Hong Kong will keep crown as world’s top destination for visitors in 2019 despite protests, research firm Euromonitor forecasts
- City to beat Bangkok to top spot for tourists again in 2019, keeping No 1 ranking for tenth straight year, British-based company says
- Firm forecasts foreign arrivals to the city will drop 8.7 per cent to 26.71 million
Hong Kong will keep its spot as the world’s No 1 tourist destination for the tenth consecutive year in 2019, with pre-July arrivals – mainly from mainland China – mitigating the subsequent visitor slump caused by citywide protests, a research firm has predicted.
Visitor numbers will drop 8.7 per cent to 26.71 million for this year, according to data from Euromonitor International. Predicted growth of 6.9 per cent in second-placed Bangkok’s numbers would not be enough for it to take top spot, leaving the Thai capital on 25.84 million arrivals.
The British-based research company ranked those two cities, plus London, Macau, Singapore, Paris, Dubai, New York, Kuala Lumpur and Istanbul, the 10 most popular destinations for 2018, having studied foreign visitor statistics across 400 cities.
Foreign visitors are defined as people who visit another country for more than 24 hours, for a period not exceeding 12 months. In Hong Kong’s case – as well as that of Macau – it includes mainland Chinese visitors, who made up 78 per cent of the city’s total arrivals in the first 10 months of this year.
Euromonitor estimated global inbound arrivals would jump 4.2 per cent to 1.5 billion in 2019, with the top 100 cities, their total arrival numbers up 6.2 per cent from a year earlier, accounting for nearly 47 per cent of the total.