Kuala Lumpur among Global Top 10 cities for international travellers -- Survey

Asia-Pacific has again bested itself with five out of the top ten destinations for international travellers hailing from the region, up from four in the previous year, according to the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index released today.

Kuala Lumpur, despite a marginally lower projected growth rate of 13.1 per cent, made it to Asia-Pacific's top ten for international visitors by sheer arrival numbers.

The Malaysian capital ranked number eight also boasted the second highest growth rate in the Global top 20.

Bangkok relinquished its top spot from last year to London, but still came in strong in second place, retaining its leading position among the Asia-Pacific cities despite an 11 per cent decline in visitors on account of the political unrest that has plagued Thailand since the latter part of 2013.

South-East Asian cities also showed promising growth rates with Jakarta projected to see growth of 18.8 per cent, followed by Hanoi (15.1 per cent) and Manila (14.3 per cent).

Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, global economic advisor to MasterCard, said international visitors and their spending were powerful transformational forces in destination cities from the business, social and cultural perspectives.

"Since 2009, we've seen cross-border travel and associated spending growing at faster rates than real world gross domestic product," he said at a press briefing here today.

Now in its fourth year, the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index provides an overview and ranking of the 132 of the most important global cities.

The index ranks cities in terms of the number of their total international visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending by these same visitors in the destination cities, and gives visitor and passenger growth forecasts for 2014.