International travellers visiting Dubai is anticipated to spend some $10.4 billion (Dh38.25 billion) this year, the eighth highest expenditure in the world, MasterCard said on Wednesday.
Visitors will continue to spend the most of their travel money in New York, one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Cross-border spending in New York is forecast to hit $18.59 billion this year, according to the latest MasterCard Index. Second on the list is London, with $16.3 billion, followed by Paris, Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo.
The huge forecast expenditure in New York doesn’t come as a surprise because the city has a high cost of living. Although Bangkok is the most visited city, it is ranked fourth in terms of visitor spending, given that living costs there are considerably lower compared to other destinations.
The figures were reached using government-sourced actual data on cross-border transactions by visitors flying into the different cities and not based on MasterCard volumes or transactional data.
“All the data were collected by different national governments and reported to the Bank for International Settlements. If a visitor buys an air ticket at home using the local currency, that’s not included in the count. The moment the visitor reaches the destination city and uses foreign currency to pay for any transaction, that is what’s being counted,” explained Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, global economic adviser for MasterCard and author of the report.
