Hong Kong has made the Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index as one of Asia Pacific’s top 10 most-visited cities for the eighth consecutive year.

The city is currently at 10th spot regionally, and is expected to see 3.78 per cent growth in international overnight visitor spending from last year’s US$5.92 billion.

Ranked 14th globally and seventh in Asia Pacific, Hong Kong welcomed 9.03 million international overnight visitors in 2017. Despite dropping a notch from ranking sixth the previous year, the city saw a slight increase in international overnight visitors from 2016, which saw 8.86 million visitors. Overnight visitor arrivals to Hong Kong are forecast to grow by 0.9 per cent in 2018.

Bangkok remains the No. 1 destination city in the world with 20.05 million international overnight visitor arrivals, while London came in a close second with 19.83 million visitors. Paris and Dubai came at the third and fourth spots, with 17.44 million and 15.79 million visitors respectively. Singapore remains at the fifth spot with 13.91 million visitors.

The top three overnight international visitors in Hong Kong last year were from the Republic of Korea (12.9 per cent), the US (9.6 per cent) and Taiwan (9.5 per cent).