The World’s Most
Visited Cities
Bangkok welcomed 32.4 million international visitors in 2024 — more than any other city on earth. Two Turkish cities made the top 10. One city on the list is not a tourist destination at all. And the city that most people call the world’s most visited is actually ranked ninth.
Every year, Euromonitor International tracks how many international visitors arrive in the world’s top city destinations. The results are not what most people expect. Paris — widely called the world’s most visited city — ranks ninth by actual arrivals. Bangkok, a city many travellers would not put first, sits far ahead of everyone else. The real ranking tells a very different story to the one in most travel magazines.
- Bangkok leads the world with 32.4 million international arrivals in 2024 — a 30%+ jump in a single year and well ahead of second-place Istanbul at 23 million.
- Turkey has two cities in the top 10 — Istanbul (2nd) and Antalya (6th). No other country appears twice.
- Mecca ranks 5th in the world by international arrivals — but almost all its 19.3 million visitors are religious pilgrims, not tourists. It is the only city on the list that does not allow non-Muslim visitors at all.
- Paris ranks 9th by arrivals — but 1st in Euromonitor’s overall city attractiveness index, which measures quality, infrastructure, and sustainability, not just raw visitor numbers.
Source: Euromonitor International Top 100 City Destinations Index 2024 (December 2024). International arrivals = persons arriving from another country for 24+ hours. Positions 1–5 confirmed via CNN directly citing Euromonitor; positions 6–10 confirmed via multiple secondary sources citing Euromonitor. Tokyo figure cited by CNN citing Euromonitor (“close to 13 million”). Tilde (~) indicates approximate figure from secondary sources.
Note: Euromonitor publishes two separate rankings — one for international arrivals (this table) and one for overall city attractiveness using 55 metrics. Paris tops the attractiveness ranking. Bangkok tops arrivals. These are different measurements. The full arrivals ranking beyond top 10 is a paid Euromonitor dataset and cannot be independently verified for this article.
Why Bangkok Is So Far Ahead
Bangkok’s lead is not just large — it is almost double the gap between any other two cities in the top 10. At 32.4 million international arrivals in 2024, it received nearly 10 million more visitors than second-placed Istanbul. Euromonitor reported the city grew by more than 30% in a single year — one of the fastest recoveries from the pandemic of any major destination globally.
The reasons are well understood: Bangkok offers one of the most complete combinations of affordability, accessibility, food, culture, and infrastructure of any city in Asia. A flight connecting from almost anywhere in Southeast Asia passes through it. Its low cost of living means visitors stay longer and spend more nights than in cities like London or Paris. It is also the gateway to Thailand’s beaches — many visitors count Bangkok even when their final destination is Koh Samui or Phuket.
Mecca Is on the List — but It Is Not a Tourist Destination
Mecca, Saudi Arabia, ranks fifth in the world by international arrivals with 19.3 million visitors in 2024 — a 20% jump in a single year. But almost every one of those visitors is a Muslim pilgrim performing Hajj or Umrah, the obligatory and voluntary Islamic pilgrimages. Mecca is the only city on this list that does not permit non-Muslim visitors at all. It has no hotels marketed to leisure tourists, no sightseeing for outsiders, and no nightlife. Its rank is a measure of religious pull, not tourism appeal.
This matters because it changes how you read the list. Mecca’s growth reflects rising Muslim population globally and Saudi investment in pilgrimage infrastructure — not a tourism marketing campaign. Excluding it, Dubai moves to fifth and Antalya to fifth equal, both serving very different audiences.
The Paris Paradox
Paris is the city most people would name as the world’s most visited. It has the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the most famous fashion week, and more hotel rooms than almost any city in Europe. In 2024 it also hosted the Olympic Games. And yet by raw international arrivals, Paris ranks ninth — behind Bangkok, Istanbul, London, Hong Kong, Mecca, Antalya, Dubai, and Macau.
The explanation is not that Paris is unpopular. It is that Euromonitor’s arrivals count measures international visitors only. Paris receives an enormous number of domestic French tourists who do not show up in this figure. When Euromonitor scores cities on overall attractiveness — using 55 metrics including infrastructure, sustainability, safety, and tourism performance — Paris has ranked first for four consecutive years. The arrivals ranking and the attractiveness ranking measure genuinely different things. Paris is the world’s best city for tourism by quality. Bangkok is the world’s most visited by volume.
Turkey’s Quiet Dominance
No country has two cities in the top 10 except Turkey. Istanbul at second and Antalya at sixth together received roughly 42 million international arrivals in 2024 — more than France’s total city tourism concentrated in just two urban centres. Istanbul’s position reflects its unique geography straddling Europe and Asia, its history as capital of three empires, and aggressive tourism investment since 2015. Antalya is a different story: a resort city whose entire economy runs on European package holidays, particularly from Germany, Russia, and the UK. It rarely appears in conversation about great cities but it consistently appears in tourism data.
What the Data Looks Like in 2025
The most recent Euromonitor data — for 2025, published December 2025 — shows Bangkok still leading with 30.3 million arrivals, slightly down from 32.4 million in 2024 due to a stronger Thai baht and some softening from Chinese visitor markets. Hong Kong jumped from fourth to second with 23.2 million arrivals. London held third with 22.7 million. Macau recorded the strongest growth of any top city — up 14% — driven by new cross-border access programmes with mainland China. Total international arrivals to the top 100 city destinations reached 702 million in 2025, an 8% increase, according to Euromonitor’s press release. Asia-Pacific led all regions with 10% growth.
- Euromonitor International — Top 100 City Destinations Index 2024 (press release, December 2024)
- Euromonitor International — Top 100 City Destinations Index 2025 (press release, December 2025)
- CNN — “World’s top 100 cities revealed” · December 4, 2024 (citing Euromonitor directly)
- Time Out — “The world’s most visited cities by international arrivals in 2025” · December 2025
- Islands.com — “Five Cities With Highest International Travelers in 2025” · December 2025
- WPTravel — “Most Visited Cities in the World: Statistics With Total Arrivals Data” (citing Euromonitor 2024 & 2025)
- UN Tourism — World Tourism Barometer 2025 (global arrivals: 1.52 billion)
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