore rounded out the top five most visited cities in the world.

With 13.13 million visitors, New York was sixth and the only American city on the list – – and the only city in the top 20 not in Europe or Asia.

An additional 30 cities were added to this year’s Global Destination Cities Index; the cities new to the top 20 include both increasingly popular destinations along with cities that weren’t included in past studies.

These are the world’s 20 most visited cities, according to the 2018 MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index: