Tourism is big business, in fact it’s one of the largest in the world. It also impacts different cities in different ways. Some places attract a lot of business and leisure travellers, while others have far less traffic. The most interesting way to understand how significant the impact of tourism is on a city is to look at the arrival numbers as a percentage of the city’s population. It’s interesting to see the cities which attract the most tourists.
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Understanding the number of international arrivals is important as it shows how popular a city is with global travelers and also how the impact tourism has on the local economy. We can see from the figures that Hong Kong has nearly 8 times as many international arrivals as its entire population while Shenzhen, right nearby, only receives about 14% of its population in international arrivals.
When you look through the data, it’s easy to see how important tourism is for many of the world’s great cities, including those across Asia.
Number of international tourists per year as % of city population
| City | Per capita | Date |
| Hong Kong | 789.10% | 2017 |
| Lisbon | 616.00% | 2015 |
| Dublin | 465.20% | 2017 |
| Edinburgh | 392.70% | 2017 |
| Amsterdam | 373.00% | 2017 |
| Taipei | 362.10% | 2016 |
| Rome | 305.00% | 2017 |
| Milan | 292.00% | 2017 |
| Vienna | 258.30% | 2014 |
| London | 220.20% | 2017 |
| Stockholm | 205.00% | 2016 |
| Helsinki | 183.60% | 2017 |
| Montréal | 160.00% | 2017 |
| San Francisco | 159.50% | 2016 |
| Warsaw | 153.00% | 2014 |
| New York | 147.30% | 2016 |
| Seoul | 135.90% | 2017 |
| Paris | 132.30% | 2017 |
| Madrid | 116.00% | 2013 |
| Tokyo | 88.00% | 2015 |
| Istanbul | 82.00% | 2014 |
| Sydney | 78.80% | 2016 |
| Buenos Aires | 77.20% | 2014 |
| Los Angeles | 69.90% | 2017 |
| Austin | 65.00% | 2017 |
| Melbourne | 55.70% | 2017 |
| Moscow | 38.40% | 2018 |
| Cape Town | 37.50% | 2017 |
| Shanghai | 35.30% | 2016 |
| Johannesburg | 35.20% | 2010 |
| Toronto | 33.10% | 2017 |
| Singapore | 27.80% | 2017 |
| Brussels | 22.40% | 2013 |
| Bogota | 21.90% | 2017 |
| Chengdu | 18.80% | 2016 |
| Shenzhen | 14.10% | 2016 |
| Lagos | 6.60% | 2017 |
As we see with the data the cities which attract the most tourists as a percentage of their population are all well known travel destinations, it’s interesting however to see just how successful and popular some destinations are.