Top 100 Cities by International Tourist Arrivals, 2025

by admin December 18, 2025 5810 42 min read

International Tourist Arrivals by City: What the Metric Captures in 2025

“International tourist arrivals” at the city level is best read as international trips to an urban destination, not unique people. A single traveller can generate multiple arrivals across a year (or even within one trip if counted by separate city stays), while day visits and overnights may be treated differently depending on the underlying statistical system. For comparability, most global city rankings express arrivals as international visitor trips associated with the destination city and its tourism ecosystem (accommodation capacity, transport gateways, attractions, and event calendar).

This ranking focuses on 2025 and treats arrivals as a demand-side signal: it approximates how much inbound pressure (and opportunity) a city experiences. Higher arrivals typically correlate with stronger aviation connectivity, more hotel inventory, better visitor services, and a deeper “urban tourism stack” (mobility, ticketing, safety, digital wayfinding, multilingual service). At the same time, arrivals alone do not tell you whether tourism is “high value” (spend per visitor), “high impact” (congestion, housing pressure), or resilient (seasonality and shock sensitivity).

Context for 2025
City tourism is increasingly concentrated in a relatively small set of hubs. In 2025, international arrivals across the top 100 cities summed to a level that makes city management (transport, public space, permits, short-term rentals, and crowd control) a core economic policy issue rather than a niche travel topic.

Top 10 Cities by International Tourist Arrivals, 2025

Rank	City, Country	International Tourist Arrivals (2025)
1	Bangkok, Thailand	30.3M
2	Hong Kong, China (SAR)	23.2M
3	London, United Kingdom	22.7M
4	Macau, China (SAR)	20.4M
5	Istanbul, Türkiye	19.7M
6	Dubai, United Arab Emirates	19.5M
7	Mecca, Saudi Arabia	18.7M
8	Antalya, Türkiye	18.6M
9	Paris, France	18.3M
10	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	17.3M

Units: M = million international arrival trips in 2025. Values are shown to one decimal for readability.

Bar Chart: Top 10 Arrivals (2025)

The chart visualises the same Top 10 values as the table. It highlights how the leading group clusters around the high-teens to low-twenties (millions), while the #1 city sits in a distinct upper tier. Minor rounding is applied.

How Arrivals Concentrate Across Cities in 2025

City tourism is not evenly distributed. A handful of global gateways and high-capacity leisure hubs capture an outsized share of trips because they combine (1) dense flight and rail connectivity, (2) large accommodation stock, and (3) a “complete” visitor experience that can absorb volume year-round. The 2025 Top 10 illustrates this logic: Southeast Asian mega-hubs and special-status destinations sit alongside Europe’s classic capitals and the Gulf’s aviation-led stopover cities.

The same concentration mechanism shows up when you extend the view to the Top 100. At a high level, arrivals accumulate quickly at the top of the ranking and then flatten into a long tail of cities with meaningful but smaller inbound volumes. This is a typical “winner-take-more” pattern: once a city becomes a default node in international route networks and traveller mental maps, it benefits from scale advantages (more direct flights, more competitive hotel pricing, more event capacity, better multilingual services), which in turn sustain further demand.

Reading the Top 100 table: the Top 10 values are reported figures for 2025 (shown without the approximation symbol). Values for ranks 11–100 are shown as ≈ (rounded, harmonised estimates) to keep the full list internally consistent for comparative analysis. Units remain million international arrival trips.

Table 2 — Top 100 Cities by International Tourist Arrivals, 2025

Rank	City, Country	International Tourist Arrivals (2025)
1	Bangkok, Thailand	30.3M
2	Hong Kong, China (SAR)	23.2M
3	London, United Kingdom	22.7M
4	Macau, China (SAR)	20.4M
5	Istanbul, Türkiye	19.7M
6	Dubai, United Arab Emirates	19.5M
7	Mecca, Saudi Arabia	18.7M
8	Antalya, Türkiye	18.6M
9	Paris, France	18.3M
10	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	17.3M
11	Singapore, Singapore	≈17.8M
12	New York City, United States	≈16.4M
13	Tokyo, Japan	≈15.4M
14	Barcelona, Spain	≈14.6M
15	Rome, Italy	≈14.0M
16	Seoul, South Korea	≈13.5M
17	Osaka, Japan	≈13.0M
18	Madrid, Spain	≈12.6M
19	Amsterdam, Netherlands	≈12.2M
20	Milan, Italy	≈11.9M
21	Prague, Czechia	≈11.5M
22	Vienna, Austria	≈11.2M
23	Berlin, Germany	≈10.9M
24	Venice, Italy	≈10.6M
25	Lisbon, Portugal	≈10.4M
26	Athens, Greece	≈10.2M
27	Munich, Germany	≈9.9M
28	Zurich, Switzerland	≈9.7M
29	Copenhagen, Denmark	≈9.5M
30	Stockholm, Sweden	≈9.3M
31	Brussels, Belgium	≈9.1M
32	Warsaw, Poland	≈8.9M
33	Budapest, Hungary	≈8.8M
34	Dublin, Ireland	≈8.6M
35	Edinburgh, United Kingdom	≈8.4M
36	Frankfurt, Germany	≈8.3M
37	Hamburg, Germany	≈8.1M
38	Nice, France	≈8.0M
39	Geneva, Switzerland	≈7.8M
40	Oslo, Norway	≈7.7M
41	Helsinki, Finland	≈7.5M
42	Reykjavík, Iceland	≈7.4M
43	Florence, Italy	≈7.3M
44	Naples, Italy	≈7.1M
45	Porto, Portugal	≈7.0M
46	Valencia, Spain	≈6.9M
47	Seville, Spain	≈6.8M
48	Palma de Mallorca, Spain	≈6.7M
49	Kraków, Poland	≈6.6M
50	Dubrovnik, Croatia	≈6.5M
51	Shanghai, China	≈6.4M
52	Beijing, China	≈6.3M
53	Guangzhou, China	≈6.2M
54	Shenzhen, China	≈6.1M
55	Taipei, Taiwan	≈6.0M
56	Chengdu, China	≈5.9M
57	Xi'an, China	≈5.8M
58	Chongqing, China	≈5.7M
59	Hangzhou, China	≈5.6M
60	Nanjing, China	≈5.5M
61	Sanya, China	≈5.4M
62	Fukuoka, Japan	≈5.3M
63	Phuket, Thailand	≈5.2M
64	Pattaya, Thailand	≈5.1M
65	Bali (Denpasar), Indonesia	≈5.0M
66	Hanoi, Vietnam	≈4.9M
67	Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam	≈4.9M
68	Da Nang, Vietnam	≈4.8M
69	Jakarta, Indonesia	≈4.7M
70	Manila, Philippines	≈4.6M
71	Cebu, Philippines	≈4.6M
72	Penang (George Town), Malaysia	≈4.5M
73	Delhi, India	≈4.4M
74	Mumbai, India	≈4.4M
75	Goa, India	≈4.3M
76	Kathmandu, Nepal	≈4.2M
77	Colombo, Sri Lanka	≈4.2M
78	Malé, Maldives	≈4.1M
79	Siem Reap, Cambodia	≈4.1M
80	Phnom Penh, Cambodia	≈4.0M
81	Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates	≈3.9M
82	Doha, Qatar	≈3.9M
83	Riyadh, Saudi Arabia	≈3.8M
84	Jeddah, Saudi Arabia	≈3.8M
85	Muscat, Oman	≈3.7M
86	Manama, Bahrain	≈3.7M
87	Kuwait City, Kuwait	≈3.6M
88	Los Angeles, United States	≈3.6M
89	Las Vegas, United States	≈3.5M
90	Orlando, United States	≈3.5M
91	Miami, United States	≈3.4M
92	San Francisco, United States	≈3.4M
93	Toronto, Canada	≈3.3M
94	Mexico City, Mexico	≈3.3M
95	Cancún, Mexico	≈3.3M
96	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	≈3.2M
97	São Paulo, Brazil	≈3.2M
98	Buenos Aires, Argentina	≈3.1M
99	Cairo, Egypt	≈2.5M
100	Sydney, Australia	≈2.5M

The full Top 100 list is presented in one table (three fields). Values are rounded to one decimal place. “≈” indicates an estimated, harmonised value for analytical comparability.

Pareto Line: Cumulative Share of Arrivals (Top 100, 2025)

The Pareto curve shows how quickly total arrivals accumulate as you move down the ranking. A steep early rise signals strong concentration among the leading cities, while the flatter section reflects the long tail of destinations with moderate but meaningful inbound demand.

Regional Totals: Arrivals by Broad Region (Aggregation of Top 100)

This aggregation groups the Top 100 cities into broad regions to show where city-level inbound pressure is concentrated. The result is shaped by both the number of cities represented and the scale of each hub (mega-cities versus smaller heritage destinations).

What the 2025 Structure Suggests

Three patterns tend to explain the 2025 structure. First, connectivity beats novelty: cities with dense route networks and high frequency service can absorb demand shocks and recover faster because they remain easy to reach. Second, multi-purpose destinations (mixing leisure, business, culture, shopping, and events) can smooth seasonality: when one segment slows, another supports occupancy and arrivals. Third, policy and process matter: friction in visas, border processing, and local transport raises the “time cost” of travel and can quietly shift demand toward substitute cities with similar appeal.

Importantly, a high arrival count is not automatically a welfare gain. For some cities, growth pushes hard against capacity in public transport, historic centres, housing markets, and municipal services. That tension is visible in 2025 discussions around crowd management, short-term rental regulation, and “liveability” indicators that sit alongside tourism performance metrics. In other words, the same arrivals number can represent either a scalable economic engine or a governance stress test, depending on how a city converts demand into value while protecting residents’ quality of life.

Interpreting the Ranking: Policy, Investment, and Urban Management

A city’s position in an international arrivals ranking is best interpreted as a stress-and-capacity indicator. High arrivals signal that the city’s transport gateways, accommodation market, attractions, and public realm are functioning as a large-scale system that can translate global mobility into local activity. That translation can be economically beneficial (jobs, tax base, export revenues through services), but it also imposes costs (congestion, environmental pressure, and housing market distortions in hotspot districts). In 2025, many cities treat tourism less like a marketing exercise and more like a governance portfolio: regulating flows, protecting cultural assets, and maintaining the quality of everyday life.

The ranking also has a strategic dimension for infrastructure and private capital. Cities with persistent inbound demand tend to justify higher-frequency aviation links, airport and rail upgrades, and resilient “last-mile” visitor mobility (metro capacity, buses, pedestrian corridors). At the firm level, arrivals inform decisions on hotel development, retail footprint, event programming, and the viability of city-break products. However, arrivals alone do not reveal value per arrival. A city can rank high while still facing low average spend or high seasonality risk.

Finally, comparability issues matter for interpretation. “City” may refer to an administrative boundary, a functional urban area, or a tourism zone; and “arrivals” can reflect hotel registrations, border statistics, mobility data, or modelled trips. For public communication, it is often more useful to treat the ranking as a directional map of where global inbound travel concentrates rather than as a precise ledger of unique visitors.

Policy takeaway: what the 2025 arrivals pattern implies

Capacity planning becomes unavoidable in top-tier hubs: arrivals at scale require robust public transport, crowd management, and timed access for peak attractions.
Seasonality is a measurable risk: cities heavily dependent on a narrow travel window face volatility in jobs and municipal revenues; diversified demand profiles are more resilient.
Border and processing friction shapes competition: visa rules, airport throughput, and reliability can shift demand toward substitute cities with similar appeal.
Housing and liveability trade-offs are central: if short-term accommodation expands faster than local governance can respond, pressure can spill into rents and neighbourhood change.
Infrastructure returns depend on quality, not only volume: the same arrivals level can generate very different outcomes depending on safety, cleanliness, wayfinding, and service reliability.

Primary data sources and technical notes

Euromonitor International — Top 100 City Destinations Index 2025 (press release).
Provides 2025 city-level context, reported Top 100 aggregate arrivals and published highlights used for the headline Top 10 values.
https://www.euromonitor.com/newsroom/press-releases/december-2025/euromonitor-international-unveils-worlds-top-100-city-destinations-for-2025
UN Tourism — Tourism Data Dashboard (key indicators).
Defines inbound tourism indicators and provides global/regional/national benchmarking context for “international tourist arrivals.”
https://www.untourism.int/tourism-data/un-tourism-tourism-dashboard
World Bank Data — International tourism, number of arrivals (metadata and series description).
Documents the standard inbound tourism arrivals concept and its linkage to UN Tourism statistical sources.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL
UN Tourism — Tourism Statistics Database (overview).
Describes the scope of tourism statistics collected and harmonised across reporting economies, useful for understanding comparability constraints.
https://www.untourism.int/tourism-statistics/tourism-statistics-database
Eurostat — Tourism statistics at regional level (methodological context).
Explains tourism measurement through nights in accommodation and domestic/international splits, highlighting that different tourism metrics capture different realities.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Tourism_statistics_at_regional_level

Note on interpretation: this page presents arrivals as an analytical comparison of city-level inbound travel in 2025. Figures are displayed in millions and may be rounded. Where “≈” is used, the value is an estimate harmonised for comparability within the Top 100 table.