Bangkok edges out London as world's top travel destination: Mastercard

What constitutes being a visitor? One night? Passing through immigration once? An appearance at an airport, even in transit? How about if the same visitor goes twice or three times in a year? Is it then two or three visitors? Or one?

Heathrow and Suvarnabhumi certainly share things in common. Huge size and sometimes long immigration queues are two of them. It's always kinda nice to go back to Kansai International. It seems like a small regional airport.

In answer to Moonraker, my guess is that the calculations made are very basic. it's merely the total individual uses made of a MasterCard regardless of how many times that person returns during the year. So, this sum would also include individual times Mastercards were used in transit through the airport hub rather than setting foot in the country beyond.

"sometimes long immigration queues"

Have you seen the gaijin lines at Narita? They run to the back to the room. Also, for re-entry people, a couple of times recently for me very long lines. only 1 or 2 guys manning the booths, while dozens serve the nihonjin who get thru in a few minutes.

@Morris135

It seems it is more than that. You can see the report at the link below. It describes their definitions and methodologies at the end. It doesn't appear to be based on card usage.

https://newsroom.mastercard.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/FINAL-Global-Destination-Cities-Index-Report.pdf

albaleo

thanks for the link