At the head of the ranking is the Thai Bangkok (19.4 million), followed by London, Paris, Dubai and Singapore. According to the study, Prague is among the cities in which interest is growing year by year. “The number of visitors who stayed at least one night in a given city increased in 2016. Estimates for 2017 remain optimistic, with New York in the forecast. He expects the biggest increase in the number of visitors in the case of Tokyo,” said Mastercard president Carlos Menendez.

Nine out of ten foreigners seek out Prague for sightseeing, shopping and entertainment. The largest part of spending by visitors to Prague goes to catering (29.3 percent). According to this criterion, Prague is among the three cities where spending on catering accounts for the largest share of all expenses. Only Seoul (47 percent) and Istanbul (33.6 percent) are more visited than the top 20 most visited cities in the world.

Another significant expenditure item in the capital of the Czech Republic is accommodation with a share of 28.7 percent. This is followed by shopping (24.7 percent) and local services (12.3 percent). The remaining five percent of expenses are transportation costs.

The Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index includes 132 cities and ranks them according to the number of foreign overnight visitors and their spending. Publicly available data are used to derive the number of overnight foreign visitors and the amount of their expenses. According to the Czech Statistical Office, almost 9.3 million foreign tourists came to the Czech Republic last year. Compared to 2015, this represented a growth of 6.7 percent.