Johannesburg is the third most visited destination city in the Middle East and Africa region and the most visited sub-Saharan city, according to a new survey released by MasterCard.
The MasterCard Index of Global Destination Cities ranks cities by their total international visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending by those same visitors in the destination cities and gives visitor and passenger growth forecasts. Cities measured in the region included Dubai, Cairo, Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Casablanca, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi, Riyadh, Amman, Beirut and Tunis.
“The index results show that many emerging market cities in the Middle East and Africa are showing robust growth in terms of both visitor arrivals and cross-border expenditures, with many showing expected growth rates exceeding 14%,” says Anna Jones, Area Head, Southern Africa, MasterCard Worldwide.
Dubai (7.9 million) and Cairo (3.7million) took the top two spots as the region’s most visited cities, with Johannesburg ranked third with three million visitors in 2011. Tunis and Beirut took the bottom two spots with just 1.7 million visitors each, with the lion’s share of visitors coming from London.
For Johannesburg, the top five cities of origin as measured by visitor arrivals were London, Frankfurt, Dubai, Paris and Gaborone.
Despite featuring in the top five, Johannesburg only saw a forecasted 9.9% increase in visitors for 2011 compared with 2010, and was the second lowest in terms of forecasted growth, while Cairo saw the largest forecasted growth with 21.6%.
The relatively low forecasted increase in visitors and expenditure for Johannesburg is largely attributed to the unusually high numbers of visitors in 2010 for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
While Parisians were only the fourth most prevalent visitors to Johannesburg (148 000), they spent the second most in the city (USD$179 million), followed closely by visitors from Dubai who spent USD$160 million.
Overall London topped the world’s cities by visitor numbers with 20.1m inbound passengers expected in 2011, ahead of Paris in second place with 18.1m. Only one city in North America, New York, is in the top twenty, and ranks twelfth with 7.6m inbound passengers expected.
London also ranked first on cross-border expenditure, ahead of New York in second place, and Paris in third. Estimated expenditures in these cities for 2011 amounted to $25.6bn, $20.3bn and $14.6bn respectively.
While cities in Europe and the US ranked highly in the MasterCard Index of Global Destination Cities, Dr. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, Global Economic Advisor, MasterCard Worldwide, said emerging market cities in Asia, Middle East and Africa were shaping to play a much greater role in the global economy.
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